Major Overview

The art and science of marketing provide a fascinating entry into the building of local and global enterprises.  Gain a more profound understanding of the theories and professional practices that are linked to marketing products and services. As you study the fundamentals of business administration—accounting, finance, management—you will better comprehend the relationship between the internal and external environments of an organization, and be ready to respond quickly and effectively to market conditions and trends in customer attitudes and behavior. You will learn how to conduct market research, brand a product, design advertising strategies, and gain a better understanding of consumer behavior and marketing in an international context, while also investigating specific topics within marketing that appeal to your personal and professional interests. 

Featured Course

ADVERTISING

This class provides a thorough understanding of what works in advertising and what doesn't.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

The educational goals for this major are as follows:

  • You will demonstrate critical thinking and the application of core competencies in business decision making.    
  • You will demonstrate an understanding of how firms operate in a global environment.          
  • You will demonstrate the ability to communicate convincingly based on data and conceptual frameworks, in writing and orally.
  • You will work collaboratively to achieve stated organizational goals.            
  • You will identify and make recommendations on strategic marketing problems.    
  • You will analyze and solve marketing problems using qualitative and quantitative methods.      
  • You will apply a critical approach towards key marketing topics and understand how it affects business and society.

Learning Environment

In small and diverse classroom settings, you will be provided with the conceptual tools for skill development within marketing and management, while also exploring the ethical responsibilities of marketing and customer contact. You will cultivate, among other invaluable skill sets, a greater understanding of how to study and design market research, acquire the tools for statistical analysis, and learn what works within advertising, all while being taught by professors and surrounded by students who value an interdisciplinary approach that maintains a careful balance between the methodological and practical expertise. 

Iceland

Study Trip

Students explore Iceland in the context of place branding and...

Kelsey

Alumna

AUP has pushed me to contemplate matters on a much, much bigger scale...

The "Retail Apocalypse"

Student Work

“Students identify a retail space that has been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic,” explains Professor Hamilton.
BROWSE ALL MAJORS AND REQUIREMENTS

Core Courses

The Marketing core courses, which you must take as part of the major requirements, will provide you with the tools you’ll need to ground your present and future studies. Your introduction to the fundamentals of Marketing will help pave the way for your successful completion of other Marketing courses.

BA1020 Foundations Of Management

The course introduces students to basic economics and management concepts and how the organizational setting influences human behavior. The course will look at management and organization topics from different domains, such as strategy, finance, marketing, operations and business ethics, to get a rich understanding of managing. Rather than presenting managing a business as a simple social technique by which managers enforce organizational standards, we will take a critical approach to understand how theory influences practice and how our perceptions of leadership and management evolve through changing contexts. An essential context is climate change caused by human activities. Anthropogenic climate change is the most significant unmet challenge facing leaders, managers, organizations and those who study them throughout this century. Through readings, in-class activities, assignments, cases and/or simulations, the course will explore how managing and organizational behavior influences the strategies of organizations and businesses. The course builds upon the active participation of students. We expect students to prepare carefully for each course meeting and engage fully in group work.

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MA1020 Applied Statistics I

Introduces the tools of statistical analysis. Combines theory with extensive data collection and computer-assisted laboratory work. Develops an attitude of mind accepting uncertainty and variability as part of problem analysis and decision-making. Topics include: exploratory data analysis and data transformation, hypothesis-testing and the analysis of variance, simple and multiple regression with residual and influence analyses.

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BA2001 Financial Accounting

This course introduces students to the financial accounting cycle and financial reporting for corporations. Students learn how to measure and record accounting data and prepare financial statements. At the end of the course, students choose a company and do an analysis of their financial statements, comparing their company against a competitor company, using financial ratios.

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BA2002 Managerial Accounting

Provides a basic introduction to the concepts of accounting for purposes of management control and management decision-making. Topics include: budgeting, budget variance analysis, cost-volume-profit relationships, product cost accounting, segment reporting and differential analysis.

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EC2010 Principles Of Microeconomics

Focuses on the role played by relative market prices in our society and on the forces of market supply and demand in determining these prices. Since the actions of consumers and firms underlie supply and demand, the course studies in detail the behavior of these two groups.

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BA2020 Management & Organizational Behavior

The course introduces students to basic Management/Organizational Behavior concepts and enables them to understand the attitude and behaviors on the individual level and the group level within organizations. Students will be enabled to use Organizational Behavior tools and theories to recognize organizational patterns within a complex social situation. Students will be provided with readings, lectures, and cases that provide a diverse and robust understanding of human interaction in organization.

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BA2040 Marketing In A Global Environment

This introductory marketing course develops students’ understanding of the principles of marketing and their use in international business. Students learn how to collect and analyze data sets to make marketing decisions with the goal of understanding customers wants, demands, and needs; they learn marketing from a strategic and functional point of view. With a focus on problem solving, students work in multicultural teams cultivating a greater sensitivity to cultural issues while improving communication skills. Students will consider marketing in the French, US, and international marketplace.

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BA3010 Corporate Finance

Examines finance as the practical application of economic theory and accounting data in the procurement and employment of capital funds. Applies the principles of strong fiscal planning and control to asset investment, and debt and equity financing decisions. Emphasizes sound leveraging in view of the time value of money, subject to the pernicious effects of taxation and inflation. BA 2002 recommended for simultaneous registration.

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BA3012 Business Ethics And Csr

This course explores the ethical issues that arise from the operation of business in a globalized and inter-connected economy. By applying the tools of theory, ethical analysis and personal reflection to a variety of real-life case studies, students will explore several disciplines of management practice, including marketing, operations, strategy, organizational behaviour, finance and accounting. Topical areas will be explored from multiple perspectives, including human rights, political involvement by business, sweatshop labour, the export of hazardous products, deceptive marketing practices, bribery, whistleblowing, religious/social discrimination, corporate governance, cross-cultural differences, sustainability and environmental issues, corporate social responsibility, and consumer society. The format of the course will be a series of interactive seminars and student participation is required. By the end of the course, students should have developed an organised, personally reflective approach to decision-making that can offer guidance when confronting difficult ethical dilemmas in both business and personal life.

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BA3040 Market Research

Market Research is essential to any student of Marketing. This course offers a comprehensive, applied approach to understanding and designing market research. The course methodology balances the fundamental quantitative methodologies and theoretical structures with practical applications of qualitative techniques to help students become more familiar with the discipline and be able to understand research methods and design, and to be able implement their own research projects.

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BA3044 Consumer Behavior

Consumer behavior lies at the crossroads of marketing, psychology, economics and anthropology. We employ theories developed in these fields to help predict how consumers will respond to various marketing stimuli. We examine the impact of purchase involvement on consumer decision making; the various kinds of decision models used by consumers; and the influence of attitude, culture, demographics, emotions, learning, memory, motivation, personality and perception on our behavior as consumers. Consumer behavior attempts to understand the consumption activities of individuals as opposed to markets.

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CM3067 Advertising

The world of advertising has seen dramatic change over the past decades and what used to be mass communication still in the 90s is about to evolve into the "market of one" as described by P&G, a global consumer goods company. The availability of Big Data and man's capacity to use massive amounts of information will soon allow advertisers to target people individually, directly catering to their personal needs and desires. However, in this quickly changing world of communications, the basic workings of advertising & communications have remained the same. While media choices have evolved, understanding and applying the rules and factors that produce effective advertising has not and will not change in the foreseeable future. This class provides a thorough understanding of what works in advertising and what doesn't. Among other things, students will acquire the skills to write a single-minded copy strategy and creative brief, how to plan for the right media in offline and online, how identify the target audience and how to recognize good creative ideas. The course will convey initial notions on how to develop advertising concepts in print, TV, digital and content strategy as well as social media communications. The course will look at over 100 ads as illustrations and for analysis purposes and will teach students the elementary principles of how to develop effective advertising by using a teaching method inspired by the Harvard Business School.

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BA3500 Management Information Systems

This course introduces students to the important managerial issues in information systems today, such as how to best use information technology to improve efficiency and effectiveness in a firm. In an attempt to improve students’ awareness and understanding of various aspects of business information systems, we adopt both a theoretical and practical approach. We begin with a brief overview of the necessity to study BIS, highlighting the strategic importance of BIS decisions. We examine various theories, concepts and strategies, with a focus on managerial challenges and best practices. Students will also learn how to use software to support business decision-making.

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BA4045 International Marketing Seminar

The course introduces students to advanced-level marketing concepts in their use in strategic and professional contexts to prepare students for graduate-level academic and professional work in the field of marketing. The course focuses on analytical, qualitative, and strategic approaches to ethical decision making and effective problem-solving, asking students to reflect upon the field of marketing from a variety of professional, critical and ethical perspectives. The course is case-driven, with background given on advanced marketing topics through lectures, discussions, and written reports. The course culminates with a final portfolio project relevant to each student’s personal, academic, and professional goals presented to program faculty and industry professionals. This course is intended as a capstone course for Marketing majors as their final course in the program sequence, as well as for Marketing minors and other Economics & Management Majors. It leverages all the subject areas studied in the marketing program and it is highly recommended that students complete their required relevant courses before enrolling in the class.

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CM4048 Marketing Strategies For Brand Dvlpmt

This is the capstone course for all Marketing and Communication interested Seniors. It puts previous learning experiences from management classes, marketing, research and communications into perspective and analyses the strategic choices that lead to building strong and lasting brands. The course sets a particular focus on brand positioning, brand architecture, Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) and teaches the academic foundations and tools that are indispensable to develop truly differentiating brand statements, to understand key research techniques and their usage in real life as well as competitive strategy. Numerous brand cases and exercises such as Nespresso, Tag Heuer, Healthy Choice, Toyota, etc. help to illustrate brand strategy and teaches students to apply strategic thinking in building strong and differentiated brands. The course employs the Harvard Business School Case Study method and teamwork throughout.

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BA4050 Business Integration Capstone

Teams of student-managers compete in a complex international business simulation designed to allow them to demonstrate mastery of department-level, major and discipline specific learning objectives. The teams operate a company in the international athletic footwear industry. Using a hands-on experiential approach, teams make strategic management, marketing, human resources, operations, facilities, finance, and corporate social responsibility decisions over ten fiscal years. Students are evaluated on their company’s performance, but also on written individual and group analyses of the simulation and on a final comprehensive exam. Please note this course has a fee.

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