Course purpose and objectives 

In the globalised and increasingly digitised economies of the 21st century consumers seek not only personalised goods and services of value but, most importantly, seek hybrid experiences which seamlessly transcend and blend the physical and digital domains. This, combined with the fast spread of technologies like Big Data, Social Media, AI and X-realities and the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environmental conditions have changed the marketplace and mandated a re-examination of marketing strategy and techniques. The experiential marketing framework, the state-of-the-art marketing theory and practice, helps marketers address the challenges and supports them in the cocreation of value with customers and stakeholders for the benefit of society.

The purpose of this course is to challenge traditional approaches to marketing and introduce students to the experiential marketing mix strategic framework and the principles and techniques for creating and managing interactive off and online brand experiences and a seamless phygital Customer Experience (CX).

The objectives are to:

• equip students with the knowledge of
  •  the neurobiology and psychology of customer experience and their nexus with technological innovations of the 21st century,
  • the tools for designing and delivering experiences in the phygital age
  • the seven pillars (7Es) of experiential marketing and the methods for managing them responsibly, effectively and efficiently
• develop the phygital marketing planning, implementation and control skills,
• cultivate the moral and leadership attitudes needed for creating sustainable competitive advantage and managing socially responsible organisations.

Learning outcomes 

By successfully concluding this course the learners should be able to:

• define and describe contemporary marketing challenges and theories for addressing them
• compare, contrast, criticise, combine, re-formulate and modify traditional and state-of-the-art theories and technologies of experiential and sensory marketing according to circumstances and in view of resource constraints
• Plan, modify and evaluate and apply theories and tools in order to achieve strategic organisational objectives.
• Select and implement the appropriate technological tools for achieving meaningful and memorable brand experiences that lead to customer satisfaction, positive Word of Mouth (WoM), loyalty and, ultimately value cocreation.

Course content 

The course introduces the experiential marketing movement, its principles and philosophical and methodological premises, examines the seven pillars (7Es), namely, experience, exchange, extension, emphasis, empathy capital, emotional touchpoints, and emic/etic process, and presents the tools that organisations can use to design, promote and deliver business experiences in the phygital age. It emphasises the communications aspects of the experiential marketing mix and the criteria and methods for selecting the appropriate channels and technologies for meeting strategic objectives.

• The VUCA environment and marketing technology, Consumer Behaviour Customer Experience research methods
• The traditional and new marketing mix - Experiential Marketing principles
• Experiential Marketing strategies and techniques
• Experiential Marketing applications - the who, what, how, and where related to the novel domains companies and scholars should consider when implementing marketing strategies, tools, frameworks, and methodologies.
• Sensory Marketing
• Phygital Retail Atmospherics
• Physical evidence for branding
• Online branded experiences
• Interactive brand experiences
• Telepresence, avatars, bots and digital assistants
• Content design, creation, curation and management, web, mobile and social media marketing
• Omnichannel marketing and Customer service
• Digital Public Relations, Corporate Social Responsibility and Crisis Communications
• Service failure and recovery, crisis communications

Course purpose and objectives 

Data and Digital literacy includes using communication tools and networks to search for, identify, interpret, evaluate, and create information.

The purpose of this course is to introduce data and digital literacy skills that are necessary for the productivity of professionals in the marketing industry. Students are expected to develop the skills they need to effectively integrate the latest business, marketing and communication software and IT applications as well as interactive data collection and presentation tools into their marketing practices.

The course is a prerequisite for ICT courses that follow in this Masters programme. 

Learning outcomes 

Upon completion of the course students are expected to:

1. analyse digital literacy and related theoretical concepts
2. integrate basic digital skills using essential software (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Google Docs etc.) into their daily communication
3. choose the most appropriate technological tool for data collection of potential users’ input for marketing purposes based on their objective
4. distinguish applying advanced technological tools and digital technologies in marketing
5. manage given quantitative and qualitative data
6. identify effective communication skills enhanced with the integration of digital tools

Course content 

Theoretical part

Session 1: Definition and importance of data and digital literacy and related components (information literacy, media literacy)

Session 2: Information literacy and Media literacy

Searching for information: Understanding and applying “filter bubbles”. How do filter bubbles affect users’ exposure to information?

Examining credibility of information, avoiding misinformation

Session 3: Social media literacy: responsible use of social media for marketing purpose

Session 4: Digital tools and practices

                Multimodality, online language and social interaction

Session 5: Quantitative and qualitative data interpretation

Session 6: Privacy and ethical issues in collecting and reporting on user-provided data

Lab component

Session 7: Proficiency with essential software (Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Google Docs)

Session 8: Familiarization with interactive tools for anonymous or non-anonymous data collection that relates to an audience’s attitudes, perceptions or knowledge on a given topic or product with real-time results (e.g. Kahoot, Mentimeter, edpuzzle)

Session 9: Exploration of gamified applications and AR applications that can be integrated in marketing strategies

Session 10: Evaluation of students’ skills using self-assessment tests on: a) essential computer skills, b) essential software skills, and c) skills that revolve around the use of technology in daily life including but not limited to social media literacy and information literacy.

Session 11: Content creation: Application of acquired skills in a marketing campaign (final project), design of data collection methods, data analysis

Session 12: Composing a final report with results of final project, including dissemination of results using different ways: a press release, a blog post, a post for any social media platform provided that a justification is used for its choice.

Teaching methodology 

For the theoretical part: Interactive lectures combined with the use of small group assignments in class, e.g. problems to be discussed and solved collaboratively by dyads or groups of three students, debates and discussions, student presentations and interactive quizzes that provide instant feedback to multiple choice questions with the use of students’ mobile devices.

Lab component: The course includes applications of tools that are used for assignments completed individually by students and are submitted online at the end of each lab meeting. Feedback is provided after every assignment is submitted, on a weekly basis.

Project-based learning: a collaborative project is assigned for designing a marketing campaign for a new product, and evaluating potential users’ input through collecting, analysing and reporting on user data.

Course purpose and objectives 

The purpose of this course is to familiarize students with IoT devices and solutions and emergent technologies such as X-realities, mobile apps, etc. and will explore both their marketing and their uses for consumer behaviour and market intelligence gathering and analysis, customer service and relationship management across physical and digital touchpoints, product and service design, delivery, and quality monitoring.

The objective is to prepare participants who will be able to lead organisations to embrace cutting-edge and emergent tools for providing unique, personalised, meaningful, and, ultimately, successful consumer experiences as well as solutions to current social and environmental problems.

Learning outcomes 

The course will equip participants with a holistic understanding of the marketing of IoT devices and solutions as well as their function as marketing and communications tools.

Upon successful completion of the course participants will have acquired the tools and developed the skills to identify and exploit opportunities, recognize threats and assess their potential impact on the organisation, understand existing, emerging, and future consumer needs, tastes, preferences, and value perceptions, and utilise technology to achieve organisational, personal, and societal objectives.

Course content 

This course will explore the shifting frontier of marketing and communications and the effect of disruptive technologies on business models and practice.

• IoT devices and solutions
• Factors affecting technology acceptance and adoption
• IoT marketing
• IoT devices as tools for
  • customer profiling, expectations, and value perception analysis
  • brand community development and managements
  • touch points analysis
  • customer service and experience management
  • providing highly contextual and tailored messages to consumers
• IoT for human welfare and addressing social and environmental problems.
• Marketing Engineering
• Data driven marketing

Teaching methodology 

Demonstrations

Case studies

Group projects

Class discussions

Course purpose and objectives 

The purpose of this course is to provide a holistic understanding of the importance of a pervasive marketing orientation and commitment to total quality throughout the organisation so as to create and deliver unwavering value across all functions and touchpoints.

The objectives are threefold:

1) to enable, empower, and train participants to think critically and creatively about the role of marketing and the importance of quality in sustainable organisational performance and growth

2) to teach the principles and techniques of design thinking and demonstrate how they are applied to product and service development and customer experience design and management

3) to instil dedication to quality and familiarise participants with the most current techniques for ensuring organisation – wide customer and marketing orientation.

Learning outcomes 

Successful completion of the course will equip participants with

the following:

Knowledge

• Contemporary theories and models of
  • sustainable and human-centric design
  • marketing
  • New Product Development
  • Branding
  • Quality measurement and management
• Marketing Analytics
• Methodologies and state-of-the-art tools for
  • value creation and delivery
  • developing and managing organisation-wide cultures of innovation and customer orientation
  • branding decision making
  • product and service quality management.
• Techniques for managing and communicating an organisation’s offering.

Skills

• Ability to think independently, critically and creatively.
• Problem solving using the right theories and tools for each situation
• Visualizing solutions and evaluating alternatives and their potential consequences.

Attitudes

• Dedication to quality
• Innovativeness
• Criticality
• Team building and teamwork

Flexibility and adaptability.

Course content 

• Critical, creative and experiential design Thinking
• Service – dominant logic and value cocreation
• Consumer Culture theory
• Innovation and new product development
• Service blueprinting
• Category management
• Service Quality management
• Service co-destruction, failure and recovery.
• Integrated Marketing Communications and branding
• Internal marketing

Course purpose and objectives 

The purpose of this course is to equip marketing and communications professionals with the tools to cut through the media clutter and utilize technology and their imagination and empathy to meaningfully and gainfully engage today’s media meshing, multitasking, and overstimulated audiences. Its objective is to provide a holistic perspective on the latest developments in the fields of advertising and public relations.

Learning outcomes 

Upon completion of the course students are expected to be able to:

• Criticise contemporary theories and methodologies related to
  • public perceptions
  • image and reputation enhancement and restoration
  • traditional and digital public relations
• Manage techniques and tools for interpersonal, mass media and state-of-the-art digital communications regarding
  • value proposition communication
  • developing media, advertising and communication plans
  • immersive and engaging brand and corporate communications
  • building and managing media and stakeholder relations
• Analyse the media ecology and current landscape.

Course content 

• Organisational reputation cocreation
• Perception Management
• Interactive, immersive, and viral advertising
• Guerrilla approaches to brand engagement generation
• Earned media and encouraging live content sharing
• Social media streams to amplify the effect of communicative products
• Personal selling and negotiation
• Public Relations and branded events management
• The contemporary media landscape
• Media relations
• Publicity generation
• Crisis communications

Course purpose and objectives 

The course provides the philosophical foundations of ethics and prepares students for their postgraduate studies and careers as reflective and responsible scientists and/or professionals in marketing communications and digital marketing. It goes past Corporate Social Responsibility, introduced Corporate Digital Responsibility as a response to emerging technologies and AI, and prepares the managers of a sustainable future for all.

Learning outcomes 

Successful completion of the course will equip participants with

the following:

Knowledge

• Classical and contemporary theories and models of
  • ethics and ethical culture development
  • Morals and Ethics
  • marketing research ethics
  • customer relationship management
  • risk assessment
  • sustainability
  • crises management.
• Methodologies and tools for
  • moral decision making
  • Behavioural interventions (nudge vs boosting)
  • bias identification
  • noise reduction
• Agility and Resilience techniques for managing careers, teams, and organizations.

Skills

• Ability to examine all aspects of business and organizational problems, analyze their parameters, and make informed decisions that stand the test of morality and time.

• Personal integrity and commitment to adhering to societal, legal, professional, and organizational codes of ethics and practice.
• Dedication to
  • providing the right solution to diverse and complex consumer problems
  • integrity and personal responsibility
  • sustainable development.
• Self-reflection, empathy, and emotional intelligence.

Course content 

• Values, professionalism, and the reflective practitioner
• Kantian and Utilitarian Ethics
• Egoism and Human rights ethics
• Advertising Ethics and implications
• Communication, moral myopia and societal implications of marketing communications
• Promoting Sustainable and Ethical consumption
• Agility and Resilience
• Corporate Digital Responsibility
• Moral Decision Making – biases and debiasing processes
• Research ethics and the responsible scientist

Teaching methodology 

• Lectures
• Class discussions
• Group projects
• Case studies

Course purpose and objectives 

The aim of this course is to let students understand and use AI techniques for Marketing purposes such as: summarization of reviews, comments and user feedback, topic modelling of discussions in Social Media, user profile construction based on information mined from Social Media and the Web, development of Recommender Systems, opinion mining via crowdsourcing platforms, etc.  

Learning outcomes 

By successfully concluding this course the students should be able to:

1. Understand and describe the notions of data science, crowdsourcing, collective intelligence and recommender systems.
2. Get familiarised with contemporary Data Analysis and AI tools
3. Apply basic techniques for crawling and analysis of web data using Python.
4. Design projects for opinion mining using contemporary crowdsourcing platforms such as the MTurk.
5. Describe and apply the basic principles of recommender systems, such as collaborative filtering and content-based recommendation, in real world problems.
6. Apply recommender system techniques in digital and political marketing.

Prerequisites : Data and Digital Literacy

Course content 

• Theoretical foundation: World of mouth and Collaborative Filtering, Learning by Example, Vector space models and similarity metrics, Clustering.
• Data and Information basics
• Introduction to Machine Learning: From descriptive analytics to prescriptive analytics
• Data crawling and pre-processing. Example: Crawling the Twitter.
• Data summarization and visualisation. Topic modelling of tweets, reviews and comments
• Building classification and prediction models. Example: Sentiment analysis of reviews, comments and tweets
• User profiling via AI techniques. Example: Construction of Twitter user profiles based on posts and interactions
• Recommender Systems
• Voting Advice Applications: An example of Recommender Systems in Politics

Teaching methodology 

• Lectures and demonstrations
• Group Projects and hands on activities
• Case studies and problem solving

Course purpose and objectives   

The purpose of this course is twofold: 

1. Students will be introduced to different technologies currently used on the web, emphasizing on Content Management. Furthermore, students will gain some hands-on experience on Content Management Systems (CMS) usage and administration. 
2. Students will gain knowledge related to the characteristics and codes of Video, Animation and Radio advertising, as well as their content and its development in the New Media Era. 

Learning outcomes   

By completing the specific course, students are expected to be able to: 

1. Familiarize with client site and server site technologies currently used on the web. 
2. Be able to utilize a CMS for content management and information communication. 
3. Familiarize with radio production at Cut-Radio Station 
4. Compose original advertising radio content 
5. Be able to implement of formal video production/animation techniques and the use of sound at Media Lab 
6. Look at the conventions of advertising video and radio spots 
7. Familiarize with novel technologies and techniques such as Gamification, Extended Reality (XR) technologies in order to provide meaningful and successful user experiences 

Course content   

The first half of the course explores modern web content management technologies. Understanding the key concepts of client-side (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) & server-side (PHP, MySQL) web programming and dynamic web content development, students understand and use functional components of a web content management system (CMS). Then, during the second half of the course, students will gain knowledge related to the characteristics and codes of Radio, as well as its content and its development in the New Media Era, understanding their evolving dynamics, in relation to the traditional forms of communication, such as advertising. Also, the basic tools of representation and its analysis are presented, as well as subjects concerning the history of video, and terms regarding visual communication and the narratives. During the lab hours, students are required to apply what they have been taught in theory, and create simple original radio and video projects and publish them on a CMS. 

Teaching methodology   

• Lectures 
• Hands-on labs 
• Presentation and analysis of examples 
• Projects 
• Discussion on students’ questions 
• Specialized tutorials for students with learning disabilities 
• Homework assignments 

Course purpose and objectives   

The purpose of this course is to provide students with the skills to design and implement an academic research project based on empirical analysis of real data. 

Learning outcomes   

Upon completion of the course, students are expected to be able to:

• Critically think and analyse scientific literature 
• Identify and formulate pertinent and operationable research questions 
• Design and implement independent small-scale empirical research 
• Use research methods of data collection and analysis 
• Learn and utilise analytical software for data elaboration and processing 
• Present research outcomes based on scientific academic standards 

Course content   

The course will focus on the following topics: 

-Development of Research Design 

-Design of Research Questions 

-Review of the Literature 

-Building Theory  

-Construct hypotheses and operationalisation 

-Design of methodology 

-Qualitative tools of data collection and analysis (eg. in-depth interviews, focus groups) 

-Quantitative tools of data collection and analysis (eg. Online questionnaires, statistical techniques) 

-Writing of final report 

Course purpose and objectives 

The purpose of this course is to provide students, that have elected the industry project option, with the knowledge, tools and skills required for a successful completion of a small-scale consulting project for an organisation.

Learning outcomes 

Upon completion of the course students are expected to be able to:

• Demonstrate a deep understanding of consulting practice through practical experience and real-world consulting project.
• Critically assess the reasons for the utilization of consultants in the various organizational contexts by engaging in knowledge-sharing and collaborative discussions.
• Emphasize the importance of effective communication and understanding clients' needs as integral components of successful consulting practice.
• Analyse and critically evaluate complex consulting process frameworks considering both insider (client) and outsider (consultant) viewpoints.
• Develop comprehensive proposals and work plans for consulting projects that reflect a high level of strategic thinking and problem-solving.
• Master advanced research skills relevant to the consulting field.

Course content 

• Foundations of Consulting Practice: Nature, Purpose, and Concept
• Experiential Learning Cycle and Active Learning Strategy
• Consulting Industry Overview
• Strategic Marketing Consulting Essentials
• Consultant-Client Relationship Dynamics
• Consulting Process Overview
• Client Business Capability Audit
• Evaluating Business Opportunities and Alternatives
• Consulting Process: Implementation and Integration
• Consulting Process Conclusion: Evaluation and Reporting
• Consulting and Change Management in Organizations
• Ethical Responsibilities in Consulting Practice

Course purpose and objectives   

This is a course designed to accommodate special interest topics related to the student body profile, contemporary events or major and/or disruptive developments in theory or practice

Learning outcomes   

Students will be empowered and encouraged to assume an active role in their training, advance their self-learning competence and develop a critical stance towards current events and/or emerging theories.  

Prerequisites   

Agile and sustainable marketing strategies 

Value-based marketing 

Course content   

Its focus and content will be determined each year according to the student body profile and current affairs and developments.