BUSI4G515: Business to Business Marketing

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• The module is designed to raise students' awareness and critical understanding of the significance of B2B marketing. It aims to re-dress the common imbalance of typical marketing programmes, which tend to over-emphasise the importance of business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing. The module provides a comprehensive and critical introduction to the main theoretical and managerial issues in the area of B2B marketing. From the outset it is stressed that for every consumer (or end-user) market there are typically several upstream organisations which must deal with each other in products and services before anything is ultimately consumed.

• The significance of B2B Marketing
• Organisational buying behaviour.
• Inter-organisational relationships.
• Marketing channels and supply chains.
• Industrial networks.
• B2B planning and strategy.
• Business products and services.
• Value and pricing in business markets.
• Marketing communications and personal selling.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• By the end of the module students will have an advanced knowledge and understanding of:
• The significance of B2B marketing in the global economy.
• The in-depth characteristics of business/organisational markets.
• The extent to which they differ from consumer markets.
• The critical importance of inter-organisational relationships within industrial networks.

Subject-specific Skills:

• By the end of the module students should be able to:
• Analyse the key processes involved in supply chain management.
• Explain the key influences on industrial purchasing decisions.
• Recognise the elements of successful customer relationship management in business markets.
• Debate how ethical issues in business marketing and purchasing can affect members of the supply chain.
• Appreciate how the metaphor of channels/chains in business markets can be extended to one of networks.
• Empathise with the roles of the industrial marketing and purchasing managers.

Key Skills:

• Effective written communication skills
• Planning, organising and time management skills
• Problem solving and analytical skills
• The ability to use initiative
• Advanced computer literacy skills

• The module will be taught through a combination of lectures, seminars, group work and discussion, supported by guided reading.
• The summative assessment is designed to test students' acquisition of subject specific knowledge and skills through their application to a specific sector and company. Students select a company within a sector to produce a marketing plan.

Formative assessment will be through a series of market research exercises designed to assist with the summative; feedback will be provided in class.

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