Areas of Specialisation

Marketing (BBusSc)

The Marketing special field has always drawn students because it is seen to be an area of study which leads to exciting and challenging work both locally and overseas. Marketing has become recognised as being crucial to success in not only the private sector but also in many other organisations not traditionally regarded as being business enterprises. Indeed, given the massive changes taking place in our social, economic and political environment, the tasks of identifying and serving customers' needs, managing communications with its ever advancing technology and meeting management objectives through marketing strategy have never been more challenging.

The Marketing stream within Business Science is well equipped to prepare students to be effective to meet these challenges.

Marketing begins with the customer, not with the production process. Using scientific application of marketing research, the marketer is in a position to determine what target market to serve, which products or services to develop, design and package, how to price them, how best to make them available to their markets and what sort of pricing strategy to adopt. The marketer must also select the appropriate communication techniques using the most efficient media to make the market aware of the company's offerings. This fundamental approach is used by marketers irrespective of the market in which they operate and this includes NGO's (not-for-profit organisations), informally-derived businesses as well as large corporations.

In order to achieve an understanding of the marketing process as well as to develop the skills required to implement marketing strategy, students are initially given a broad overview which includes economics, behavioural science, law, mathematics and statistics; thereafter, the educational process focuses on specific marketing functions such as marketing research, product selection, design and development, pricing policy, advertising and sales promotion, retailing, wholesaling and physical distribution and strategic marketing. The different forms of marketing also receive attention, viz consumer, industrial, services, social and international marketing. Classes are run by our team of academic staff well supported by marketing practitioners who give willingly of their time. Study takes place in the lecture room as well as in the field as students do practical projects and a dissertation.

The BBusSc Marketing Stream has been carefully structured to develop the discipline of marketing out of a broad base of relevant and supporting business courses.

The introductory Marketing I course is taught in the second year, after students have been given a grounding in economics, mathematics, statistics, behavioural sciences and information systems. The third and fourth years are specialist years as far as marketing is concerned and consumer behaviour, marketing communications, international marketing, industrial marketing, marketing research are all covered. In addition, students are expected to write a marketing paper or dissertation where they can show evidence of critical analysis when considering a marketing problem.

The increasing demand for marketing graduates who can immediately apply their knowledge and skills in the work place and particularly those who have a solid knowledge of the fundamentals of business, testifies to the popularity of the marketing stream of the Business Science degree and the Postgraduate Diploma. Career prospects are not limited to those types of companies traditionally associated with marketing, i.e. consumer goods sellers. Banks, insurance companies, retailers, the public sector and many other organisations are employing Marketing graduates on an increasingly greater scale. In addition, with the emphasis today on small business, many graduates find great success in starting their own businesses.

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