Marketing Ethics and Sustainability (992N1)

15 credits, Level 7 (Masters)

Autumn teaching

Understanding and appreciating the ethical dilemmas is an important dimension of marketing. Marketing, whilst an essential business activity, often attracts criticisms in terms of both its nature and its practices. The module covers perspectives for ethical and socially responsible marketing decisions as well as the ethical issues faced by marketers in marketing activities, such as developing products, segmenting markets, advertising and retailing.

This module looks at the criticisms levelled at marketing ranging from materialism and unsuitable consumption patterns, advertising to young and vulnerable consumers, promoting potentially harmful products, overlooking cross-cultural issues and the challenges of new media outlets and online issues, helping you to navigate the challenges and pitfalls present in a range of activities.

The module also explores the role of marketing in influencing consumers towards more sustainable and socially desirable behaviour.

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 150 hours of work. This breaks down into about 33 hours of contact time and about 117 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2024/25. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to feedback, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum.

We’ll make sure to let you know of any material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.