APPLIES TO ACADEMIC YEAR 2015/2016

GRA 6433 Theories and Methods in Marketing Communication

Responsible for the course
Bendik Meling Samuelsen, Klemens Knöferle

Department
Department of Marketing

Term
According to study plan

ECTS Credits
6

Language of instruction
English

Introduction
Communication is a fundamental part of most marketplace transactions. In its purest form, price communicates the information necessary for a transaction. In most other deviations from perfect competition, marketers have to communicate more than price in order to establish, sustain, and grow their business. This course aims to provide a deep understanding for theoretical perspectives on marketing communication as a field of scientific research.
The course will draw extensively on influential research in advertising and sensory marketing, and we will give detailed attention to theoretical and methodological challenges in these research areas. In other words, this is not a course on how to create advertising, but a course about the premises of how communication works, and how to assess communication effects.

Learning outcome
The primary learning goal of this course is to enable students to address the managerial challenges of marketing communication in an analytical manner. To this end, the course establishes a sound platform of knowledge based on two research streams: (1) Theories of attitude formation and persuasion from social psychology (e.g., dual process theories like the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) and the heuristic-systematic model (HSM)) can provide marketers with rich insights into how consumers process the information contained in marketing communications. (2) Theories of sensory perception and attention from cognitive psychology allow marketers to understand better how the sensory aspects of their communications affect consumer behaviour. An additional learning outcome is the ability to create experimental designs that can test communication effects.

Prerequisites
GRA 4145 Brand Management or equivalent
All courses in the Masters programme will assume that students have fulfilled the admission requirements for the programme. In addition, courses in second, third and/or fourth semester can have spesific prerequisites and will assume that students have followed normal study progression. For double degree and exchange students, please note that equivalent courses are accepted.

Compulsory reading

Collection of articles:
Compilation of articles

Other:
During the course there may be hand-outs and other material on additional topics relevant for the course and the examination.


Recommended reading

Course outline
Communication process entities
- Source
- Message
- Recipient
- Context
- The information processing perspective/persuasion
- Attitudes and persuasion
- Dual process models
- The sensory perspective
- Sensory perception
- Multisensory interactions
- Attention
- Learning, priming, and fluency
- Methodological issues in communication research

Computer-based tools
SPSS

Learning process and workload
A course of 6 ECTS credits corresponds to a workload of 160-180 hours.

Part one: Marketing communication from a managerial perspective
Part two: cognitive premises for communication effects
Part three: Principles of persuasion in advertising

Please note that while attendance is not compulsory in all courses, it is the student’s own responsibility to obtain any information provided in class that is not included on the course homepage/It's learning or text book.


Examination
The course grade will be based on the following activities and weights:
- Term paper 60%, written individually or in groups of max 3 students (in special circumstances individually)
- 3-hour written examination 40%

The term paper shall be submitted in three (3) printed copies, and additionally, one electronic copy through Ephorus in It's learning in order to scan for plagiarism.