MSc Marketing and Consumer Psychology

We're delighted to offer a £2,000 Award to all our international Masters students. This fee waiver can also be combined with other scholarships to ensure our overseas students have the opportunity to study at our EQUIS and AMBA accredited school.

Key information

• Duration: 1 year full-time
• Start date: September 2023
• Apply by: 1 August 2023 (international), 1 September 2023 (UK)

Learn how successful organisations use psychology to understand consumer behaviour, and gain the skills to apply psychology in a business context. Consumer psychology is key to:

• Understanding buyer behaviour
• Enabling organisations to design innovative products
• Creating effective communication messages.

This course prepares you for careers building on both disciplines – whether you want to work in marketing or apply psychological theories to the business world. Your studies culminate in a research project that bridges marketing and psychology.

You’ll benefit from the academic expertise and industry experience of the School of Psychology and the University of Sussex Business School.

Accreditation

The University of Sussex Business School is accredited by EQUIS, the most comprehensive institutional accreditation system for business and management schools. Accreditation ensures rigorous quality control, benchmarking against international standards and is acknowledged worldwide.

Our Marketing and Consumer Psychology MSc opens up career options in both marketing and psychology. Prepare yourself for a range of roles including in:

• Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG)
• Retail marketing
• Brand management
• Communications
• Public relations
• Market research
• Consumer insight management
• Consultancy
• Goods and services innovation
• Social marketing and channel management

We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2023/24. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to COVID-19, or due to staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum. It may not be possible to take some module combinations due to timetabling constraints. We’ll make sure to let our applicants know of material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.

Core modules

Core modules are taken by all students on the course. They give you a solid grounding in your chosen subject and prepare you to explore the topics that interest you most.

Autumn teaching

• Buyer Behaviour
• Classic and Contemporary Social Psychology
• Research Skills in Psychology

Spring teaching

• Advanced Marketing Analytics
• Applying Psychology in Business and Policy Contexts
• Contemporary Applications in Consumer Psychology: Neuromarketing and Beyond
• Marketing Ethics and Society
• Psychological Methods for Marketing and Consumer Research

Summer teaching

• Business Analysis Report

Options

Alongside your core modules, you can choose options to broaden your horizons and tailor your course to your interests. This list gives you a flavour of our options, which are kept under review and may change, for example in response to student feedback or the latest research.

While it’s our aim for students to take their preferred combinations of options, this can’t be guaranteed and will be subject to timetabling. Options may be grouped and if so, students will be able to choose a set number of options from the selection available in any particular group.

Spring teaching

• Management of Negotiation
• Marketing and Communications in the Digital Era
• Strategic Brand Management

Spring and summer teaching

• Empirical Project in Consumer Psychology
• Empirical Project in Marketing and Consumer Psychology

We’ll make all reasonable efforts to provide you with the courses, services and facilities described in this prospectus. However, we may need to make changes due to significant disruption, for example in response to COVID-19.

• 1st in the UK for annual research income in 2020/21 (Chartered Association of Business Schools)
• 13th in the UK for Business and Economics (The Times Higher Education World University Rankings by Subject 2022)
• =14th in the UK for Psychology (The Times Higher Education World University Rankings by Subject 2022)