Strategy and Marketing

The Department of Marketing and Strategy is a vibrant hub for research and teaching in the key business disciplines of marketing and strategic management, boasting research expertise in international strategy, strategy-as-practice and non-market strategy. Members include experts in social marketing under the aegis of the Institute for Social Marketing (ISM-Open).

The Institute for Social Marketing (ISM-Open)

This international centre of research excellence conducts research in the following key areas: the development and evaluation of behaviour change interventions based on social marketing principles; the impact of public policy on health and social welfare; the impact of commercial marketing on the health and behaviour of individuals and of society more generally; and the impact of social marketing on sustainability.

The Centre for Innovation in Teaching and Learning (InTel)

The Centre provides leadership for research, scholarship and quality enhancement in responsible management and law education. Research in this area is vital to renewing and developing our pedagogy, keeping the Business School at the cutting edge, globally, of creating and delivering blended learning using a wide variety of media.

Research focus

The Department is a hub for research and teaching in the key business disciplines of strategic management and marketing, with a focus on the areas of:

• International strategy and strategy-as-practice, looking at what managers actually do as the basis of understanding how to improve performance.
• Non-market strategy, the vital role that managing political and cultural factors plays in organisational success.
• Social marketing, which harnesses the power of marketing to change behaviour and improve the health and wellbeing of individuals and society. Our work contributes to national policy in this field.
• Marketing strategy, branding, digital marketing, services and information systems.

Academic Publications

Full details of our research publications can be found on Open Research Online and via our staff pages.

Teaching

Nourished by our research, our teaching draws on OUBS’ distinctive practice-based learning approach across a range of relevant and engaging modules at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, including major elements of The Open University's triple-accredited MBA. The Department contributes to a number of undergraduate and postgraduate modules within the Business School:

• An introduction to retail management and marketing
• Business organisations and their environments
• Making sense of strategy
• Marketing and society
• Managing 3: the integration challenge
• Managing 2: marketing and finance
• MBA Stage 1. Management: perspectives and practice