Business-to-Business Marketing and Purchasing New programme

Programme Structure

1. semester

• Marketing Theory (5 ECTS)
• Buyer-Supplier Relationships and Networks (10 ECTS)
• Innovation in Buyer-Supplier Relationships (5 ECTS)
• Business-to-Business Marketing Research Methods (10 ECTS)

2. semester

• Pricing Strategy (5 ECTS)
• Business-to-Business Purchasing Management (10 ECTS)
• Business-to-Business Sales and Marketing Strategy (10 ECTS)
• Regulating Marketing and Purchasing Cooperation (5 ECTS)

3. semester

• Elective Courses (30 ECTS)

4. semester

• Master's Thesis (30 ECTS)

PREREQUISITE COURSES

Buyer-Supplier Relationships and Networks (10 ECTS)Companies engage in a wide variety of buyer-supplier exchanges, either as supplier or as buyer. This course provides students with an understanding of the social characteristics of buyer-supplier relationships, allowing them to manage these relationships for improved value creation. In addition, the course focuses on how the network context affects the buyer-supplier relationship.

Marketing Theory (5 ECTS)

The Marketing theory course enables students to understand developments and perspectives within the marketing discipline, and to identify marketing concepts and theories relevant for the analysis and solution of marketing problems at hand. Also, the course relates to ethical issues and to the interests of different stakeholders.

Innovation in Buyer-Supplier Relationships (5 ECTS)

Many firms rely on external knowledge inputs and collaborate with external partners such as suppliers and customers when developing new products and services. Collaboration with external partners around innovation involves complex knowledge transfer processes and creates a number of managerial challenges. This course addresses the role of suppliers and customers in the innovation and product development activities of firms. Students will acquire the skills and competences needed to analyze and work with the organization and management of product and service development processes involving suppliers and customers.

Business-to-Business Research Methods (10 ECTS)

The purpose of the course in research methods is to give students practical knowledge and mastery of standard methods used in B2B marketing research. This involves knowledge of the research process beginning with the design and choice of research question, selection of data, analysis of data, and reporting of data. The course covers qualitative as well as quantitative research methods.

SPECIALISATION COURSES

Business-to-Business Purchasing Management (10 ECTS)

Companies spend as much as 70-80% of their finances on buying goods, services and knowledge from a global portfolio of suppliers. B2B purchasing management deals with how this task is managed, including developing a purchasing strategy and selecting the right suppliers, evaluating and developing suppliers’ performance and value creation, and coordinating and organizing the purchasing task internally in the buying company.

Business-to-Business Sales and Marketing Strategy (10 ECTS)

Firms operating in Business-to-Business (BtB) environments are facing growing complexity in their markets, and are therefore susceptible to some difficult challenges when selling and marketing their offerings. BtB firms are traditionally characterized by long reaction times due to (1) asset specificity in their production, (2) long-term supplier/customer relationships, (3) long time-to-market when innovating, (4) limited market orientation due to their upstream supply-chain positioning and (5) relatively long time horizons when planning. These characteristics impose business development challenges on managers by forcing them to rethink market definitions and how customer value is produced, delivered and capitalized on. The course in BtB sales and marketing strategy is positioned within these evolving challenges and grounded in classic and modern literature on customer value generation in a strategic, tactical and operational sales/marketing perspective.

Pricing Strategy (5 ECTS)

Pricing strategy provides an introduction to the firm’s pricing problem and provides practical techniques to understanding price setting in the context of the firm’s customers, costs, and competition.

Regulating Marketing and Purchasing Cooperation (5 ECTS)

In the course "Regulation of marketing and purchasing cooperation" the most important regulatory areas covering the cooperation between private enterprises on marketing and purchasing will be presented. The most relevant issues are competition law, intellectual property law (IP) and contract law. The main focus will be on agreements restricting competition (competition law), including rules on agreements between competitors as well as non-competitors. Within contract law the focus will be on the basic foundation of entering into cooperation contracts primarily according to rules for international contracts. In relation to intellectual property law the focus will be partly on the introduction of relevant IP issues (e.g. patents), and partly on the possibilities of transfer of IP rights.
In the third semester, you can choose elective courses within your areas of interest. The courses can be taken either at Aarhus BSS during the semester, at the AU Summer University or at one of our more than 300 partner universities abroad. You can also participate in internship programmes either in Denmark or abroad.
The fourth semester is devoted to the Master's thesis. You may freely choose the topic of the thesis and thereby get a chance to concentrate on and specialise in a specific field of interest. The thesis may be written in collaboration with another student or it may be the result of your individual effort. When the thesis has been submitted, it is defended before the academic advisor as well as an external examiner.