Elective Courses

This course is designed to help students acquire the necessary knowledge and skills to achieve service excellence in an organization. The course materials are equally applicable to organizations in service industries (e.g., banks, transportation companies, hotels, hospitals, educational institutions, professional services, telecommunication, etc.) and to organizations that depend on service excellence for competitive advantage. It considers service excellence as a corporate strategic vision and views effective service strategy from an integrative perspective that covers customers, employees, and operations. The course covers: understanding and managing customer expectations and evaluations of services; designing services that meet or exceed customer expectations; delivering and performing quality services through people and operations; pricing of services; managing customer complaints and service recovery; and building & managing customer relationship. Students will also learn effective services marketing and management tools such as service audit through gap analysis, service quality survey, customer satisfaction survey, and service blueprinting.

This course is aimed at bridging the academic world and the business world. Indeed, “branding” is an extensively researched topic and also a day-to-day management subject. Throughout the course, the concept of branding will be thoroughly examined in a holistic manner. The contemporary literatures on branding strategy will be frequently referenced, balanced by an interpretation of the instructor’s practical experience. Case studies from a global as well as Asian perspective will be cited in order to provide students with relevant insights to brand management in their work place. This course combines the most critical theories as well as the most current marketing topics including “branding in the digital age” and “brand management during economic turmoil” and “CSR and sustainability”.

This course approaches the integrated marketing communication (IMC) as a cross-functional process for creating profitable relationships between customers and corporations. It focuses on how firms can strategically design and execute messages to consumers and general public. It also examines ways for firms to engage and encourage dialogues with consumers through different digital media. Participants will learn how best to integrate marketing communication elements (advertising, social media, public relations, sales promotion, event marketing, direct marketing, and selling) to enhance brand loyalty and advance firm successes. It will cover theoretical framework, firm practices as well as cases to help participants learn how to develop effective IMC plans.

Entrepreneurship is both an exciting and a big topic. This course aims to provide an overview of the entrepreneurship process by focusing on new venture creation from idea generation, building compelling business model and entrepreneurial marketing. While traditional marketing is defined by customer orientation, entrepreneurial marketing is defined by customer development and innovation orientation. Students will learn how entrepreneurs should interact with potential customers with activities like designing minimum viable products and conducting customer development and validation process.

This course is designed to provide students an opportunity to acquire first-hand knowledge of international marketing management. Experiential learning and knowledge exchange will be applied throughout the study field trip to develop students’ understanding of international marketing environment in a different cultural context, help them construct a global perspective, provide them with the opportunity to analyse a business organization of their interest, and to apply and integrate the marketing concepts they have learnt during their studies in the programme. Firm visits and cultural related activities will be arranged during the study field trip to arouse students’ awareness in cultural diversity and enhance their understanding of how culture can impact international marketing strategy.

Consumers leave a massive digital trail through mobile devices, social media, transactions, and information communication technologies (ICT). Companies and organizations in all industries face this plethora of consumer data and are looking to turn it into value through advertising and better products and services. This course looks to introduce students to the various methods and strategies to make sense of the data. We will cover topics including advance and Big Data predictive analytics, machine and deep learning, text mining and analysis, image and video analysis, and geospatial and mobility analytics. Students will have real hands-on practice exercises with these methods, learn how to generate insights from large and unstructured data, and build an understanding of its strategic relevance in creating sustainable competitive advantage. The course will also bridge these technical methods with social sciences and consumer behavior. We will cover a number of case studies, with an emphasis on Asia, in sundry industries including retailing and e-commerce, advertising, FinTech and retail financial sectors, telecommunication, and transportation and smart nations. Finally, we will discuss the interwoven dependencies on the legal frameworks with Big Data, including issues relating to privacy, regulations, rights, consumer reactions and adherence to data legislation in different markets.

The FinTech movement is considerably changing the financial sector. In particular, there has been considerable disruptions in retail banking & consumer finance coming from technology companies, the “TechFins”, and from traditional financial institutions, the “FinTech”. These efforts have helped to give access to financial services in un- and under-banked consumers, provided novel products and services to mature markets, and helped build financial access across borders. This course looks at how technological advances and regulatory policies have created opportunities in different markets, with an emphasis in China, Asia, ASEAN, and the region. We will discuss how retail banking & consumer financial products and services including microfinance, peer-to-peer lending, crowd-funding, digital payments, digital banking, and insurance are being affected, and, at times, disrupted, by Big Data, AI, blockchains/cryptocurrencies, and smartphones. Furthermore, the course looks at how these omni-channel and technology-based approaches are fundamentally changing consumer behavior of banked, un-bankable, and under-banked consumers. We will also look at the direct and unexpected societal and economic impact of these innovations. Students will get hands-on experience with credit scoring using non-traditional data. Finally, teams will create their own blockchain of their own design.

The strategic management of customer relationships is a critical activity for all enterprises. In this course, an understanding of customer equity in various parts of the enterprise will lead to customer management strategy development incorporating elements of segmentation and differential marketing (data-driven marketing), key measurement areas such as churn rate, the use of customer satisfaction survey and Net Promoter Score (NPS), and determining Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). Further sessions will explore the profitability of customer retention, the effectiveness of win-back, and modern customer management methods and tools with the associated data privacy and security requirements. This course will also include the leadership elements required to develop an enterprise-wide customer-centric approach to maximising customer value.

More than ever, corporations are engaging the larger community with policies and procedures in pursuit of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG). Using a case-based approach, this course will focus on the experiences of companies that have used such strategies successfully – and unsuccessfully. Students will analyse different models of social purpose, examine case studies to test assumptions and find the winning solutions for companies’various stakeholders. By studying the criteria and standards of evidence developed to measure the true social impact of an organization, they will identify the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Environmental Social and Governance Criteria (ESG) to accurately assess an organisation’s inputs, outputs, and impact. Students completing this course will have a clearly defined understanding of purpose in an organization and how to contribute to successful implementation.

This course introduces the quantitative analysis of online marketplaces. Students will learn how to gather information from online marketplaces and how to analyze the data to generate managerial implications for platforms, sellers, consumers and public policymakers. The course covers a variety of topics for data collection and data analysis, including statistical and econometric analysis, programming, data visualization, data scraping, text analysis, and some machine learning algorithms. Students will also have the opportunity to analyze real datasets from online platforms to gain deeper insights of data analysis in the digital age. Students will use R and Tableau for the course.

This course is designed to equip students with a thorough understanding of the major marketing and digital transformation frameworks / concepts, as well as how they can be applied practically to develop competitive marketing strategies and performance evaluation mechanism. We will build on the principles of marketing frameworks to examine the role of digital transformation as a strategic necessity. It provides a roadmap for transforming companies into infrastructures to link customers, partners and employees to create superior business value.

This course examines the opportunities and challenges that contemporary managers confront when conducting business across national borders. It addresses the complex environment of international business with respect to economic, social, cultural, political, and legal institutions. Special attention will be given to examine how these institutions shape business operations in the global market. Throughout this course, we will also highlight some of the drivers of global macroeconomic development and its impact on international business.

This course introduces simulation models to analyse business processes and solve practical problems. Students will gain basic knowledge such as Monte Carlo simulation and discrete event simulation first, and then be introduced to a simulation package that can be used to evaluate business process performance and, more importantly, facilitate decision making process.

This course focuses on marketing strategies and emerging issues in platform business models and the sharing economy. It covers the special features, pricing, customer acquisition and management, trust building, ecosystem and governance of such business models. The course also analyzes the business models of representative firms in several key sectors — lodging, ride-hailing, e-commerce, office sharing, and online travel — and the future trends of platform business models and the sharing economy. In addition to qualitative analysis, this course also discusses how data analytics are applied in these businesses and the special skills needed for such business models. This course combines lectures, HBS case studies, hands-on exercises, and student group project presentations.

Consumers do not always make rational and predictable decisions based on the information provided by firms and retailers. A deep understanding of consumer psychology will enable you to better predict consumers’ behavior in the marketplace and also develop important skills to influence consumers and make effective business decisions. This course intends to provide hands-on experiences applying knowledge about consumer behavior to identify important problems in real business cases and practices, analyze available data, and provide insightful recommendations.

You can take up to two electives from the Master of Accounting, Master of Economics, Master of Finance, Master of Finance in Financial Technology, Master of Global Management or Master of Science in Business Analytics programme at HKU. Enrollment in electives from other programmes is subject to seat availability and approval by the Programme Directors concerned based on your profile, capabilities and performance in the MSc(Mktg) programme.

Since enrollment in other taught postgraduate electives is not guaranteed, you should always choose five MSc(Mktg) electives during the course enrollment in our programme. Course enrollment results of other programmes may only be confirmed after that course has started. If your enrollment is successful, you can drop the MScMktg elective(s) and enroll in the other taught postgraduate elective(s).

It is your responsibility to make sure you obtain 60 credits to fulfill the graduation requirements and there is no overlapping of classes and exams in courses from different programmes.

*The list of available electives from other programmes may have prerequisite requirement(s) and is subject to change for future intakes.