BS in Marketing
The field of marketing focuses on the activities of product management, pricing, promotion, and distribution as it responds to changing consumer demands and moves goods and services from producer to end-user. The BS in Marketing program provides students with an understanding of these activities and the tools to make sound decisions.
Requirements, Syllabi and Policies Heading link
Featured Courses Heading link
MKTG 459
Marketing Insights from Qualitative Research
Do you want to become an expert on consumer trends, but don’t really like math?
What makes consumers tick? How do cultural trends emerge and why? Answers to these questions and much more can be found using qualitative methods. Marketing Insights from Qualitative Research is an engaging, dynamic and fun course that will teach students how to use interviews, observations, and in-depth analysis to develop rich and nuanced insights about consumer behavior. In this course, students will become curious observers of consumer culture in their own lives and in the lives of others and will be able to apply the skills they learn to conduct a qualitative market research study of their own.
MKTG 482
Innovation Management
Want to take a course where you never see an exam or textbook, but instead work directly on company innovation opportunities?
The role of marketing in the innovation process is key to the identification of growth opportunities. The new Innovation Management is a dynamic course that is targeted to students who are looking for a nontraditional approach to learning the principles of innovation. This course does not include exams. Course materials consist of 3M Post-It Notes, sharpies, and project boards. The course framework is highly collaborative, flexible, and non-linear. Students work in small teams that apply a solution-based and human-centric approach to solving complex problems. The course methodology explores the five core principles of the Design Thinking process:
- Empathize: User-centered research is generated in an effort to best understand unique problems, experiences, and motivations.
- Define: Problem statements are created from analyzing and synthesizing human-centered research.
- Ideate: Solutions to the problem statement are identified and considered.
- Prototype: Marketing concepts are created and investigated.
- Test: Concepts are tested, validated, and refined.
The scope of research will vary and can include products, services, and processes.
MKTG 485
Customer Experience Management
Want to learn the secret sauce for amazing consumer experiences?
This Customer Experience (CX) Management class focuses on how to create and manage customer-centric business practices that generate customer loyalty and set companies apart from the competition (e.g. Chipotle, Nordstrom, Warby Parker). This course will teach you how to create consumer personas, map consumer journeys, identify consumer pain points, and design CX improvement strategies. You will analyze success and failure examples across various industries, business models (e.g., human driven, AI driven, online, offline), and geographic locations. CX knowledge can be helpful to students interested in innovation, service design, strategy, inequalities in the marketplace, social responsibility, and ethics.
This course is taught by Professor Lez Trujillo Torres. Her research investigates how consumers and institutions value ideas, products, people, and experiences in the marketplace. This work is examined in the context of marketplace disparities, service experiences, health markets, risky technologies, and social responsibility.
Concentrations Heading link
Students may choose among five concentrations based on their interests and career focus. Visit the UIC Academic Catalog for complete course concentration details.
Data-Driven Marketing
Effective marketing decisions are based on information about customers, competitors, and markets. Today, both businesses and other organizations have access to a huge amount of data that provides a rich source of insights for decision makers IF they know how to turn that data into actionable information. This concentration will introduce you to the latest tools for understanding rapidly changing markets, ranging from customer analysis to marketing and business intelligence, and training in advanced market research techniques.
Innovation and Design Thinking
How do businesses develop new products and services that meet the needs of its customers? Innovation and design thinking is key to the success of any business. This concentration will provide you with an understanding of how an innovation and design process applies to new product and service development. The course options include hands-on experiences with the innovation process as well as courses that focus on creativity, branding, and customer experience management.
Retailing and Services Marketing
Are you interested in a professional career in any customer-centric industry such as retailing or services, or planning to launch a service business of your own? The courses in this concentration will give you an in-depth understanding of how to manage and maintain customer relationships in both online and offline environments, how to manage the customer experience in a variety of service and retail settings, and components of a successful retail or service strategy.
Sales Leadership
Sales is an important function for many companies, but especially those in Business-to-Business marketing. This concentration will provide you with an excellent foundation for a career in sales or more broadly a career that requires expertise in selling. The courses will provide experience with the strategies, processes, and tools used by individual salespeople. You will also gain insights into how businesses structure their salesforce and various roles within the organization, and an understanding of the relationship between sales and marketing.
Digital Marketing and Promotions
In an increasingly digital centered world, it is critical for marketers to provide an omnichannel consumer experience with personalized communication. In this concentration, you will learn how to develop, plan, create, implement, and manage traditional and digital marketing strategies and campaigns that deliver on key metrics. The courses included in the concentration cover topics such as branding, advertising, social media campaigns, search engine marketing, website, email, display advertising, and content marketing with a key focus on analytics.
Faculty
Marketing Studies Waitlists Heading link
Students may take Managerial Communication (BA 200) and Introduction to Marketing (MKTG 360) without having been admitted to the UIC Business. However, since we give registration priority to UIC Business students first, you must put your name on a waitlist for these courses. We review the waitlist one week prior to the beginning of each term and based on remaining availability in the classes, we will notify you by email if you can register for the course. Register right away because space will not be held for you. Please be advised that putting your name on a waitlist does not guarantee that you will be able to register, and we cannot provide permission to register for specific class sections.