Department of Marketing

About

The Department of Marketing at King’s Business School brings together rigorous research, innovative education, and engagement with practice to advance understanding of how markets, organisations, and consumers interact. Our ambition is twofold: a) to be a leading centre for marketing thought leadership, contributing insights that matter to business, policy and society across Europe and beyond, and b) to be the destination of choice for marketing studies.

Our academic work spans areas such as marketing technology and behaviour, responsible marketing and consumption, and marketing’s role in delivering societal value. Rather than treating research as separate from education, we use it to shape how we teach, how we design our marketing programmes, and how students engage with real-world marketing challenges. This research-led approach ensures that our teaching remains analytically robust, current, and ethically informed.

What distinguishes the Department is not only the quality of its research, but how that research is mobilised. We combine different methodological paradigms and interdisciplinary collaboration to address complex marketing problems at the intersection of technology, sustainability and society. This integration across research, teaching, and external engagement defines our distinctive contribution to the field.

Study

We offer a portfolio of marketing education designed to support learners at different stages of their academic and professional careers, combining analytical rigour, applied insight and engagement with contemporary marketing challenges.

Postgraduate programmes

MSc in Digital Marketing (full-time, on campus)

Research-driven digital marketing expertise. The MSc in Digital Marketing develops students’ ability to understand, evaluate, and shape digital markets. Drawing on contemporary research in digital consumer behaviour, analytics, branding, social media marketing, and emerging approaches such as neuromarketing, the programme emphasises critical analysis, evidence-based decision-making, and the responsible use of digital technologies.

MSc in International Marketing (full-time, on campus)

Strategic marketing for global contexts. The MSc in International Marketing equips students with the analytical, strategic, and cultural capabilities required to operate effectively in global markets. The programme combines rigorous academic foundations with applied learning through authentic projects and external collaborations.

MSc in Marketing (part-time, online)

King’s rigour, delivered flexibly. The online MSc in Marketing offers the intellectual rigour of a King’s postgraduate education in a flexible format designed for a global and professionally active student body, enabling students to apply research-informed insight while balancing study with professional commitments.

Undergraduate programmes

Marketing within BSc in Business Management

Marketing is taught within the Business Management undergraduate programmes, where students develop a strong foundation across core areas of management alongside specialist study of marketing. Marketing modules draw on contemporary research and applied learning to develop critical understanding of consumers, markets, and strategy.

Executive Education in Marketing

Evidence-based learning for senior practitioners

Our executive education short open courses translate cutting-edge marketing research into focused learning experiences for senior practitioners and organisations, supporting strategic decision-making and leadership in complex marketing environments.

Doctoral programme

Structural doctoral training with impact

Our School’s MPhil/PhD Management programme enables our doctoral researchers to earn their PhD in Marketing. This programme provides a rigorous pathway for developing independent scholars whose research is both academically robust and societally relevant, supported by close supervision, advanced methodological training and engagement beyond academia.

Summer School programmes

Intensive, global, research-led study

Our summer school programmes offer short, immersive opportunities for university and pre-university students from around the world to engage with research-led teaching in marketing and business.

Research

Research in the Department of Marketing at King’s Business School examines how markets, consumers, organisations, and institutions interact in contexts shaped by technological change, sustainability pressures, and societal challenges. Our work combines theoretical development with rigorous empirical inquiry to advance understanding of marketing as a behavioural, cultural, and institutional force.

The Department fosters a collaborative and methodologically pluralist research environment. Our academics employ experimental methods, qualitative approaches, field studies, and data-intensive techniques, and engage actively with international research networks. Our research is published in leading flagship marketing, business and interdisciplinary journals, including Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Retailing, Journal of Service Research, and International Journal of Research in Marketing.

Our colleagues play a leading role in shaping the direction of the marketing discipline through editorial leadership, including senior editorial positions at flagship journals, such as the Journal of Consumer Research where Professor Eckhardt serves as Co-Editor, alongside Associate Editorships and special issue leadership across highly ranked CABS journals. This form of disciplinary stewardship underpins our approach to doctoral training, interdisciplinary collaboration across King’s, and engagement with practitioners and policymakers.

Research hubs

Our research is organised around three interconnected hubs that reflect our substantive strengths and strategic priorities:

Marketing Technology & Behaviour
This hub explores how emerging technologies, including AI, digital platforms, and data-driven systems, shape behaviour across consumers, organisations, and society. It positions marketing as a primary lens for understanding the behavioural implications of technological change, connecting academic research with practice, policy, and public debate.

Responsible Marketing & Consumption
This hub investigates how marketing influences ethical, sustainable, and inclusive consumption. Research addresses issues such as climate and sustainability communication, circular economy practices, digital marketing ethics, consumer trust, and greenwashing, informing responsible business practice and regulatory approaches through interdisciplinary collaboration.

Marketing for Societal Value
This hub examines how marketing can contribute to health, wellbeing, public services, and collective resilience. Research focuses on complex, multi-stakeholder challenges that require coordination across businesses, policymakers, NGOs, and communities, drawing on King’s interdisciplinary strengths.

Our research shapes core debates in marketing scholarship and beyond. Looking ahead, the Department will continue to invest in shared research infrastructure that supports experimental and collaborative work. This will strengthen doctoral training and enable closer engagement with scholars, practitioners, and policymakers on behavioural challenges facing markets and society.

Engagement

The Department of Marketing combines our world-class research to tackle the challenges facing our communities, at home and abroad. The department has close collaboration with a variety of international, national and local organisations and universities.

For example, postgraduate marketing students tackle real-world marketing challenges in London, with modules in e-services marketing, corporate sustainability and more, aimed at improving local communities and raising environmental awareness using the latest theoretical and practical marketing approaches.

Partners on these projects have included the London Wildlife Trust, the Bat Conservation Trust, King’s Culture, Mercato Metropolitano and the Crown Estates.

Many collaborative works have been created between the marketing academic staff and artists, aiming to solve one issue or another through the arts and marketing. Layers of Vision, a collaboration between Dr Katharina Husemann and several visually impaired artists, explores the experiences and perspectives of blind and partially sighted (BPS) artists and how we can make the arts more accessible.

Dr Anna Dubiel and Prokriti Mukherji worked with artist team Something & Son, on how we can reduce human-wildlife conflict in countries where subsistence farming is common, using a board game as a tool.

Sustainability is a major focus of impact work in the department, with work involving responsible consumption in fashion, King’s Business School accreditation with NUS’ Green Impact Awards, and the department’s researchers’ work on King’s Business School’s new Centre for Sustainable Business.