PROGRAM STRUCTURE
Student well-being and personal thrive is at the core of the Marketing program. We accompany students in their individual, psychological and collective journey toward professional development and leadership.
The MSc Marketing curriculum combines:
- A set of mandatory core courses necessary to master the fundamentals of marketing strategy and business development
- With a portfolio of electives courses students can choose from to get an edge on specific business and marketing topics that make a difference on the job market.
The program intends to balance soft- and hard-skills learning, as leadership is based on both knowledge and attitude. Therefore, students will be trained to:
- Think in a strategic manner;
- To break free from « old-good marketing » by learning and implementing the latest research-based frameworks developed by our renowned faculty;
- To provide readily implementable business decisions to hands-on issues and real-life business cases
- To display a positive can-do attitude by mastering self-development and self-presentation tools
CORE COURSES
The main track of the curriculum revolves around 4 fundamental pillars:
- Strategic thinking and management:
- Design-thinking and product development
- Strategic Marketing Management
- Strategic Brand Management
- Data-driven decision-making and digital innovation:
- Data analytics for marketing
- Data manipulation and visualization with R
- Digital marketing
- Entrepreneurship and new business models:
- Reinventing your business model with Odyssey 3.14
- Marketing business KPI and business planning
- Pricing strategy
- Optional: Startup launch courses in collaboration HEC-42 Startup Launchpad
- Sustainability-driven marketing
ELECTIVE COURSES
In the second part of the curriculum, students can choose specialization courses to deepen their knowledge in a topical field of marketing and business.
- Marketing specifics:
- B4B marketing
- Consumer behavior
- Marketing 4.0.
- (R)e-tail strategies
- Neuroscience and AI reshaping marketing
- Business development for startups
- Luxury management
SOFT SKILLS SEMINARS
Along with the core courses’ curriculum, students follow seminars aiming at developing career-oriented skills and at supporting the personal growth necessary to any today’s leader.
Professional career seminars:
Personal development seminars:
-
Be an unshakeable leader: this seminar, taught by a trained psychologist and therapist, uses research on neurosciences, physiology and cognitive psychology to train students to stay calm, develop resilience and take up challenges in a competitive leadership environment.
- Raise your game to perform like a champion: in this seminar, a certified coach of US tennis champions and extreme sports buff teaches students how to develop routines of excellence and address issues and opportunities to “raise their game” and outperform.
BUSINESS SIMULATION & CASE STUDIES
All along the curriculum, students have the opportunity to apply newly acquired theoretical knowledge and frameworks in a real-life setting.
Business simulation:
Students participate in a marketing serious game in teams and develop new products they launch on the market within highly competitive environments.
Business cases:
- The L’Oréal Bootcamp: a two-day design-thinking marathon where students provide a readily implementable solution to a strategic marketing issue raised by one of L’Oréal brands. For example:
- how to develop customer-centricity in travel retail;
- how to respond to DNVBs in the luxury cosmetic division;
- how to make a hair color brand meaningful to younger generations;
- how to leverage an iconic brand to develop business while transiting towards sustainability.
- The DDB Challenge: for a week, students provide strategic consultancy to one of DDB’s (advertising agency) clients on a hot marketing issue. For example:
- how to make a theme park more customer-centric;
- how to launch a blockbuster in the video games industry.
RAMP UP TO THE HEC-42 STARTUP LAUNCHPAD
Students willing to launch their startup company while continuing their marketing education can do so.
First term:
- Students follow core courses to acquire the necessary credits then apply to the startup launchpad.
- In case of successful application, they can follow up with the HEC-42 Startup launchpad courses. Should their application fail, they can go on with the marketing program curriculum.
Second term:
- Students accepted into the Launchpad follow the Launchpad courses and grab the opportunity to develop their startup project.
BUSINESS PROJECTS
For 10 weeks, students carry out a consulting project with a company they solve a strategic issue for. Students work in teams, two days a week, meet with the company and provide output along the way in landmark meetings. A final presentation closes the consulting mission and provides a fully-documented answer to the issue raised by the partner company.
STUDY TRIP
When possible, students participate in a study trip where they can learn about local businesses and grab the opportunity to network locally with companies of interest.
MASTER'S THESIS
At the end of the program, students hand in a thesis on a topic of their choice. The thesis can be fully research-based or more practitioner-oriented. Each student benefits from the tutorship of a member of the HEC Paris faculty.
The thesis is a one-of-kind opportunity to combine conceptual thinking, hands-on practice and business decision-making in the same exercise.
It provides students with the opportunity to broaden their scope of interest, to deepen their expertise on a topic and to attract companies’ attention on the job market.
