Fashion Management - MA

This module will introduce you to your specialist field, focusing on the key skills, issues and debates surrounding the creative industries and in your specialist field. Marketing and management theory will be put into the context of your specialism and relate to your growing awareness of the global nature of the creative industries.

This module will provide you with the elements of business planning as well as the ability to analyse the environment of a business and plan future directions based your findings. Analysis covers topics such as trends, competitors, market and industry influences. Planning-related areas include product and service development, sustainable innovation, finance and marketing. Overall, the module will equip you, as a future manager, with the tools you will need to make strategic and tactical business decisions to provide evidence-based direction to future employers.

The aim of this module is to introduce you to research skills and methods to allow you to craft your own research proposal, which will support and inform your major project module. You will choose your own area of interest relating to your specialism for research.

Taking an international attitude, this module focuses on the importance of brand adaptation to meet local market conditions. Assuming the role of Brand Manager, this module challenges you research a new market for an existing brand of your choice, then develop a sales & Distribution plan, and Marketing promotional plan for the first year of the brands entry into their new market.

The global value chain framework will be explored to explain the transformations in production, trade and corporate strategies that have shaped the apparel industry over the past decades.

You will be taken on the full journey of the garment from design, to sourcing factories and or suppliers, to delivery into retailers or distribution centres. International and UK production and local and global sourcing will be studied, and students will gain an understanding of the different supplier types and how these are matched to different aspects of fashion retail business model.

The purpose of the module is to enable you to undertake a sustained, in-depth and theoretically informed research project exploring an area that is of personal interest to you. It is important that we can support you appropriately, so you will be guided towards choosing a research topic which is relevant to your discipline and in which your lecturers have expertise. The outcome may take the form of a written dissertation or a practical outcome with accompanying reflective, critical and contextual material. The main consideration when choosing your topic is that it must be relevant to your programme and you should consider the relevance of this topic to your future academic or professional development.