Dr Lauren Josie Thomas, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, speaks about her passion for marketing.

I’m proud to have been leading the undergraduate marketing degree at USW since 2016. We have graduates all over the UK, and around the world in countries like France, Germany, Spain, Greece, Slovakia, Poland, China, Nigeria, Vietnam, and Qatar.

I came into academia after taking a break from practice to work on my PhD, which examined a concept called customer equity (an academic way of saying ‘the value of a customer'). A marketer’s primary responsibility is profit, and we try to achieve that through customer satisfaction wherever and whenever we can, so my research focussed on meeting the modern customer in an easy place to find them – their social media. I asked, ‘how do we use social media to increase customer equity for the UK’s fashion brands?’. I’ve always been fascinated by questions like this. I was one of the original digital natives, spending my teenage years with a succession of social media platforms becoming popular and then fading away into history, and experiencing changes in how the internet was used for marketing.

I came into marketing looking for answers to my questions and realised it wasn’t just me. Lots of people who come into marketing do it because they’re deeply curious about the human condition. Why does advertising work? Do organisations have a responsibility to look after their customers? How do the attitudes and behaviours of groups of people affect the psychology of individuals? These are all questions you can find answers to by studying for your BSc (Hons) Marketing Management degree. Independent, critical thought is key to a successful career in marketing and your teaching team will always be keen to hear your opinions on topics rather than simply telling you what to think.

The teaching team on the BSc (Hons) Marketing Management is comprised of experts on a range of topics. As a team, we all love marketing, strategy, and consumer behaviour, but we have experts on digital marketing, marketing communications, and public relations, just to list a few. We were drawn in by our curiosity, but we stay because of our love of the customer. Marketing might not always be the most obvious career choice, it’s not something you hear a whole lot about at school or in the news. But if you’re looking for a career that challenges you, brings out your curiosity, creativity and passion for the world around you, then you might just find it in marketing.