COURSE OBJECTIVES
This master's degree aims to provide, from a professional and specialized perspective, a solid training that ensures the close relationship between the Commercial Direction and Marketing, and contributes to the increase of specialists in commercial and marketing decision-making, developing its capacity for analysis, organization, planning and evaluation, as well as enhancing relational and negotiation skills, problem solving, decision making and teamwork.
It is aimed at training senior staff and managers to exercise functions within the scope of Commercial and Marketing Direction in companies, whether these are SMEs or large companies, and has as specific objectives:
a) Provide students with a strategic, systemic and integrative view of commercial and marketing activities, and awareness of their interrelationship;
b) To enable students to have a rigorous understanding of the company's internal strengths and weaknesses and distinctive capabilities, while developing their skills to analyze the environment and accurately identify the threats and opportunities it presents to the company;
c) Foster the mastery of tools, methods and techniques that enable an optimization of efficiency and effectiveness in making commercial and marketing decisions, while developing students' creativity in the search for innovative and differentiating responses;
d) To provide the development of capacities, attitudes and values in line with the exercise of functions and positions of high responsibility in companies, in a coherent, innovative and highly oriented problem solving learning and study environment;
e) Develop decision and communication skills for the diagnosis, understanding and evaluation of complex commercial and marketing situations;
f) To contribute, finally, to the development in students of an honest, responsible and committed behavior with the company and the society in which they are inserted.
MASTER AND CURRICULAR PLAN STRUCTURE
This master's degree is divided in three academic semesters.
With a normal duration of one and a half years and a maximum term for completion of 6 academic semesters after admission, it consists of 12 curricular units (curricular part of the master) which will be followed by an individual but oriented work period, which may consist of a master's thesis, in a project work, original and specially made for this purpose, or in a professional internship subject to a final report, under the terms established by this regulation.
To obtain the master's degree, the student will need to complete 90 ECTS credits, which are distributed as follows:
a) Curricular part: approval in all 12 course units of the master's course: 60 ECTS credits;
b) Approval, in the public act of defense, of the dissertation, or project work or professional internship: 30 ECTS credits.
COMPETENCES TO BE ACQUIRED
In accordance with the requirements demanded by employers, at the end of this master¿s degree, it is intended that students have obtained the following main competences (to be developed throughout their professional lives in a fundamentally self-oriented or autonomous way):
- Know how to define, implement, integrate and supervise marketing and commercial strategies, in line with the guidelines of top management, and in the context of the ongoing digital transformation;
- Act as an expert in the supply universe and be knowledgeable about the markets, the competition and its evolution;
- Be able to identify and develop new business opportunities, nationally and internationally, as well as define and ensure the fulfillment of commercial goals;
- Manage information, including the report of customer needs and market studies, work modes, consumer trends, competitive activities and all information that can bring value to the company;
- Contribute to the development, maximization, implementation and evaluation of brand building programs;
- To be able to ensure the coordination and management of sales and operational/logistics teams, as well as to determine sales agreements and conditions;
- Know how to participate and follow high-level business negotiations and monitor the company's main accounts;
- To be able to provide the necessary inputs to improve business processes, procedures and goals, preparing periodic sales reports and forecasts, aiming to increase the company's market share and profitability;
- Have a great capacity for communication, interaction and negotiation with the different interlocutors.
PROFESSIONAL OUTPUTS
Based on the defined professional profile, founded on a solid training aimed at the development of the skills described above, the possible professional outputs for future masters in Commercial Management and Marketing, among others, are the following:
- Administrator and Commercial Director
- Marketing Director
- National Account Manager
- Key Account Manager
- Business Unit Manager/Sales Manager
- Country Manager
- Channel Manager
- Sales Director/Sales Manager
- Export Director
- Director of External Relations
- Business and marketing management consultant and advisor
- Marketing Manager in non-profit organizations
- Teaching and research in the field of marketing.
TEACHING METHODOLOGY
The innovative teaching and learning concept of ISAG¿s Masters allows students to develop a real contact/connection with the most prestigious companies and professionals, thus making a truly enriching learning experience. The In School Business model is based on the idea that the business must be within the school and the school within the business. The model is based on 3 essential pillars:
Fundamentals - thought before action, reflects the strategic dimension and the basis of training. It intends to instill the foundations and the structure that gives form and consistency to the action.
Booster - thinking in action, translates the tactical dimension and provides the methods and tools that allow you to develop efficient actions.
Pitch - action and implementation, translates the operational dimension and the mobilization of the skills applied to solving real problems.
Methods of discovery, presentation of problems, debate, autonomous and group work, mixed expository methods and case studies, among others, will be used to develop skills that allow students, after the course conclusion, to learn independently throughout their lives.
The teaching and support methodologies for students include:
- The organization of several seminars on specific topics, with the participation of invited experts from companies and other organizations with great experience (entrepreneurs, marketing, financial and human resources directors, responsible for the brand and management and control systems, specialists in studies market, etc.);
- Conducting transdisciplinary work, applied project work and case studies of real success and failure in the business context that allow: the development of critical thinking, analysis and decision making, consolidating the learning results; integrate the knowledge and experiences acquired; and allow applying knowledge, analyzing problems and identifying solutions;
- Carrying out group work, to be developed within each curricular unit;
- Tutorial sessions in all curricular units since, by their nature, they require a closer monitoring of teachers, aiming to promote the ability to analyze, research information and apply the knowledge acquired.
ACCESS REQUIREMENTS
a) Holders of a bachelor's degree or legal equivalent;
b) Holders of a foreign higher academic degree conferred following a 1st cycle of studies organized according to the principles of the Bologna by a State acceding to the Process;
c) Holders of a foreign higher academic degree that is recognized as meeting the goals of the degree by the ISAG¿s Technical-Scientific Council;
d) Holders of an academic, scientific or professional curriculum recognized as attesting to the ability to carry out the master's degree by the ISAG Technical-Scientific Council (namely, entrepreneurs, senior managers and other responsible persons with experience in the commercial and/or marketing area, consultants and other professionals who provide advice to companies).
The recognition referred to in paragraphs b) to d) of the previous number has the effect only of access to the training of this master's degree, and does not confer on the holder the equivalence to the degree of graduate or the recognition of that degree.
DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS
On request.
PLACE
The course will take place at ISAG's facilities, located at Rua de Salazares, 842, in Oporto.
OPERATION MODE
Classes take place, preferably, three days a week, from 19H00 to 24H00.