Marketing / Business Studies

Our graduates can pick and choose from a range of career opportunities in large corporates and SMEs alike, across the trade, retail and service industries. Most of them find roles in sales and marketing, management accounting, organisational and HR functions or management consulting, as well as with service providers such as advertising or marketing agencies. Here they have the potential to advance to senior marketing positions – for example, as senior product managers or in leadership roles in market research or digital marketing.

Graduates of this course leave us with the ability to independently resolve issues arising in day-to-day business practice on the basis of academic knowledge and scientific methodologies.

The course’s opening semesters supply a grounding in all specialist areas relevant to the subject: sales, production, financing, investment, accounting, law, economics, technology and business information systems, and statistics.

In the second part of the course, the focus is on both theoretical and academic knowledge and the application of this knowledge as part of the practical phase. Standard courses in marketing and technology are offered alongside courses in marketing-related areas that take up marketing-specific issues and address them from the perspective of the particular subject. In addition to this in-depth study, students are encouraged to expand their horizons by selecting an additional specialist module.

Students have the opportunity to explore the following areas in depth:

• Market research; psychology of consumer behaviour
• Product and innovation management
• Production engineering and quality management
• Branding and marketing management
• Using today‘s communication technologies in marketing
• Communication and sales strategies and how to handle them
• Empirical research methods
• Technological issues and their impact on marketing decisions
• Digital marketing
• Real-world case studies
• Project management, learned on real projects with businesses

You’ll spend your fifth semester doing an internship in Germany or abroad, and complete your course (standard duration: 7 semesters) with your Bachelor thesis.

If you’re keen to know more about interactions between business and technology, you’ve come to the right place. You’ll need to be interested in finding out what customers want and you should like the idea of developing products and working in sales and communication functions. You’ll do best in this course and beyond if you’re an articulate person (in both spoken and written communication) with solid general knowledge, good maths skills, and interpersonal competencies, to whom joined-up thinking is second nature. We welcome flexible, organised self-starters who are good at working in small groups.

Interested – but not quite sure yet whether this is the right course for you? Our self-assessment test can help you make up your mind. Take it here: HAW Navigator.

Higher education entrance qualification
You can apply directly for this course if you hold one of the following qualifications:

• Fachhochschulreife
• Allgemeine Hochschulreife 
• Fachgebundene Hochschulreife (subject-specific HE entrance qualification)
• Meister*in (vocational qualification – master tradesperson)
• Fachwirt*in (certified specialist)

Applicants who do not hold a higher education entrance qualification but have completed vocational training (Berufsausbildung) and at least three years of subsequent work experience can apply under Section 38 of the Hamburg Higher Education Act, which sets out special provisions for these applicants (Besonderer Hochschulzugang für Berufstätige).

You are also required to provide proof of proficiency in English at the B2 level of the Common European Framework of Reference as stipulated in section 7, paragraph 2 of the General Admissions Regulations [HAWAZO])

Find out more at Admission requirements for a Bachelor's degree.

Self-testing procedure
As part of the application process you will need to demonstrate that you have used the self-testing tool.

Pre-course experience
We do not require you to have completed pre-course experience for this course.

International applicants
If you completed your schooling outside Germany and want to study here for a Bachelor’s degree, you need to hold an academic school-leaving qualification which entitles you to admission to higher education; that is, it needs to be comparable to a German Abitur or Fachhochschulreife. The organisation uni assist will check your certificates from school and any degree-level studies to establish comparability. Please note that you are also required to have proof of German at level C1 – for example, in the form of a TestDaF certificate – in order to apply for all Bachelor's degree courses (except Information Engineering).

You can find more information about HAW Hamburg’s application criteria at International applicants.