LO1 Inquiry
Every summer from the sweltering days in Alabama I knew early on I wanted to be
in Marketing. I used to have one of the hottest lemonade stands around with various
channels of advertisements. My two brothers are almost millionaires in the Casino
business so I’ve been inspired all along. When I got to high school I got extremely
involved in the organization called DECA, which was a competitive organization that
competes nationally in role-play events and written manuals. These events literally
reflected real life situations and I ended up winning nationals in my marketing
event. I’ve still open to new areas of studies however.
I decided to research between the department of Marketing and the department of
Hospitality and Management for my two majors of interest. I started my research with
primary research over the Virginia Tech webpage.
The marketing tab isn’t exactly the most informative page in the world, but it gives you
the sample curriculum, checklists, and various programs and clubs to join. I wasn’t
thrilled that there wasn’t an overview about the program itself, so I had to go to library
databases to do some secondary research.
Marketing is great major for students who enjoy working in teams and are creative in
developing new ways to accomplish their goals. Marketing related careers must
understand the basics of marketing, sales management, research, and advertising. They
also need to be familiar with the motivation from the dealer and customer standpoint.
Thus includes knowing the buyer and seller environment and being a competent
communicator to follow through with each area. Marketing majors have hobbies such as
computer activities, and other extracurricular activities that involve teamwork and
problem solving.
I found an article where researchers conducted a study on the Marketing programs in
colleges in Australia and New Zealand. I thought that reading an article internationally
would be unbiased and interesting to say the least. It stated that Marketing was the most
popular selected major out of all the majors in the business school. The study found that
most of the students that selected Marketing as a major also intended Marketing to be
their fallback major after switching majors. With this researchers see a steady decline in
the quality of marketing students the universities worldwide.
“The Department is consistently ranked in the top five of HTM programs
worldwide. Recent rankings include top five rankings for the quality of our faculty and
our undergraduate, masters, and Ph.D. programs.” (Vt.edu) 70 percent of students also
have a job right out of college, which is reassuring to me. Students interested in
Hospitality Management must have interest in management, but have a keen interest in
the flourishing service industry too. You must be a competent communicator and have
great leadership skills.
Needless to say, I am still intrigued with Marketing major. The sky is the limit and I’ll
probably even exceed that in Marketing. None of the other areas of Business can
incorporate the amount of creativity and areas I’m interested in. Aspire higher!
SOURCES
HTM, D. (n.d.). Department of hospitality and tourism .
Retrieved from http://www.htm.pamplin.vt.edu
Pamplin. (n.d.). Marketing virginia tech, brand the future.
Retrieved from
https://secure.hosting.vt.edu/www.marketing.pamplin.vt.edu/blog.
php?page=marketing
Pappu , R. (n.d.). Why do undergraduate marketing majors
select marketing as a business major?. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/abiglobal/docview/204412714/1397E21
24CE69DECBFB/1?accountid=14826