Led by Sandra Luxton and Carla Ferraro, the MIMSP 2009 group gathered on Monday 17th November to plan and discuss our upcoming trip! First on the agenda were updates of the companies we are visiting in January.
Ian Walker, Department of Marketing
The first guest lecture of the day was on the concept of Culture by Ian Walker (Senior Lecturer, Department of Marketing), which is very useful in preparing our assignments. Ian outlined the importance of culture when travelling to this many countries and how to observe and understand this in different situations. The main conclusion drawn from Ian’s presentation was that culture can provide us with insight into five main areas; language, context, time, equality and power, and information flow. This is particularly important in comparing and contrasting the different countries and cities we will be visiting, and will provide us with the context that the companies operate in.
We then moved on to discuss what is required of the students from the trip, including our assessments and suggested topic areas for our major research projects: advertising, branding, sponsorship, retailing, corporate social responsibility, and market entry strategy. As part of this discussion, we were allocated pairs to prepare a summary on one of the companies we will be visiting for a presentation to the class on Day 2. Our research groups were also formed in which we further developed the suggested topics for our major research project.
The second guest lecture for the day was provided by David Stewart (Senior Lecturer, Department of Marketing) who presented on how to formulate our research project. A brainstorming exercise we did with David proved that the group was well suited as the whiteboard was covered in words and we managed to come up with a large amount of ideas as a group. David also outlined what we need to do in the following stages of the research process.
David Stewart, Department of Marketing
Establish objectives
Design research
Gather data
Analyse and interpret
Write final report
The feeling from the group on Day 1 was a good one and everyone seemed to be bonding well - discussion was easily flowing and excitement for the travel program was certainly building! Overall the day was a great start to what will be an exciting trip in January. Most importantly, we were told to take everything in from the minute we get off the plane as every experience will be useful to us.
Emily Fisher, MIMSP 2009 participant
Gallery
MIMSP 2009 group
Ian Walker, Department of Marketing
Group assignment workshop
Dr Colin Jevons, Department of Marketing
David Stewart, Department of Marketing
Karsten Horne (Reho Travel),
Alana Jones (MIMSP 2007 participant),
Hermia Lee (MIMSP 2008 participant)
