School/Classes

This is on the walk to school. Its pretty random? But its right at Presikhaaf Park in which I walk through every day to get to HAN.

Classes so far are not bad at all. I am enrolled in 4 courses and have class Mon-Wed. This will correspond to 12 credits at UW-W and then in my graduating semester (In January) I will be taking 15 more credits. I'm taking all marketing courses here, so when I get back to UWW I only have one more marketing course to take, the rest will be electives. I'm hopeing to get into an Advertising Course & PR course! And maybe a fun one like Scuba Diving or something like that ;)

E-Marketing/E-Commerce Course: This course has an exam at the end, but one semester long project. We have to take two similar, but international companies and compare their websites and everything available ONLINE. We have to explain what we think is right/wrong while explaining theories and why. This is a personal opinion with directions of improvement. Also with this is compare the two companies with their promised vision and mission statement and if what they are doing in "real life" corresponds to these corporate values. We have to analyze if what they do and offer online actually matches up with the companies goals. So, our professor told us to do any company without it being "too big" (for example PEPSI Vs. COKE or DELL Vs. APPLE) there is just too much to analyze. I thought a lot about which companies I'd like to choose as I did an Internship at CUNA Mutual Group (Business-To-Business oriented) as well as an Internship with Remington Personal Care Products (Business-To-Consumer oriented). I really wanted to do Remington Vs. Conair or other hair care competitor, or Braun/Panasonic as the Men's Category competitor and because I know the companies and products so well. Buuuuuutt, I decided against it. I figured that because I know so much about these companies I'm not sure if I would get out of the assignment what I really wanted. I'm extrememly interested in Consumer Products and Brand/Category management, so I thought of a bunch of brands and last minute chose two. Other kids in the class are doing: Blackberry Vs. HTC, Disney Vs. Universal, My friend from Canada, Madison is doing Old Spice Vs. AXE and my friend, Kristie from Australia is donig Gloria Jeans Vs. Starbucks --- I chose NIVEA Vs. DOVE. I'm excited about the project and to really dig deep in to the products and how the companies do E-Commerce (and if they do it well or not) and I'm a huge fan of women's products (of course). I thought of make-up brands and things of this sort, but to be honest - my mind jumped right to Dove because of all the marketing campaigns they are doing surrounding around Women's Self Esteem. There are a lot of print ads, YouTube things, commercials...etc. regarding this - so I though - WHAT THE HECK, shot in the dark and chose two random companies. This is an individual project.

Business-To-Business Course: Kind of Ironic that last summer I worked in B2B and also was an E-Marketing intern, now I'm taking actual courses with these two elements, but B2B is also a group project. We have to start our own car-lease business in Europe and develop a business plan. We have to study theories, competitors, what is relevant and explain why - all surrounding car lease companies. The professor set us up in groups and I have one American in my group, one girl from France and one girl from Russia - so this should be fun!

International Distribution (Translates at UW-W for External Logistics): This course is what is sounds - Logistics. This is a topic I know little to nothing about, and in the Marketing "profession" I know that it is necessary. This class in particular has A LOT of students from China. There are soooo many. The class is 42 people and right now we're doing a case study in regards to TESCO which is a real life food retailer in the UK. We're analyzing their distribution/purchasing/delivery/R&D models.

Marketing Communication (This course is OUTSIDE of the exchange program so I am with Dutch students!): This class is broken up into numerous parts and meets twice a week. Right now I have 3 "classes" 1. Communication 2. Branding and 3. Public Relations. This whole class is surrounded around the Publishers Project (group project) and we have 2 professors. We have to introduce a magazine from our home country, on to the Dutch Market. So this cannot be on the Dutch market already. My group decided to do an American magazine (which I liked) because it is in English, and we all speak English. Our magazine is SPORTS ILLUSTRATED. We have to look at the positioning, brand, concepting, target market and the whole sha-bang and present to the "publisher" - our professor in how we would introduce this American Magazine on to the Dutch Market. Next "period" (after the Autumn break in October) we start media and design classes as well with this Marketing Communications Course.

There is the school update for ya!