Career Options after MBA Marketing

Commerce and trade have always been the pivotal force for any civilization. As the sales process is a crucial and integral part of any business, the science of selling is considered most vital in an organization.  The art of zeroing in on the target consumer group and carving out brand equity belongs to the forte of sales and marketing, for the reason that any service or product needs to locate and reach the appropriate base of end users or beneficiaries. Working as a sales or marketing professional require one to create and popularize a brand as well as guide a corporation to identify the behavior of the customers and cater according to their needs or anticipations.

MBA-Marketing students are required to possess a firm grasp of the following areas of learning.

• Quantitative Aptitude
• Excellent Communication Skills
• Analytical Reasoning and Problem-Solving Skills
• Leadership Skills

MBA in Marketing offers vast learning opportunities to rigorously groom the students and make them competent so that they can excel in future as better sales managers and some of the valuable skills that are usually taught in this course are as follows.

• Market Analysis and Research
• Pricing
• Selling
• Advertising
• Presentation
• Product Designing
• Communication

Curriculum

A two-year, full-time, on-campus MBA program is spread over four semesters or six trimesters and the former is more common in India. All the students have to compulsorily undergo a summer internship course in their final academic year, which is meant to impart hands-on training to the students and teach them how a company functions.  It is pretty standard for the business schools in the subcontinent and around worldwide to include foundation topics in the first and offer optional subjects for the second year.

All reputed management colleges follow an identical structure for course delivery, and the method of teaching includes lectures, individual/group projects, classroom discussions, case studies, paper submissions, quizzes, etc.

A typical MBA degree course is designed as follows.

• Finance, Economics, Accounts and Statistics
  • Managerial Economics
  • Business Statistics
  • Corporate Finance
  • Macroeconomics
  • Financial Accounting
  • Management Accounting
• Human Resource and Organizational Behavior
  • Managing Organizations
  • Managing People and their performance in a typical organizational environment
• Business Communication
  • Managerial Communication
• Marketing
  • Marketing Management
  • Competition and Strategy
• Operations
  • Operations Management

Electives for Marketing stream are listed below.

• Advertising & Sales Promotion
• Marketing Management
• International Marketing
• Consumer Behavior
• Internet Marketing
• Marketing Research
• Marketing Decision Models
• Pricing Management
• Product & Brand Management
• Marketing Law
• Retail Management
• Sales & Distribution Management
• Rural Marketing
• Strategic Marketing
• Service Marketing

Admission Process

Students are required to score qualifying marks in the competitive examination, to receive a call for group discussion and personal interview, and the major Indian MBA entrances are listed below.

• Common Admission Test (CAT)
• Common Management Admission Test (CMAT)
• Xavier Aptitude Test (XAT)
• Symbiosis National Aptitude (SNAP)
• NMIMS Management Aptitude Test (NMAT)
• Management Aptitude Test (MAT)
• Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT) Entrance
• AIMS Test for Management Admissions (ATMA)
• ICFAI Business School Aptitude Test (IBSAT)
• MICA Admission Test (MICAT)
• Maharashtra Common Entrance Test (MAH-CET) for MBA
• Institute of Rural Management (IRMA) Admission Test
• KIIT Entrance Examination (KIITEE) for MBA
• Odisha Joint Entrance Examination (OJEE) for MBA
• Karnataka Management Aptitude Test (KMAT)
• Andhra Pradesh Integrated Common Entrance Test (APICET) for MBA
• Telangana State Integrated Common Entrance Test (TSICET) for MBA
• Tamil Nadu Common Entrance Test (TANCET) for MBA
• TISS National  Entrance Test
• HP University Management Entrance Test (HPU-MAT)

The selection algorithm is weighted B% of A.

A: B

Entrance: 60% – 70%

GD-PI/essay: 5% – 10%

Academics: 10% – 15 %

Work Experience: 5% – 10%

Career Pathways and Job Portfolios

There is lots of scope for MBA-Marketing Graduates. Marketing itself happens to be a vast field. Students can become manager or sales executives in reputed FMCG (fast/frequently moving consumer goods) companies, after pursuing an MBA in marketing. One may also work in sectors like IT (information technology) and ITES/BPO (IT-enabled services/business process outsourcing). Ample job opportunities are available as well in tourism, retail, hospitality, banking, advertising, media, market research and consultancy to name a few. A student can also join as an assistant lecturer after graduating with the MBA-Marketing degree, or even opt for doctoral studies in India and abroad.

Typical job portfolios are listed below:

• Brand Manager
• Marketing Manager
• Asset Management
• Market Research Analyst
• Corporate Sales
• Sales Manager
• Product Manager
• Media Planner
• Digital Marketing Manager

Typical Job Profile:

• Managing the marketing initiatives of a company
• Using market analysis and research to plan strategies for direct marketing
• Supervising marketing campaigns and the production of all the promotional materials
• Reporting sales and marketing results to the senior management

Prospective Career Opportunities in Advertising and Product Marketing

Marketing might be defined as everything an organization does to facilitate an exchange between itself and its customers/clients. Advertising is just one of many marketing activities.

Kathleen Micken, assistant professor, marketing, school of business, Roger Williams University

The moral of the story is, the scope of finding employment is remarkably greater in the product marketing sector!

Scope of Government and Private Sector

The graduating students of MBA-Marketing have a plethora of career opportunities in the private and the public sector. One can be a part of digital or direct marketing. Technology has revolutionized and radically altered the traditional concepts and practices of marketing, which are not restricted to door to door selling anymore, and it has a wide array of modern tools readily available at its disposal in present times. Marketing can now be done by engaging the social media; employing SEO & SEM (search engine optimization and search engine marketing) techniques; as well as using contemporary approaches and methods like web designing, PPC (pay per click), and website/blog hosting. Candidates employed in central and state government jobs generally earn a monthly salary in the range of forty to sixty five thousand rupees or phenomenally more in private firms; and the CTC (cost to company) is decided by one’s experience, designation, job-readyness, and academic lineage or institutional pedigree.

Pay Package Trends

Though there are around four thousand MBA schools in India, only the graduating students from the following institutes are offered lucrative salaries and positions.

• IIMs (Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, and Kolkata)
• Alliance University, Bangalore
• SPJIMR, Mumbai
• Institute of Management Studies (IMT), Ghaziabad
• Xavier Institute of Social Service (XISS), Ranchi
• KJ-SIMSR, Mumbai
• Faculty of Management Studies (FMS), Delhi
• Xavier Institute of Management and Entrepreneurship, Bangalore
• Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (JBIMS), Mumbai
• Management Development Institute (MDI), Gurgaon

A glimpse of the present (2015-17) placement trends is illustrated below for the perusal of the students, and all figures are in LPA (lacs per annum expressed in Indian rupees).

College: (Highest/average salary, international) & (highest/average salary, domestic) in INR

• IIM-A: 82/44.27 & 53/22.58
• IIM-C: 87/29.5 & 70/20
• IIM Nagpur: 19.5/13.05 & 15.23/12.06

Top Recruiters

• HDFC Bank
• Airtel
• IDEA Cellular
• Reliance Communications
• Tata Teleservices
• ICICI Bank
• Hindustan Unilever
• Vodafone Essar
• Tata Motors
• ITC Limited
• InterMESH
• IndiaMART