Marketing Research

One of my favorite classes this semester is Marketing Research. Dr. Robinson is new to NCSU, and she's a great professor! We had 1 exam which was in September (love early exams), and then the bulk of the semester is based on our project. We are basically going through the entire process that a marketing researcher goes through.

 

We started with describing a problem that a brand is facing, then held a focus group or in depth interviews, and just finished developing a survey. Our project is based around beer preferences and consumption. We just launched our survey two days ago, and are looking to close it in roughly a week to analyze our results. The rest of the semester is learning specifics in SPSS and how to manipulate and analyze results. We finish up on November 29 with our final presentations and report!

Registration

Bright and early this morning (8am early) I registered for my LAST semester of grad school!! wahoooo!!!

Wait...really, my last semester?? I can't believe it's just right around the corner! We have less than 6 more weeks of class, then exams start. I don't have any exams per say this semester, but 1 paper and 1-2 presentation/reports due by December 7. I'm trying to finish everything before the 7th because I have a wedding at home on the 8th, but I may have to end up coming back for a presentation on the 10th.

Anyways, for next semester I am currently registered for Consumer Behavior, Business Relationship Management, & Services Management. I'm applying to get into the Consumer Practicum class, but that application process doesn't start for another few weeks. It's a new class offered at NCSU put together by Dr. Wood. She is the consumer behavior professor, and I'm really excited for the opportunity to work with her!

If this schedule stands, I'll only have classes on Tuesday and Wednesday along with at least 2 meetings per week for the practicum. It's definitely vastly different than first year with all our classes during the day, Mon-Thurs!

Girls Weekend!

Last weekend, 6 of my best friends from high school came into town for our annual girls reunion weekend. Erica has a 4 bedroom house in Cary, so this year we decided to make Raleigh/Cary our reunion destination. Everyone came into town on Friday afternoon, and we started out with lunch and shopping at Cameron Village-pretty much a must see for anyone out of town!

Erica and I took care of appetizers and dinner for Friday night since we didn't have to travel anywhere. We stayed around Cary Friday night because our friend Katie is pregnant, and she could only stay one night. We had a great time catching up on everything going on in all of our oh so busy lives!

Saturday was absolutely beautiful, so we hit the pool for a few hours then came back to the house for happy hour! We arranged for White Horse to pick us up that night to go downtown for dinner/bars for the evening. We ate at Humble Pie, then walked over to Oxford where we met a few other friends.

Everyone left fairly early Sunday morning, but it was a great weekend-even though it was short! It's so rare that high school friends stay so close, and we are making sure it continues!

Football!

Yesterday was the first football game of the season-where I was able to go at least! We played Citadel at 6pm, and the day was absolutely perfect for tailgating. I was worried for all of 2 minutes during the game when Citadel tied us at 7-7, but then NCSU went on a run and never stopped. The final score ended up being 52-14.

After a great weekend, I'm back to grind! 2 projects to work on, 3 articles and 4 chapters to read, and a couple hours working for my internship!

2nd year MBA

We’re about a month into the semester, but I could tell the first week of class this year is completely different. The main difference is our classes. Last year, our cohort was together for 15+ hrs per week because we were in every single class together. Only small exception was second semester, we were able to choose a concentration class. This semester we are all together for about 3 hours a week.

Another huge difference is the group structure. Over half the groups from first year have split up or lost a few people which will change the entire dynamic of the group. We also worked with the same group the entire year, and this year I have 4 different groups. Working with 4 completely different groups is a very different experience. In the same group, we would have standing meetings every week and go over multiple projects and classes. Now, I have to work around 15 different schedules.

 This semester is also very concentration specific. I’m in 3 marketing classes, and only 1 core class. All the core classes are extremely important and provide us a basic knowledge of the subject. However, this semester is a little more interesting because its directly related to the field where I’d like to work.

 

Some would argue this as good or bad, but I also only have 1 exam this semester. And its next week. Every class has a huge project, but no final exams to study for. I know I'll be glad when I don't have to spend 20+ hours studying for 3-4 exams in December!

Summer Internship

I spent the summer interning at Quintiles as a Corporate Digital Strategy Coordinator. Quintiles is the only fully integrated biopharmaceutical services company offering clinical, commercial, consulting and capital solutions worldwide. The Digital Strategy group is a fairly new group, part of the overall Corporate Communication (CorpComm) department. A big project going on with Digital Strategy this summer was the re-design of Quintiles.com, internally known as Q.com.

 My boss is the lead on the re-design, and I was her "right hand girl". We had a “core” group of 5 people including my boss, another Digital Strategy member, another intern, our outside vendor contact along with myself. We were each assigned sections of the overall structure to own from start to finish.  For each of my sections, I had to contact the department head and set up initial and follow up meetings to discuss and finalize content for each section. I worked with the HR department for the Careers section, CorpComm for News and Our Markets, and Marketing for Therapeutics, Events and Services. For the Careers section, I also helped to design specific templates based on the needs of the site and wrote content for certain pages.

 

In addition to working on the re-design of Q.com, I was tasked with the project of putting together the Digital Content & Style guide. This document would include information on how to write for our site based on our audience and our overall company strategy. It also included branding information (typography, color palette, fonts, and restrictions), template and wireframe examples, interface designs and examples of the live site. It will be added to the Marketing Brand Guidelines for the company, and would be a document to distribute to outside vendors who write for our site or create additional pages for Q.com.

 My internship has been extended through December as of now, because the site has not launched yet. I will help see the site through launch, and then develop a training guide for Quintiles employees and external vendors to learn best practices and ways to navigate through the CMS, Ektron.

 

My team was absolutely amazing from day 1, and I was never treated like a traditional intern. I was treated as part of the team where my suggestions and comments were weighed the same as everyone in the department. It's been a littly busy balancing class and work, but I feel its completely worth the few sacrifices I might make!

Peer Coaches

Each year, roughly 10 First Year students are selected to be Peer Coaches for the incoming MBA students. I was honored to be chosen as one for the 2012-2012 year. We had 2 training sessions-the first was with Laura Taylor and the second was with Belinda. We were able to gain insights from the current Peer Coaches in the first meeting as well, and their rewards and struggles with the program.

We have a total of 11 for this year: Mark Frazier, Donavon Boykin, Brian Kubis, Patrick Ferguson, Alysia Baker, Lionel Grebert, Marko Zivkovic, Jackelyn Vander Veer, Binu Raj & Mike Westrich.

Each person has different backgrounds, and we will be able to direct the incoming students to other coaches if they have specific questions about topics we aren't as familiar with.

We will meet with our students for lunch during their Orientation week, and I'm excited to meet the incoming class!