does a degree in marketing automatically imply "sales"?

[Double J]

Hello everyone,

 

Recently I posted here about my decision to switch from accounting to marketing that shocked everyone. My dad was very upset because he wanted to me to become a CPA like my sister, but I chose not to follow his prescribed path and reach success my own way.

 

I'm looking for responses from people with experience in the business field - particularly in marketing, economics and communications. I want to be a Market Researcher. My BA is in Marketing and I'm getting a minor in Psychology to complement it because I love psychology, and because various companies want some background in the social sciences. What I ultimately want to focus on is something that concentrates on consumer behavior.

 

Does getting a degree in Marketing mean that for sure you'll have to do sales/retail in the beginning? I really don't want to do that because I see myself as more of the office type/analytical person than the savvy salesperson. Sales won't drive me, but analyzing consumer trends and stuff like that will.

 

Open to responses, thanks

[RayKay]

Simple reply is NO it does not automatically mean Sales, especially as you are also working on pyschology and have ambitions on focusing on consumer patterns.

 

Now, it is possible that getting some sales experience will be beneficial as a way to truly learn more about the consumer and the product, and take that into developing marketing campaigns and so forth that would target those consumers based on their patterns and research.

 

There are plenty of people though who start and stay "behind the scenes" and are employed by companies to do market research or work as consultants without every doing sales/retail.

[mgirl]

To answer your question, no, i don't think so.

 

With market research, you'll find they prefer people with a social science degree. Marketing will only make you look better. Market research is like any other research field. You will have to have good numeracy skills and be good at report writing. The bulk of what you do will be analyzing data using statistical methodologies. Once the data is analyzed, you will then be able to run more tests and see trends. The thing with market research is that you will have to stick to the client's brief. You won't be able to spot your own trends in the data (although i'm sure you could in your own time), because the client will ask for something specifically, such as, "who is the likely target market for our retail brand", or "what is the level of recall for our latest television commercial". So, you will inevitably design ways to determine this information... whether by focus group or questionairre, or by other methodolgies. I think it would be fun, but a lot of hard work.