Graduate /
Each pessimistic finds a problem in each opportunity; SOP- PhD / Marketing/CANADA [4]
To the Review Committee,
Everyone, sooner or later, should decide which career path to take. As for me, I have chosen Marketing.
My Vision "Each pessimistic finds a problem in each opportunity and each optimistic finds an opportunity in each problem" A well-known story, Shoe-Maker firm sent two supervisors to an island located at the Pacific Ocean, Both did a market survey in the island as a prospective customer to sell their brand, the first supervisor (Pessimistic) reported that there is no opportunity to sell the product because the island residency is not wearing shoes "No Need", the second supervisor (Optimistic) reported that there is a major opportunity in that island because all the island residency is not wearing shoes, so we can easily work on the idea and sell to them our brand "Open Market", this is my approach is to think positive and out of the box in any challenge i face, that place me in the forefront of my colleagues and make me more powerful to deal with different situations either personal or professional.
My interest starts with Marketing at the age of six, and that has happened to me when I watched the Nike Advertising Campaign "Just Do it" on T.V, the campaign was a hit in 1988, I found myself always repeat this phrase in every action I do or every situation I met. "Just Do it" was short and sweet, Yet encapsulated everything people felt when they were exercising and that feeling remains the same today, it's a human truth we all could relate to, that drive to push myself further and gives me a real sense of empowerment and inspiration, and up till now Nike is still my favorite running shoes, after I matured enough my curiosity led me to search for that specific campaign, I have found that Nike sales in 1988 were only $800 million, and by 1988 sales exceeded $9.2 billion because of the campaign and that has also reflected on the corporate culture and advertising approach, Nike campaign "Just Do it" is considered one of the top successful campaigns worldwide.
After that incident, I insist to get more in depth for what happened to me, how marketers study consumer taste, preferences, wants, shopping and buying behavior and how they work on our attitudes, now having studied two years in my MBA in marketing at the Arab Academy for Graduate School of Business and having broad research experience, I do understand that the job of marketer is to meet and satisfy target customer's need and wants but not limited to knowing the customer.
I came to know University of Western Ontario because of a word of mouth through a friend of mine, I checked its website and I have found that Richard Ivey School of Business is one of Canada's leading business school, The Ivey's school reputation is based on more than 75 years producing top scholars, as well as on the faculty's vitality, and commitment, what I like most about Ivey school that it has earned an international reputation for providing a good quality of teaching , research experience and high calibers of its students and faculty , that place Richard Ivey to be one of the world's greatest business schools, Ivey School is applying the Magic Formula in its curriculum, which is the Concept (Academic Studies), Applications (To solve real problems in existing firms) and finally the Evaluation (which is the student input), that puts Ivey graduate students in both real academic and professional tracks.
During my two years study of my MBA, I have spent most of my time carrying out research and attending a number of extra-curricular lectures and seminars in Marketing, my favorite lecture was Consumer Behavior, there is always a rhyme and reason to consumer purchases, even if there appears to be no pattern, Need is the driving force and it is shaped by number of factors such as emotions, finance and values, my great interest to me at that time is how consumers learn from emotions and analogy and the effect of categorization on consumer attitudes toward innovative products.
On the other hand, I have gained some teaching experience during my Master, as I taught low level classes in Principles of Accounting for undergraduate students assigned to me by Professor Mahmoud Soliman, it was an interesting experience where I put the students on the right track, as they were much behind, in addition to working as a teaching assistant for the Seminar in Marketing class in developing educational materials and run study groups under the guidance of Professor Rafaat Youssef.
I carried out my first research project in Promotion and Personal Selling Class during my MBA, it was about how McDonald's uses promotion to increase its product use, through the research I have outlined that McDonald's does this as a way to keep loyal customers and gain new ones, its marketing campaign is through three things such as coupons, premiums and sweepstakes, it was an amazing experience research, where I met different McDonald's branch managers and heard from them what promotions they work on, which are most familiar to their customers, and how that kind of promotions make the customer loyal to them.
The Second experience in research, it takes place in my recent work at I.C.Group (Real Estate firm) when I was assigned to an important research project as a fill-in Project Manager by Dr.Waffa Marzouk (Marketing Consulting and Member of the Management Team) to monitor our customers opinion regarding our company showrooms, slogan, customer service, collections and our prices to check how customers see us and how to enhance ourselves in that specific areas, In this role I was responsible for the technical aspects of creating a computer-based survey questionnaire, monitoring the telephone data collection process, and completing the data processing and analysis of the survey results. I started by participating in discussions with the client and suggesting and implementing several changes to the script that shortened its length and clarified the instructions to respondents. I spend several days working odd hours, observing and monitoring interviewers and supervisors as we began to field 2000 persons study, Within a few days I had shortened and clarified the script even more-removing redundant questions, collapsing multiple questions into one, and improving the flow from question to question and screen to screen, all to the great praise of both interviewers and director of our phone center, at the end I outlined some areas of development for the company and wrote a memo to several managers with that ,and demonstrate the value of this ideas and we hit an annual cost reduction of close to $ 50,000, At the end of the project , I reached several findings about of our interviewing and supervisory staff where I described the characteristics and skills employed by the best interviewers I had observed and made some suggestions for those skills how to be taught to the entire staff, and I was proud that my recommendations were well received and implemented by the managers whose staff was being critiqued. After a couple of months of that survey, I have promoted to the position of Marketing Supervisor.
I start to think about my project interest of the PhD and it begins when I was reading about the "got milk" campaign, The National Milk Mustache "got milk" Campaign is one of the most recognized and respected advertising campaigns, It earned a place in advertising history, they starts by providing facts and educating consumers about the benefits of drinking milk in order to increase per capita consumption ,such as Milk is good for Skin, Muscles, and make your bones and teeth more stronger (All source of positive information) ,that turns the audience to have positive attitude towards the milk, and they support that by "milk mustache" celebrity ads, The lesson here is that the campaign didn't focus on people who were not drinking milk, but on the set of consumers who already were, Sometimes it's not always about getting new people to use the product, but to get your current set of customers to appreciate your product more, and that is by using the marketing and communications to tell the audience whey they should appreciate the product or service you are already providing to them, because of this campaign, milk sales in California rose to 7% in just one year ,All of these Considerations are forms of consumer behavior, from that event, I would love consumer behavior to be one my expertise area, and to get more focus in that area, Consumer Behavior is an interdisciplinary science, what I like most is the Social Psychology as it is blend of sociology and psychology, so my interests in Marketing lie in that area.
I would like to carry out my research under the guidance of Associate Professor June Cotte, I believe that under her supervision I can proactively contribute to the work, her areas of work are of great interest to me and I believe I can prove to be an effective and reliable team member in carrying out cutting edge research in this domain.
After completing my PhD program, I would like to shift being working as professional to work as a researcher and a teacher in this field, I also believe that my serious intention for study and research, my past technical experience and academic background in various areas of marketing will be beneficial for my graduate studies, I would like to serve also as a faculty of committees dealing with curriculum planning and degree requirements, My ultimate goal is to chair the marketing department in 10 years.
Taking all the circumstances into consideration, I came to the conclusion, that the best opportunity to pursue my marketing path would be to continue my education as a graduate student at Ivey School. The facilities, scholarship, and traditions of your university, combined with the caliber of the students, make me confident that I will be stimulated throughout the course of my studies. Upon graduating from your program, a variety of options are available for pursuing my objectives.
In conclusion I must say that I would regard my being admitted to the graduate program not only as a great honor but more as a high responsibility and obligation of hard work.
