Personal Statement
Applied Program: Marketing Management

In an epoch in which marketing is regarded as an integral part of an enterprise’s management strategy, the professionals who are engaged in marketing business will be inevitably confronted with a life of tremendous challenge and a strong sense of achievement. Despite the fact that up until now I have had little full-time professional experience of marketing, I have undergone sufficient exposure, both theoretical and practical, to marketing management in the course of my undergraduate education at JiNan University, considered one of the most prestigious universities in Southern China. I believe that the time and the energy that I have devoted to my practices of marketing management are very worthwhile, because in marketing management I have discovered a possible professional career which is at once in line with my interest and is capable of enriching the meaning of my life. The creativity and artistic quality inherent in marketing, as well as its vital significance to the survival of an enterprise, have captured my imagination as I came to develop some insightful understandings regarding the essence of marketing management through my theoretical and practical efforts. In the same way that my potential in and aspirations for business management have made my choice of MBA inevitable, my option for marketing management as the specialty of my degree program wholly derives from my academic interest and potential.

Born in a family where business management has become a tradition, my formative experience and early education have been accompanied by the extended process during which my parents have made relentless efforts to become the renowned insurance specialist and a senior public accountant. In retrospect, both my interest and my talents in management science and in public relations should primarily be attributed to the familial influences cast on me. Those influences made it possible for me to acquire some rudimentary knowledge and perceptual experience of business management long before my undergraduate education at the Department of Economics of JiNan University. It was precisely on the basis of my pre-university experiential understanding of business management that my formal university education, with its systematic theoretical and practical trainings, initiated me into the world of business management.

Although strictly speaking as an undergraduate I specialize in economics rather than in business management, the undergraduate education in China in the economics specialty actually covers most branches of business management, as indicated by my academic transcript. This fact has allowed me to assimilate knowledge of business management in a wide variety of fields in addition to learning fundamental theories of economics. Those fields include Marketing, Public Relations, Advertising, E-commerce, Marketing Communications, Principles of Management Science, etc. Those are the courses that fascinate me most and in which I invariably achieve the highest scores of the entire class. As an academic field, Business Management is a subject that poses important challenges to an individual’s creativity. With the inspirations that I came to develop in management since my childhood, I have always completed my coursework with much facility. For instance, I once received very positive comments from my teacher for my efforts to combine the principles in The Art of War by China’s ancient military strategist Sun Zi with those of modern management science.

My wide-ranged interests and my readiness to communicate with people prompted me, during my undergraduate studies, to undertake ample social activities and business practices, ranging from serving as the broadcaster of my university’s radio broadcasting station, planner and the producer of advertisements and radio plays, the main figure in the Students Union, planner of the large-scale advertising campaign for Yinon Advertising Company, part-time insurance agent of The People’s Insurance Company of China (PICC) after having obtained full professional qualifications, and the master of ceremonies of various large-scale business and social activities. To a great extent, my involvement in those activities compensated for my lack of full-time professional experience. Of all those activities, the one that has given me most productive trainings and has influenced my career choice most is my experience of acting as the PICC’s insurance agent. During that period, I creatively applied the knowledge of marketing that I had learned to introduce some innovations into the mode of business development. I broke up the conventional mode of selling insurance policies and created a completely novel mode of business development which, branded by the company as the “Starlight Project”, was popularized on a company-wide scale. Under such a mode of business operation, the insurance company creates individual insurance service offices in different residential areas with the help of the property management companies stationed in those residential areas. The service offices are responsible for selling insurance products by first providing full publicity and services. In this way, by means of an widely-encompassing network of inter-personal relations and relatively reliable human trust, the insurance products were successfully publicized and sold.

Another achievement of mine that deserves special mentioning is that early in 2001 I devised and was chiefly responsible for developing the Installment Warranty and Insurance of Home Appliances and Other Durable Products in Shenzhen City. Put into successful application in the city’s ShenDian Company, the strategy permitted Shenzhen citizens to purchase high-end large home appliances by means of installments, fundamentally transforming the citizens’ conventional mode of purchase and creating a precedent in the company’s business operations in this field. Each of my successful marketing experiences shows me that innovation is the soul of marketing and creativity will be the principle that I will adhere to in my future studies and work.

Undoubtedly, the present education of marketing in China lags behind that of advanced countries due to the existing market conditions of the country. In particular, the subject of marketing communications which I started to study since my junior year is all too immature, with a serious lack of highly qualified staff resource and pedagogical cases. By contrast, the United States has the greatest number of internationally renowned enterprises and highly successful marketing education. This constitutes my most important motivation behind my present application for an MBA program majoring in marketing management. On the other hand, as a necessary preparation for becoming a potentially successful enterprise administrator, to develop an intimate familiarity with the English language and the Western culture, and to be trained by the rigorous and highly competitive international education are also some of the objectives I wish to arrive at through my MBA program. In my proposed studies, I would like to concentrate on learning the knowledge of business management and marketing management and to actively participate in case studies and group discussions. In addition, I expect to engage in marketing practices and internships at certain American companies so as to substantiate the theoretical knowledge that I learn. It is my belief that I will come up with some splendid academic performance in my future MBA program the way that I managed to be the top 4th student in my grade in terms of overall scholastic performance at JiNan University.

Entering the 21st century, almost all the Chinese enterprises seem to have realized that successful marketing is where the life of an enterprise lies. Against such a backdrop, I am determined to become one of the most accomplished marketing managers in China’s future. It is my most sincere wish that my pursuit for a marketing career commences with this very presentation of mine, which is in itself a form of “marketing”.