Personal Statement
Program: Ph. D. Program in Marketing

--The Future is not a place to which we travel, but a place which we must create

As a production factor, human resource also faces scarcity—in the technical sense of economics—the way that other forms of resource face. Therefore, when an individual makes a choice as a human factor, he or she has to take into account of the opportunity cost to himself (or herself) in particular and to the society as a whole within the general framework of his or her individual value. My resolution to pursue an advanced program in the field of marketing is precisely founded on the guidelines provided by economics. My personal interest and ample potential allow me to possess comparative advantage in pursuing marketing for reasons that I will state in the succeeding paragraphs, and I believe that my choice is a rationalized choice in keeping with the rules of economics.

My interest in marketing commenced with the learning of two important courses in my sophomore year—Marketing and Management. The first year of my undergraduate program at the Department of Accounting, Henan University, was spent in overwhelming frustration because I was arbitrarily assigned to study accounting as my specialty, a subject in which I had little interest. However, in learning Marketing and Management, I discovered my real interest. In retrospection, this interest of mine stemmed from my willingness to communicate and exchange with people, my desire to experience the collisions between different schools of thought, the interdisciplinary nature between those two subjects, and the demands that they impose on a person’s creative thinking. The 4P’s as advocated in marketing (price, place, promotion and product) are specifically oriented toward market fluctuations and they require special sensitivity in capturing market information, thorough understanding of the problems involved, and the ability to solve problems by sound logical reasoning. The four aspects as represented by 4P’s constitute the fields in which I made conscious efforts to develop and to improve my competence. While taking the market course, I immersed myself in various western textbooks including the classic work Marketing Management by Philip Kotlor. Meanwhile, I endeavored to assimilate useful knowledge from case studies, realizing the empirical nature of the subject. I had a habit of applying a multiplicity of perspectives from different frameworks of knowledge to bear on the same problem and for this reason I once achieved the highest score in my department in an oral presentation. My teacher of the Marketing course, who is also the chairman of the Marketing Department, believed that I was most suited to a career in marketing. His remarks gave me tremendous encouragement and further reinforced my determination to seek an advanced education in this fascinating area.

Marketing is an applied science that calls for constant practice based on a mastery of its theories and principles in order to develop an awareness of how marketing is actually conducted. During the summer vacation in the second year, having completed the marketing course, I participated in the promotion campaign on behalf of the Little Swan Home Appliances Products (Little Swan being the brand name of China’s most famous producer of home appliances) at Zhengzhou Department Store in Henan Province. During the promotion campaign, we provided detailed information to our prospective clients concerning the products and their post-sale services on one hand and submitted the feedback to the headquarters on the other. This refreshing experience of directly facing clients excited me, making me all the more interested in various activities that could increase my practical knowledge of marketing. One of such activities was a project my classmates and I contrived for developing a realistic understanding of the principles of Marketing Lens Model. According to this model, different individuals may experience major differences in their cognition of their surroundings due to differences in their education, backgrounds and personal experiences, which lead to their development of their differential cognitive lenses. Our project team conducted an all-campus evaluation of the teachers’ performance and of the soundness of the curriculum in the form of questionnaires and follow-up surveys. Based on the findings of our investigation, we submitted to the university authorities rationalization proposals concerning how to improve of the quality of teaching and how education could be geared to the specific needs of students. Positively commented upon, our proposals were mostly adopted by the authorities. This successful experience made me understand that some concepts of marketing could be fruitfully applied to different walks of life, not merely put into service for the profit-making organizations.

My practical work experience in marketing started with my employment at the Sales Department of Beijing Education & Cultural Communications Center upon my graduation in the summer of 2001. Over the past one year, I participated in planning promotion campaigns for several sets of book series and in the management of media publicity. I was also responsible for designing the exhibitions for those book series. However, in performing my responsibilities, I became dismayed by the reality. Theoretically speaking, marketing responsibilities within a company should be specified and marketing personnel should perform their duties according to specialized division of labor so that the efficiency can be optimized. Nevertheless, in actual operations, different divisions of labor among different departments tend to produce conflicted interests and communication barriers, resulting in disruptions in work schedules and in reduced efficiency. I came to realize that teamwork is still a major problem within Chinese context, especially in the field of marketing, that needs to be worked out. To materialize good concepts of marketing, optimum approaches must be adopted that can meet the changing circumstances of the environment. My heretofore work experience shows me that, although marketing has developed into a comprehensive discipline that is both enlightening and capable of social guidance over a century-long innovation and evolution, the idea of marketing as the strategic presence of a given enterprise has not yet been established within the Chinese economic milieu. With the increased competition brought about by globalization, especially with China’s accession to the WTO, the widely-accepted conventional formula of “production + product + marketing” has been rendered obsolescent, unable to satisfy the needs of China’s present buyer’s market and the necessity to maintain sustainable development after China’s WTO accession. In particular, faced with the challenges posed by the emergence of knowledge economy, Chinese enterprises must revolutionize its conventional notions of marketing. Toward this objective, Chinese enterprises must top-level management and marketing professionals who can formulate effective marketing strategies and establish highly efficient marketing network. In this regard, prospective marketing professionals have a mission and a responsibility to perform. Apart from my interest and my potential, this factor constitutes the most direct reason behind my current effort to apply for a Ph.D. program in marketing at your prestigious university. It is my expectation that in my future degree program I will be exposed to the most recent concepts and modes of thinking in marketing which I can ultimately apply to the Chinese marketing practice.

Although I did not major in marketing as an undergraduate, my professional training in accounting can nevertheless be instrumental to my academic and career development in the future. The specialty of accounting also required me to receive basic training in economics and management, an education background that allowed me to evolve mental habits characteristic of economics and management. In my undergraduate program, trainings in the development of mental habits were far more important than the mere acquisition of book knowledge and my performance in work has also indicated that I excel my peers in logical reasoning and in economics-specific mentality. My GPA is not absolutely high (but showing obvious ascendancy), which could be attributed to my initial dislike for accounting on one hand and to my extensive participation in extracurricular activities to satiate my special love for marketing practices. Those activities consumed a considerable amount of my time and energy that I could otherwise have devoted to coursework. Nevertheless, I take great comfort in having developed my empirical knowledge of marketing by participating in those activities.

Successful marketing is the most crucial strategic arrangement in making quality products available to prospective consumers. Having accumulated necessary knowledge and experience, I have an implicit faith in myself as a most competitive candidate for your Ph.D. program. In presenting myself for your scrutiny, I am doing an important “marketing” of myself. I sincerely wish that my further exploration in the field of marketing could be made possible with this very “marketing” of myself.