Download A Study of Market-Oriented Skill Cultivation Model of the Marketing Talents

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A Study of Market-Oriented Skill Cultivation Model of the Marketing
Talents
MO Qiuming
School of Business Administration, Guangxi University of Finance & Economics, China, 530003
1033229472 @qq.com
Abstract: At present, there is a disconnection of supply-demand of persons with ability between
marketing major and industries. This paper, based on the problems, elaborates some adjustments should
be made in university marketing personnel training model, with the core of self-management skills,
knowledge skills and transferable skills to meet the market. In addition, through the establishing the
training goal of “one main-line, two key-points”, three-stage reform of university marketing professional
curriculums has been put forward to provide reference for cultivating marketing talents to meet the
needs of social and economic development.
Keywords: Marketing, Marketing talents, Skill, Talents training
1 Introduction
In order to meet the needs of the social and economic development, many colleges and universities have
opened marketing major. As the enterprises’ requirement about talent is gradually changed from quantity
to quality, the demand for integrated marketing talent with marketing expertise, and the ability to use
modern marketing methods and means to make decisions and effective management will increase
substantially. Therefore, colleges and universities should adjust and improve the marketing major
training mode in order to meet the needs of the market.
Researches about the marketing major training mode at home and abroad are mainly focused on the
following aspects; 1 Studies on the positioning of the marketing major training mode; 2 Studies on the
specific teaching methods of the marketing major training mode; 3 Studies on implementation of
practical teaching of marketing. These previous studies provide theoretical basis and worth learning
from.
The innovation of this article lies in: First, in content, this article analyzes the skills of the marketing
major training mode to implement the current study. Second, the article uses sociology, ethics,
organizational behavior, management science, humanities and other disciplines interdisciplinary as
theoretical support.
2 Pose the Problems
With the further development of China’s market economy, the competition among enterprises is
increasingly fierce; the demand for marketing personnel is growing. Against this background however,
some phenomena arise in the employment of marketing major graduates. First, instead of marketing
positions, some prefer clerical workers, production management, and administrative assistants and so on;
second, high transfers. Some graduates just start to work in marketing, but transfer to other posts very
soon; third, new employees cannot adapt to the requirement of position or make benefits for the
enterprises, and ultimately are obsolete. These phenomena are in great contrast with the shortage of
market demand.
According to the analysis, the main reasons are: on the one hand, requirements for marketing knowledge
continuously improve. More and more enterprises require their staff with a cross-trade and compound
knowledge structure. On the other hand, enterprises believe that the students often have high aspirations
but low abilities and lack practical experience as well as professional quality to satisfy them. It shows
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that the marketing talents’ training in university is out of step with modern world, which not only brings
about the shortage of qualified personnel but also a dreadful waste of education recourses.
Therefore, not surprisingly, all-round marketing talents, equipped with professional marketing
knowledge, high occupational qualities and cross-trade compound competence are in great demand,
which is also a big challenge for universities and colleges to cultivate these kinds of skills.
3 The Composition of Marketing Talents Skills in the University
Capability refers to one must have certain psychological characteristics to complete certain activities
successfully. Aptitude is endowed everyone with a special ability. It is innate and a potential. Skills are
acquired through learning and ability cultivation. This paper will mainly research on how university
develops marketing talents’ professional skills.
To obtain skills must experience a continual process with repeated practice, and university is the critical
period to format the skills. One of the teaching purposes is to make up a deficiency in students’
professional skills. The marketing teaching should pay more attention to comprehensive talents of
combining theoretical knowledge and marketing technology, constructing three-stage skills centered
training model, which is “self-management skills, knowledge skills, and transferable skills”, so as to
effectively improve the defeats in talents’ training. Please refer to the table 1 for detailed information:
Skill classification and composition for marketing professional talents.
Table 1 Skill classification and composition for marketing professional talents
Skill type
skill components
Self-management skills
stress-tolerance, responsibility, challenges,honesty,teamwork,workethics,
influence, passion, meet the etc.
Knowledge skills
marketing professional knowledge, selling techniques, interpersonal
relationship, market insight and analysis, negotiation, marketing plan,
marketing strategic management, product development, customers
maintenance, etc.
Transferable skills
organization, coordination, innovation, execution, team management,
strategic decision, leadership, adaptability, flexibility, problem analysis
and solving, resource integration, etc.
Self-management skills are often regarded as the occupation accomplishment. It involves how
individual manages themselves in different environment. We often hear that some enterprises evaluate
college students as a kind of “lacking professionalism, sincerity and diligence, no service consciousness
and initiative, having high aspirations but low abilities and so on.” Those are related to self-management
skills. Good self-management skills can help individual better adapt to the surroundings and deal with
the problems in the work. Marketing personnel should be law-abiding, patience, dedication, enthusiasm,
anti-frustration and other qualities such as good occupation moral and humanities, health in psychology
and body.
We believe that marketing talents acquire professional knowledge skills through education, which
includes market development, investigation and execution, the promotion of products and services,
market forecast, program design, business negotiation and marketing management, market research and
forecast, marketing strategic planning, products development management, brand strategic planning,
marketing diagnosis and auditing, corporate identity design, public relations and non-profit
organizational marketing work and so on. In other words, knowledge skills require students to apply
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theoretical knowledge of marketing to analyze and solve relevant problems.
Transferable skills refer to things that a person can do, such as persuasion, analysis, decision making,
communication, organization. The skills can be developed from the work and applied to different
occupations. Thus they are employed most durably and reliably for individual. Compared with
knowledge skills, transferable skills can be applied everywhere regardless of ages, individual’s needs
and change of work environment. Enhance, marketing talents should possess transferable skills such as
communication, leadership, interpersonal relationship, adaptability, problems analysis and solving.
Three kinds of skills not only attach importance to theoretical knowledge of marketing but also take
demand of enterprises for professional talents’ skill into account. Marketing talents training model will
be oriented towards the three skills, which contributes to cultivate interdisciplinary talents combining
with professional theoretical knowledge and marketing techniques.
4 The Professional Personnel Cultivation Model of the Marketing Major in the
University
The centre of the professional personnel cultivation of the Marketing Major in the university lies in the
craftsman skills. In light of this, a scientific and appropriate teaching and practicing model will be a
strong guarantee for high professional personnel training. Therefore, the principle of “One main-line,
two key-points”, which serves as the objective of Marketing Major, should be high-lighted. In other
words, the main line of teaching should be market-oriented in order to fulfill the requirement of most
enterprises, so that the students could have the capability to achieve their goals with a balance between
knowledge and practice, and finally meet the needs of local economy development. Besides, combining
theoretical teaching into social practice and cultivating students three different kinds of skills are two
key points in teaching. There are three steps in this part. The first one is to gain general knowledge of
the courses, which aims to develop students’ self-management skills, while the second one is
professional knowledge of the courses, which to their professional skills. The third one is professional
internship, which is to students’ further development.
4.1 Being basic with general knowledge courses and cultivating self-management skills
The basic general knowledge courses make up of such classes as Politics, Computer, English, Sports, etc.
They aim to improve students’ law and political awareness, as well as their physical and psychological
qualities and professional moral. Students will be law-abiding, honesty, dependable as well as
responsible, and finally communicable.
4.2 Adjusting the teaching mode of the key courses and enhancing the professional competence of
the students
In this part, it is necessary to combine course characteristics and its content by means of different kinds
of teaching modes such as case analysis and role simulation as well as monographic study. In addition,
some practicing exercises which closely related with internships, questionnaire survey and statistic
analysis, for example, are also accountable. They could make the course more targeted and pragmatic.
1) Case analysis
One of the best ways to do case analysis is to choose some typical business examples such as “How
Wang Lo Kat success in the market” for classroom discussion after teachers finish their pedagogical
tasks. The advantages of this are as following. First, it improves students’ ability of thinking and solving
problem independently; second, it makes students grasp the principles, strategies and methods about
market positioning in a vivid way; finally, it promotes students’ language skills and study atmosphere.
2) Monographic study
Monographic study in college should take the characteristics of local enterprises into consideration,
because local enterprises, especially those pillar ones, are main recruiters for graduates. In light of this
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situation, it is responsible for teacher to give students some appropriate guidance in their study
according to the features of local pillar industries and thus help them get familiar with the situation of
local market and finally make the job choices.
3) Students’ presentation
For those easy parts of the courses, teacher could ask students to do some presentations. Students
themselves make the group and each takes charge of one chapter. Teacher is only a guider in the class
and evaluates student’s team-work achievement. It is a sure way to arouse student’s study enthusiasm
and improve their coordination capability as well as knowledge acquirement, and finally get twice the
result with half the efforts in their studies.
4) Foreign Teacher employment
In order to make students gain more experiences and further comprehend key knowledge of their major,
college education management department should invite some experts to do seminar.
4.3 Setting up the platform of social practice and enhancing students’ competence of working
The starting point of education is market requirement. A good marketing staff should not only have solid
theoretical knowledge, but also have solid working capability. He or she could achieve this goal by
doing follow steps.
1) Cooperation between university and enterprises through specific class foundation
According to the needs and differences of personnel demands of the enterprises, college has the
responsibility to re-classify the curriculums and set up some specific classes in terms of the features of
the market. Furthermore, planning a appropriate personnel training program which related with the
needs of the market and inviting experienced experts to guide students so as to make them aware of the
operations of the business are also accountable.
2) Simulating the real situation of the market
It is reasonable for college to build up a lab equipped with necessary software and tools, where students
could experience the real situation of the enterprise marketing activities such as business survey, product
development and production as well as transaction. The reaction of the students under such
circumstances could highly promote their skills of independent thinking and solving problems.
3) Extra-curricular activities implementation
Organizing some extra-curricular activities related with the major in Students’ Association and clubs.
There are three advantages for doing this: on the one hand, through those activities college could
encourage students take part in the researches and then publish their academic results and essays. These
researches results and academic essays could serve as the credits of public elective courses; on the other
hand, those activities provide a new way for students to making practice and going outside of the
campus. For example, through activities such as charity sales, community public service, enterprise
tours, etc, students could have some more comprehensive understandings for their majors. Last but not
the least, those activities could also serve as competitions. For instance, Challenge Cup, ERP Sand Table
Simulation Match and many other activities could highly arouse the enthusiasm of the students and
finally improve their general executive capability as well as decision-making capacity.
5 Conclusion
The knowledge structure of the marketing personnel objectively requires our activated exploration and
bold innovation in light of the real situation of the market, enterprises and society. Only when we
continuously reform our teaching modes can we cultivate qualified professional personnel who have the
ability to adapt the development of the society and market economy.
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References
[1]. Li Yongduan. Organisational Behaviour, Higher Education Press, 86 (in Chinese)
[2]. Liang Wenling, Gao Hongjing. Empirical Study of Practical Ability of Marketing Professionals,
Eduaction Explore, 2009 (10): 72-74 (in Chinese)
[3]. Zhang Wenling, Wang Yiyan. Discussion on the College Marketing Personnel Training Methods,
Youjiang Medical College, 2006, 26 (4): 685 -686 (in Chinese)
[4]. Xu Hongjie. Construction based on Capacity-oriented Marketing Professional Practice Teaching
System, Education and Occupation, 2012 (18), 155-156 (in Chinese)
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