By: Jolie Chene
This past summer I got the opportunity to study international marketing abroad in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Through this experience I was able to meet and work with students across the United States with the same interest.
Over this four-week, three-credit course, I met with businesses in Amsterdam who explained to us how they market internationally to other countries outside the Netherlands. We looked at different PR and marketing plans companies use to market outside of their target geographic audience. My class and I helped map out a PR plan for a new geographic audience the company did not already work with and different ways to connect with that country.
We heard from different companies in Amsterdam explain how they communicate and market to other countries such as Spain, England and Germany. We learned that it takes a different approach to sell the same products to different businesses and geographic audiences. This also gave us the opportunity to brainstorm new ideas and other ways to approach marketing in the U.S.
In this course we also looked at big corporate brands such as Nike, Chanel and Apple and studied how their marketing strategies differed between countries. We compared ads from the U.S. and the Netherlands, saw the way companies cater to their different audiences as well as looked at product sales from one country to the next and how each audience accepts products differently.
This opportunity has allowed me to grow my knowledge of marketing, international business, a new lifestyle outside of the U.S. and an overall life-changing experience.