Jekaterina Rindt
MSc in Advanced Marketing Management, 2011
Country of origin: Germany
Currently a full-time PhD student at Lancaster University Management School
The MSc in Advanced Marketing Management at Lancaster University constitutes an important milestone and turning-point in my academic life and personal development.
Prior to my application to Lancaster University, I studied for my undergraduate degree in International Communication Management at the International University in Germany. As part of my studies, I completed an internship at the A&B Communications Group in Frankfurt-am-Main and studied during my semester abroad at the Cardiff Business School, participating as a full-time student in the MSc in Strategic Marketing Management. During this phase, I decided to pursue a full postgraduate degree in the UK for a variety of reasons:
First, the universities I applied to offered a one-year Master-degree (compared to most German universities requiring two years of studies). This allowed me a more efficient use of time and financial resources and guaranteed an international, high-quality degree.
Second, given my interest in marketing studies and the fact that the advances in this discipline are primarily Anglo-American, I aimed at a first-hand access to institutions and professors who shape the current debate in research and practice.
Moreover, as I had gained thorough insight into the structure of the Masters degree during my semester abroad, I was looking for a degree that offered added value in terms of knowledge, perspectives and skills; and that provided a strong foundation for postgraduate doctoral studies.
Lancaster University provided a perfect fit in many respects: apart from an excellent university ranking, Lancaster University Management School offered me a scholarship for the MSc and was and is the only university in the UK offering an intensive programme that actually meets the criterion of being “advanced”: It actively involves students in the most recent debates of marketing practice and research and manages to balance insights into B2C as well as the oftentimes neglected specifics of B2B-marketing.
The MSc in AMM does justice to the increasingly dynamic and complex economic environment by acknowledging that “we are not students of some subject matter but students of problems. And problems may cut right across the borders of any subject matter or discipline” (Bagozzi, 1975, p.37).
In practice, this approach was reflected in integrated case-study focused exams, company project-based dissertations and the real-life Microsoft Project. Particularly the Microsoft-Case linked the often missing process of applying and modifying theoretical understandings in solving practical problems. The question we were confronted with in the Microsoft Case of 2011 was: How can the new technological concept of cloud-computing be innovatively applied by Microsoft? The open question required multi-disciplinary approaches and included a team presentation of the project to an academic audience and Microsoft representatives. Overall, the MSc in Advanced Marketing Management is an intellectual challenge, a journey with many unknown variables but the certainty of an extraordinary academic and personal enrichment.
Since the MSc in AMM, I continued as a full-time PhD student at LUMS and have often been asked by fellow AMM students the question: “Aren’t you tired of studying?” My answer is a definite “no”.
The AMM inspired and encouraged me to pursue the PhD which gives me today the opportunity to finally explore the problem I am most interested in within a vibrant, international and highly professional research community that challenges and supports my endeavors and is a perfect platform for future work in business in academia.
