First Installment of Summer Diaries

Follow 3 Marketing Club Members through their summer internships in Retail, Technology, and Financial Services.  This installment, the writers reflect on their first week(s) of their internships.  The next installment will follow the writers during the middle of their internships.

From Amanda Hill - Target

Minneapolis in the summer is a great place to be! I am one week in to my summer internship at Target and have made Minneapolis my summer home this year. I am spending 10 weeks as part of the Merchandise Buyer internship program in the Housewares Division, and that includes everything from kitchenware and small appliances to home improvement and automotive goods. 

Target has an extensive training program for their MBA interns, and we’ve spent most of the week getting to know more about the buyer role, guest insights, financials, strategic plans, and getting to know our team. I came into this program very interested in Target’s culture, their retail approach and not really fully understanding what a buyer is and what they do. I’ll spend a large part of my summer shadowing buyers across departments and meeting with people across the company as I learn more about retail. Already one week in, and I’m pretty fascinated with how the products are selected, the interactions with the vendors, the inventory turns, store layout, and each brand approach to the aisles. Also, I’ll spend a lot of time on a promotional strategy project for the Housewares division – really figuring out how to best leverage pricing incentives, their weekly circular, and online marketing to find a way to optimize their marketing voice. So far this internship is the perfect marriage for me of the quantitative approach to merchandising and the qualitative approach to guest and brand insights. 

Prior to Wharton, I worked in Advertising and PR account management for seven years in both Washington, DC and then Manhattan. I’ve worked with government and non-profit clients and ultimately, pharmaceutical clients. In making this shift to business school and marketing on the client side, I’m looking to broaden my perspective and understand more of the business in brand management and retail. So far so good. And interning at a company with a great culture of “Fast, Fun & Friendly,” endless happy hours, and a wealth of knowledge in the retail space is pretty exciting.

From Shirley Lin - Amazon

Hello from almost-sunny Seattle, Washington! I am working in a retail management position at Amazon for 12 weeks this summer in theirBooks In-Stock division. I am working on a customer analytics project that is focused on understanding why customers are making certain traffic/navigation decisions on the Amazon website. The project is data-intensive, which is a focus and core competency for Amazon, but it is also extremely cross functional, as I get to work closely with the In-Stock team, along with product managers, vendor managers, and engineers. I have learned so much about Amazon’s business as a whole, in addition to developing a specialized skill-set for my position (lots of SQL queries!). Amazon’s culture feels very self-serve in that you are expected to seek out people and information you need for your project, but it is a good feeling to know that they trust and empower you, even as a summerintern.

Prior to Wharton, I worked in finance for 5 years: 2 years in New York in investment banking, 2 years in Boston/Providence in middle-market private equity, and 1 year in Malaysia helping my parents outwith the family semiconductor business. My summer internship is a big career change for me, as I learn more about what it feels like to work for a technology/consumer-facing company.

My goal for the summer is to learn more about e-commerce and retail management, and to also reach out to people in the various teams/functions at Amazon. While my internship is not a traditional marketing role, it helps me better understand how important it is to differentiate your product or service in the increasingly competitive e-commerce landscape. 

From Gayley Woolston – Chase Credit Card

Greetings from Wilmington, Delaware and the Philadelphia area!  For the summer, I am working on a recently launched co-branded credit card that partners with an up-scale hotel chain.  An example of a co-branded card is a Disney or Marriot Chase card.  My projects are to develop the strategy and communication plans to re-engage high-spend customers.  I am trying to understand the consumers’ preferences and patterns to better cater to their needs and inspire them to use their credit card for more purchases and rewards.  I am a part of a class of over 30 college and graduate student interns for the summer, and many times a week, we have the opportunity to learn about a specific business unit or brand such as Chase Sapphire or Ultimate Rewards.  This access to a diversity of groups at Chase provides a great perspective on how my project fits in to the organization.

My goal for the summer is to understand the various aspects of a marketing career at a large institution and get a better sense whether a career in marketing is right for me.  The biggest adjustment thus far has been navigating the work flow in such a large company.  Every task needs to be accomplished with the help of numerous people, many of whom I have not yet met.  On a positive side, I have exposure to so many different people within the organization, so when I do reach out to new colleagues, I learn so much.  I am looking forward to continuing learning more for the next 8 weeks of my summer at Chase.

Prior to Wharton, I worked at a 30-person fixed income research firm in New York City.  I arrived at Wharton looking to gain a formal business training and possibly to  launch my career in a completely new direction, in marketing.  I chose to work at Chase this summer because I was very interested in understanding marketing at a large institution highly driven by marketing and because I was looking to stay within financial services.  Chase was the perfect opportunity to work in credit cards but also be a part of the larger JPMorgan institution.

Announcing the 2011 Summer Diaries for Marketing-Related Internships

As we end the school year, we will be starting the 2011 Summer Diaries.  Current Wharton 1st year students will be writing about their summer internships in marketing related fields from Retail, Technology, and Financial Services companies.  We will provide 3 installments from the students' beginning, middle and end of their summers.  We hope this will provide insight to current and prospective students on summer internships in marketing from a variety of industries.

Have a great summer and check us out throughout the next few months!

Wharton Wins Big!

Courtesy of the Wharton Journal

Wharton Marketing Team Wins Big

Wharton MBA team collects the "Cheerwine Cup" at the 21st annual Wake Forest Marketing Summit

By Americus Reed II

Published: Sunday, February 13, 2011

Updated: Monday, February 14, 2011 07:02

I want to let you in on a little known fact. The Wharton School's Marketing department is the best marketing department in the world. See for yourself. Go to http://som.utdallas.edu/top100Ranking/ for data on total research contributions (number of publications) and you will see that the Wharton Marketing Department tops the list (publications in the most prestigious marketing journals from 2000-2011). Talk to hard core academicians and you'll be singing to the choir. The rest of the world? They don't know this well-kept secret. That other school in Evanston is often associated with "Marketing." In fact, many of our own students have in their minds the perception of Wharton = Finance.

But that is starting to change, with events like the one that occurred this past weekend. I was faculty advisor for an all-star MBA team of Wharton Marketing students (Iris Chin,Jonathan Harmon, Rebecca Ricalde, Carolyn Schogol and Sodany Sor; all second year Wharton MBAs) who competed in the 21^st annual Wake Forest Marketing Summit (http://www.marketingsummitlive.com/). This event is one of the most prestigious Marketing Case competitions in the world. One hundred and twenty six teams applied, and only eight MBA teams were selected to compete.

My team rocked it, and took a giant step toward letting this little secret out of the bag. In a grueling 36 hour time frame consisting of blood sweat and tears (as well as nonstop Red Bull and Donuts), my Wharton Marketing MBA team constructed a case solution for the brand "North Face" (owned by VF). The judges did not know which schools each team represented. Our Wharton Marketing MBA students were #1 in the event, collecting the "Cheerwine Cup" trophy, and pocketing a cool $75 grand. You read that right. These students won the seventy-five thousand dollar cash prize for first place.

I, of course, was very proud of their hard work—combining creativity with rigorous market analytics. I was also excited to see how the efforts of our research conducted in this department (which informs these tools and approaches), can be translated by our Wharton Marketing MBA students into strategy formulation and implementation tactics that can impress a real world company.

This is a step in the right direction, especially given recent discussions around the new curriculum and issues of aligning the school's research incentives with teaching incentives (see previous Wharton Journal articles on this point). Either way, it was a great day for the Wharton School's Marketing Department(http://marketing.wharton.upenn.edu/) and the Wharton MBA Student's Marketing Club(http://www.whartonmarketing.com/).

Credit goes to the kids. They worked their tails off. Professor Keith Niedermeier (who leads the undergraduate marketing efforts) was also instrumental in terms of preparation and support. We worked closely with his team to prepare ahead of time (incidentally Keith's undergraduates won this event last year, and came in second this year).

So, for those who think that the best place to get your MBA if you are interested in marketing is somewhere in the Midwest, we've got your wake up call. The Wharton Marketing department is the best department in the world, with the best marketing faculty and the best marketing students, end of story!

Americus Reed II is Whitney M. Young Jr. Associate Professor of Marketing of the Marketing Department at The Wharton School.

Preparing for Interviews!

It was a packed house tonight in Huntsman Hall where General Mills delivered their annual interview prep workshop.  Two marketing managers from General Mills shared with over sixty first-year Wharton Students how to prepare for marketing cases and behavioral interviews.  Wharton students got the inside scoop on what recruiters are looking for during an interview as first-years prepare for DIP (dedicated interview period).  

Wharton Marketing Club Holiday Party

It was great to have a chance to catch up and socialize with fellow marketing club members at TenStone.   All of the first years were able to share their Day on the Job and networking experiences and speak to the second-years to get advice about the recruiting and interview process.  And some of our professors, including Americus Reed came to hang out, too!  Good food and drinks and good company!  Happy Holidays, Marketing Club Members...

Wharton Marketing Conference

Check out the pics from the Wharton Marketing Conference! 

The Seventh Annual Marketing Conference brought approximately 300 faculty, students and leading experts from the marketing field together under the theme “Captivating the Consumer in Times of Change.” There were keynote speakers and panel discussions focusing on how marketers are breaking the mold to reach consumers and capture share of mind, whether it’s online, in the stores, or on the streets.


All the Wharton marketing club students had a blast hearing experienced and successful marketers speak about their passions and experiences on panels and throughout the day at informal lunches and coffee chats.