The 「INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION」course, which is taught by Professor Chun-Tuan Chang at the Department of Business Management, has received the excellent course award for the fall semester of the 2019/2020 academic year. The course provides students with the foundational knowledge and executive concepts of Integrated Marketing, and is conducted in English throughout. With a combination of theories and experimental meanings, the course focuses on choosing a commercial’s purpose, the best way to bring out a brand’s effectiveness, and the importance of customers’ insights. To increase students’ ability and to help them adjust to working environments, every member of the class is required to use English when discussing in groups, writing papers, and presenting their projects. In this way, students face challenges that they may confront at work, such as presenting English proposals.
The course’s final group project was a collaboration with FLOMO（富樂夢）, the first eco-friendly and innocuous eraser brand in Taiwan. On the day of the presentations, the managers of FLOMO were invited along to judge the proposals. Some groups used market investigation to analyze the difference between eraser brands and then SWOT analysis to propose a marketing strategy suitable to the target audiences for the brand (such as teachers, parents, or children). Some groups analyzed the brand’s social media and proposed different functions for the erasers in order to attract different target audiences. Some groups suggested that over-pricing might be the brand’s issue; they recommended a strategy of swapping out the high-cost product and creating a brand new mascot to draw attention. Moreover, students also suggested concepts such as membership systems, reward schemes, and DIY programs; these were all eye-opening, innovative marketing plans, and were complimented. Students answered the judges’ questions fluently in English; as such, this course provided them with early experience of the international proposal pattern.
The vice-chairman of FLOMO stated that there are many exciting ideas and creativity in the proposals; there were even some details that they had not considered internally. Some groups’ proposals were even considered worthy of proposal inside the company, which made the students feel more confident about their ability to perform integrated marketing. Prof. Chang, the program lecturer, has stated that the course’s purpose is to provide students with the capability to analyze different elements in advertisements, create plans individually, execute strategies, choose media, and learn problem-solving abilities.
Ting-Ying Wu, a second grade student on the International Business MBA program who took this course, explained that Prof. Chang always began with theories during each class and gathered many case studies for everyone to analyze. Through the discussion of these studies, students were encouraged to share short presentations on stage. The workload might be heavier than other courses; however, this course gave students a chance to learn how to think based on consumers’ behavior. Moreover, the course gave students a better understanding of communication strategy. From thought to execution, this course helps students to get closer to the real world of work.
