Perreault−McCarthy: Basic
Marketing: A
Global−Managerial
Approach, 14/eBack Matter Appendix C: Career
Planning Marketing© The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2002684 Appendix C
You are the Product you are going to include in your own marketing plan. So first
you have to decide what your long-run objectives are—what you want to do, how
hard you want to work, and how quickly you want to reach your objectives. Be hon-
est with yourself—or you will eventually face frustration. Evaluate your own personal
strengths and weaknesses—and decide what factors may become the key to your suc-
cess. Finally, as part of your personal analysis, set some preliminary timetables to guide
your strategy planning and implementation efforts. Let’s spell this out in detail.Strategy planning requires much trial-and-error decision making. But at the very
beginning, you should make some tentative decisions about your own objectives—
what you want out of a job and out of life. At the very least, you should decide
whether you are just looking for a job or whether you want to build a career. Beyond
this, do you want the position to be personally satisfying—or is the financial return
enough? And just how much financial return do you need? Some people work only
to support themselves and their leisure-time activities. Others work to support them-
selves and their families. These people seek only financial rewards from a job. They
try to find job opportunities that provide adequate financial returns but aren’t too
demanding of their time or effort.
Other people look first for satisfaction in their job—and they seek opportunities
for career advancement. Financial rewards may be important too, but these are used
only as measures of success. In the extreme, the career-oriented individual may be
willing to sacrifice a lot, including leisure and social activities, to achieve success
in a career.
Once you’ve tentatively decided these matters, then you can get more serious
about whether you should seek a job or a career in marketing. If you decide to pur-
sue a career, you should set your broad long-run objectives to achieve it. For
example, one long-run objective might be to pursue a career in marketing manage-
ment (or marketing research). This might require more academic training than you
planned, as well as a different kind of training. If your objective is to get a job that
pays well, on the other hand, then this calls for a different kind of training and dif-
ferent kinds of job experiences before completing your academic work.What kind of a job is right for you?
Because of the great variety of marketing jobs, it’s hard to generalize about what
aptitudes you should have to pursue a career in marketing. Different jobs attract peo-
ple with various interests and abilities. We’ll give you some guidelines about what
kinds of interests and abilities marketers should have. However, if you’re completely
lost about your own interests and abilities, see your campus career counselor and take
some vocational aptitude and interest tests. These tests will help you to compare
yourself with people who are now working in various career positions. They will not
tell you what you should do, but they can help—especially in eliminating possibili-
ties you are less interested in or less able to do well in.One of the first things you need to decide is whether you are basically “people-
oriented” or “thing-oriented.” This is a very important decision. A people-oriented
person might be very unhappy in an inventory management job, for example, while
a thing-oriented person might be miserable in a personal selling or retail manage-
ment job that involves a lot of customer contact.
Marketing has both people-oriented and thing-oriented jobs. People-oriented jobs
are primarily in the promotion area—where company representatives must make
contact with potential customers. This may be direct personal selling or customerConduct Your Own Personal Analysis
Set broad long-run
objectives
Evaluate personal
strengths and
weaknesses
Are you people-
oriented or
thing-oriented?