MKTG 567 Marketing Internship
College of Business, San Francisco State University
Fall 2008
Instructor: Sanjit Sengupta
Office: 835 Market Street #572 (SFSU Downtown Campus)
Office hours: Mon Thu 4 – 6 or by appointment
Mandatory Class Meeting: Wed August 27, 6:30 – 7:30 PM in BUS 202.
Telephone: 415 817-4366
Email:
Instructor web page:
Course Web Page:
COURSE OBJECTIVES
This undergraduate course has three learning objectives for students: (1) to provide a hands-on opportunity to learn how marketing is practiced in a real business, (2) to apply theories, frameworks and principles to the analysis of marketing problems, and (3) to improve business writing skills. After completing the course a student should have a better idea of the kind of job, company or industry they are interested in working for.
COURSE PREREQUISITES
MKTG 431, appropriate employment, instructor approval. The MKTG 431 pre-requisite cannot be waived because we must ensure you have the basic knowledge to do well in your marketing internship.
INTERNSHIP REQUIREMENTS
The student is responsible for finding a marketing position with a professional organization reporting to an executive willing to support student learning. Family members and close friends are not eligible to be internship supervisors. Your work duties and your supervisor must be located in the San Francisco Bay Area. A minimum of 10 hours/week of employment is required for a minimum of 10 weeks. You can do more hours at your option. You can do less than 10 in some weeks, but it must average out to 10 hours/week. The internship may be paid or unpaid. Day-to-day work must involve marketing tasks that contribute to your knowledge about products and services, pricing, advertising and promotion, distribution, marketing research or planning. The day-to-day work must be done during the current semester. No retroactive credit can be given for work done in the past because the internship has to be approved and monitored by the instructor.
In addition to day-to-day tasks, with the consent of the work supervisor, the student must pick a specific, solvable, marketing problem the organization is faced with, analyze and research the problem and recommend solutions to the problem. Problems are often diagnosed by looking at performance of organizations or products / services in the marketplace and looking for underlying causes. In the past students have worked on problems such as how to improve awareness, client relationships, customer service, web sites, or implementing and testing some new marketing process, among others. If your internship is with a consulting or marketing services organization, you may take on a marketing problem faced by one of their clients.
By the end of the course, each student must write and submit a 5-page single-spaced, 12-point font paper on their research problem. Research for the paper may include secondary data sources such as web sites and trade publications as well as primary data from employees, customers, competitors, distributors etc. All sources of data must be cited in footnotes.
HOW TO GET AN INTERNSHIP?
There are many sources of marketing internship listings:
- College of Business Internships web site.
- SFSU Career Center web site.
- Binders in Career Resources Room, BUS 137 and Career Center, Student Services Building 206.
In addition don’t hesitate to use other web sites or personal networks to obtain a marketing internship or cold call on an organization that is of interest to you.
You have to make contact with the organization, submit a resume, interview with them, and show them this course syllabus. If they agree to take you on as an intern, have your supervisor fill out the Internship Contract available on and email it to me. If you (or your prospective employer) have questions about whether the internship meets the guidelines in this syllabus, feel free to contact me (or have your prospective employer contact me) by email or phone. The deadline for your supervisor to email the Internship Contract to me is September 16, 2008. If I do not receive your contract by this date, you will be dropped from the course. If you are looking to add this course have your supervisor email me the internship contract by the deadline. Then send me a follow-up email requesting permission to add the course. The last day to add the course on the web with a permit number is September 23.
COURSE GRADING
You will be graded on the following assignments:
- Participate in four online discussion forums in iLearn according to guidelines provided there. These are due September 26, October 17, November 21 and December 12 and will constitute 20% of your course grade. You need to post two messages for each forum assignment. The first message should be an original one addressing the posted topic and will receive 1 point. An additional point will be awarded for responding to the post of a classmate.
- Mid-term outline of your final paper. Prepare an outline of the final paper that you will write for this course. The outline should be one page, single-spaced, 12-point font in Microsoft Word with three sections: Problem Definition, Sources of Data, Benefit to Organization. Clearly state the marketing problem that you wish to investigate, how you will go about analyzing the problem, what sources of data you will need, and how the results of your paper will benefit the internship organization. Avoid cryptic bullet points, use complete sentences and paragraphs in your outline. Sources of data can include internal company data, interviews with management personnel, competitor analysis, customer focus groups, surveys or interviews, physical observation among others. If you need help in formulating ideas for the paper, visit or call me during office hours. Submit the outline electronically in iLearn by October 31. Name your file, “Lastname_Firstname_SFSUID.doc”. The outline will constitute 20% of your course grade. You will receive instructor feedback on your outline to see if you are on the right track for your final paper. If you are taking MKTG 567 a second time, you should let me know this and tell me how this paper is going to be different from the earlier one you submitted. Attach a copy of the first MKTG 567 final paper that you submitted earlier. Remember, the second paper must be completely different from the first paper in order to receive course credit even if they are based on internships with the same organization. If you have multiple files you need to create one zip file not exceeding 20 megabytes for submission in iLearn. If you get less than the class average on the mid-term outline (cick on Stats in the Grades section of iLearn), you should consult with the instructor during office hours to get advice on how to improve.
- Final paper will receive 40% of the course grade. This will be 5 pages, single spaced, 12-point text with four sections: Company background (history, products / services, performance), Problem Definition, Data Sources and Analysis, and Recommended Solution. Pictures, charts or appendices should be referenced in the text but added at the end of the 5-page paper, or in separate files. The problem definition, data sources and analysis should be based on your outline after incorporating instructor feedback. Recommended solutions should flow from your analysis but it would be helpful to get feedback on feasibility from management before submitting your paper, All sources of research including books, periodicals, web sites, interviews and other primary research must be referenced in the text with superscripts and detailed in footnotes. Deadline for turning in the final paper electronically in iLearn is December 15, 2008. Name your file, “Lastname_Firstname_SFSUID.doc”. If you have multiple files you need to create one zip file not exceeding 20 megabytes for submission in iLearn.
- Have your supervisor complete the Report of Completion form available on and email it to me by December 15, 2008. Your supervisor will evaluate your performance during the internship, which will count towards 20% of your final course grade.
- Extra Credit Class Meetings. Based on student feedback, it appears that some students prefer offline class meetings and direct interaction with the instructor in addition to the ILearn course platform. With this in mind I have arranged for two additional class meetings during the Fall semester. These will all be on Wednesdays 6:15 – 7:30 PM in BUS 202 on October 29 and November 19. Students can get an extra credit of 2.5% for attending each of these meetings to discuss issues and problems pertaining to the internship.
COURSE POLICIES
Students must enroll in the course by September 23, 2008. Under no circumstances will you be permitted to add later than this date.
University policy is that withdrawals are permitted only for serious and compelling reasons. In addition, College of Business policy prohibits students from withdrawing from the same course more than once for any reason.
If, for any reason, you are unable to complete the internship, please inform me immediately. With prior consent, you may get an incomplete grade for this course provided you have participated substantially up to that point. You then have one year during which you can complete the internship again at the same or a different organization to receive credit. If neglected, after one year, an incomplete grade defaults to an F grade.
Late submissions will be penalized with a full letter grade lower than the paper merits.
Academic dishonesty is taken very seriously by your instructor. In such cases, I willrecommend expulsion from the university to the student discipline officer.
Students with disabilities who need reasonable accommodations are encouraged to contact the instructor. The Disability Programs and Resource Center is available to facilitate the reasonable accommodations process.
I will be using iLearn to send you important emails during the course. iLearn only sends email to your official sfsu.edu email account. If you would like to receive emails at a non-SFSU email account, please fill out a form to have e-mail forwarded from your SFSU account to another account.
At any time if you need help with any aspect of your internship, or if you are having difficulty defining a problem or researching it for your paper, or need specific feedback feel free to call or visit me during office hours.
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