Interview with Dr. Marye Tharp, visiting professor for the Specialization Diploma in Marketing Management, who taught the course “Understanding the Consumer.”
-Why is a Certificate of Specialization in Marketing Management important?
-In the past, the world of marketing wasn't complicated. There were three TV channels, a few magazines, and newspapers, but today there's an explosion of media through which we can communicate with consumers. That's why it's now much more important to understand who we want to reach, who our market and consumers are, because their habits, sources of information, and responses to marketing techniques will vary.
-What challenges do students in the university's Specialization Diploma in Marketing Management program face?
-I think they’re very similar to the challenges faced anywhere else. Often, company executives don’t include marketing among their priorities and don’t want to allocate much of the budget to it, but marketing is the only business discipline that brings in money. Marketing is what encourages consumers to buy. However, most of the time, more attention is given to finance or administration.
-Do you think that one of the main challenges in marketing is adapting to new technologies?
-Yes, for several reasons. First, because there’s a technological revolution, but most people my age don’t know how these new media work, so executives aren’t part of their consumers’ world. So there’s a gap, which is why they have to learn how to use these media. That’s a problem.
Second, we're competing in a global market, which means there's much more competition. There are many options available, so it's even more important to be able to differentiate your products and services.
-You've said that marketing is both an art and a science. Why do you define it that way?
-For example, how can we understand consumers? We can do so by using or gathering data, which means applying scientific knowledge to help me choose the best marketing techniques.
But it also depends on the creativity of the marketing director—on how they use this information and what decisions they make. The most memorable advertising campaigns are memorable because of art, not science.