Azerbaijani students study marketing and global supply chain management at MSM

From 19 February – 2 March 2018 the Executive MBA students of MSM’s partner ADA University visited Maastricht for their European study attachment. During their two week stay the group attended classes in Marketing in a Global Context and Global Supply Chain Management.

The ADA students started their two week residency with the course Marketing in a Global Context, lectured by Mr. Oliver Olson, Senior Lecturer of Marketing and Strategy. One of the first take-aways from this course was that marketing does not equal advertising.  Marketing is a much more significant part of a firm’s success. It is all the parts of the business that implement the firm’s strategy, not only promotion.  Advertising is one part of the marketing mix, which is the end of the marketing process.  The group then explored the world to find new markets, since a growing firm will almost always have new potential customers in new markets. Throughout all of this course, as well as the course of Ed Weenk, the underlying theme was defining and delivering value to customers.

In the Global Supply Chain Management Course, students learned about the basic concepts such as transportation, warehousing, outsourcing and production in the context of an ever changing world, lectured by Mr. Ed Weenk, Senior Lecturer Supply Chain. In the first two days the fundamentals were mainly addressed in cases and discussions, and in the second half of the course the students were being put in the driving seat of a virtual company, making the relevant decisions themselves via a business simulation game called The Fresh Connection. This is where one of the main motto’s of the course became a tangible reality: “simple but not easy”.
The students returned to Azerbaijan to work on their final project, which is a combined project for the Marketing and Supply Chain Management course.

The students also visited Nike in Ham, Belgium. During the company visit the students received a presentation on Global Supply Chain Management and a tour of the building. The Nike building in Ham, Belgium is the biggest distribution center in Europe and the largest in the world for the American sportswear distributor.

The company visit to Nike gave the students an excellent real-life experience in Global Supply Chain Management practice. During the tour the students received more information on the process of Supply Chain Management and they got a chance to see how the products of Nike are stored, labeled and sent to their final destination.