Home > Gazette > March 2007

International Trips, Part 2

Last month’s School of Business Gazette covered study tours through the Wisconsin MBA Global Business Program to Chile and to Dubai, UAE during the first and second weeks of January. 

Several Wisconsin MBA Career Specializations took international trips as well:

Grainger Center for Supply Chain Management: Ireland

To see first hand what The Economist termed “Ireland’s economic miracle…one of the most remarkable transformations of recent times,” several Grainger Center MBA students traveled to Dublin and Waterford, Ireland, over winter break to participate in the Center's first "global experience." The week included visits to and tours of IBM, Intel, FreeFlow, Genzyme and meetings with representatives of the Industrial Development Authority of Ireland and the National Institute of Transport and Logistics. Students learned about policies that have led Ireland to become a hub of outsourced and off-shored operations for many U.S.-based companies. The experience culminated with an exchange with faculty, staff  and students in the supply chain management master's program at University College of Dublin Smurfit School of Business—one of Ireland’s premier business schools.  The Grainger Center plans to incorporate a similar international experience into the extracurricular programming every other year.

A.C. Nielsen Center for Marketing Research: China

Seven students from the A.C. Nielsen Center for Marketing Research took a trip to China, visiting the cities of Shanghai and Beijing. The trip was a comprehensive mix of business visits and cultural immersion activities. The goal was to understand how marketing research supports or works within international firms, how marketing research fits with other functional areas of Chinese companies  and how these approaches might differ from the U.S. Students also took a day trip to ZhouZhuang, a famous water city about an hour outside Shanghai. Cultural visits in Beijing included a trip to the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, and the Forbidden city. Students also had an opportunity to see China’s local markets and participate in an urban safari on how the new rich in China buy and consume luxury goods.

Company visits included Best Buy, McDonalds, P&G, J.D. Power and Associates, High Team promotions agency, the 2008 Beijing Olympic Committee  and a local real estate development firm.

The Center for Brand and Product Management: China              

The Center for Brand and Product Management took a 12-day trip to China to visit cultural sites and companies in the cities of Shanghai, Suzhou and Beijing. The trip to China was developed as a collaborative effort between the Center’s board companies and students in recognition of the importance of China as an emerging market and a critical link in global supply chains. Additionally, as markets globalize, companies want their MBA hires to arrive with more significant international experience than in the past and the China trip provided allowed students to combine business education with global knowledge.

Company visits included Johnson & Johnson, Abbot, Freshfield’s law firm, Proctor & Gamble, SCJohnson, Grainger and Lowe Worldwide. Each company hosted the students for a two- to three-hour presentation about a recent business case or consumer issue which was followed by an open Q&A session. Factory tours were also provided at Johnson & Johnson and SCJohnson. The visits gave unique insight into intellectual property, Chinese consumers, and Asian business operations and an opportunity to contrast old versus new China to gain an understanding for the cultural dynamics of doing business in this country.  The trip will likely become a biannual event for the Center for Brand and Product Management.