People often forget that I am in France for school, and not just a month-long holiday. With school comes, homework and assignments.
You may be wondering what it’s like studying in a different country, especially one one which over 98% of the students are international exchange students. And even more specifically one that is only just 4 weeks.
As you know, I am taking 2 courses.
International Luxury Brand Marketing
My teacher has set up 5 visits for us:
- Luxury Quiz (I mentioned in a precious post)
- Printemps (Department Store)
- Galeries Lafayette (Millennial Concept Store) + Mystery Shopping (Hermés)
- Fragonard Perfume Museum + Mystery Shopping (Masion Margiela)
- Yves Saint Laurent Museum
So far, my team has been working on our Luxury Brand Project for Hermés. We did intense amount of research about the History + Heritage, Brand Identity + DNA, Marketing Mix, SWOT Analysis, etc which lead up to a 10 minute presentation. This was the main project for this class. Other groups has Louis Vuitton, Dior and Christian Louboutin We only have a few classes left and will be doing smaller assignments regarding retail.
This course has been so much fun. It taught us a lot about the luxury industry and how different and unique it is from any other industry. These visits are so awesome because we get to take the classroom outside and see it first hand.
For example, we read about Hermés, it’s values and brand identity, but it wasn’t until I walked into the store and got to see the products first hand and experience customer service was when I really understood what I read.
For our perfume unit, my group was assigned the Replica perfume by Maison Margiela and had to create a new fragrance for millennials, in which we had to include describing the base, middle, and top notes, the 4 P’s, product, price, promotion, and place.
International Business Management
So, this is where it gets weird. We have 2 classes for this topic, with 2 totally different teachers.
The first we are focusing on a start up where we evaluate the target market, the risk, as well as other factors we may need to consider.
My group is working to start a Currency Exchange Machine that will have 4 different currencies. For example, if you arrive at the airport late and the currency exchange counter is closed, you can insert your USD and get Euros. They currently have Multi-Currency ATMs but they require a debit card and doesn’t not allow you to exchange cash for cash. Same goes for when leaving and returning home, you can exchange your unused currency for cash if your home country. We are looking to start this company in Hong Kong and expand to the USA and France.
This week, we had a guest speaker who is a 25-year old French Entrepreneur, who shares with us his story and gave us tips on what it takes to get your start up off the ground. We dove into unicorns, start ups that have made $1B+ and discussed different types of funding and incubators. He, then, took us to visit his office at Le Tremplin, which is an incubator for the sports industry.
For the second, International Business class, we’ve only had twice so far so I’m not exactly sure what we’re focusing on, but I do know that we have 6 page dossier due on July 9th followed by an oral presentation. We aren’t having this class again until July 4th so it’ll be crunch time. My group mates and I decided to research Uber in China and explore why Uber decided to enter the Chinese market, the risks it faced and why it decided to leave.
We will also be visiting the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Again, not too sure what we’ll be learning there but our teacher makes it sound like a big deal, lol.
https://titatakesoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/uber-in-china.pptx
So far, the classes have been great. It’s a lot of group work (which I usually hate) but for the most part my teammates have been really good. Always great discussions and I’m learning a lot. We do a lot of activities that makes it fun. I’m not looking forward to the essay but other than that I’ve really been enjoying my courses.