Sales and Marketing

Introduction | Sweet - The Pros | N' Sour - The Cons |  
Employment Tips | Corporate Recruiters

Introduction

The consumer products, are the things the consumer uses regularly in daily life. A rough rule of thumb to determine the identity of these animals is to ask oneself whether they're used at least once daily.
Of course, this rule needs to be used with caution with some products - sanitary napkins would obviously not fit the bill. Traditionally, most marketing hotshots on campus yearn for a life peddling consumer goods - later on, we hope to explain exactly why this could be so.

Important Jobs in FMCG

Most of the jobs described below require an Undergraduate degree or an MBA. Senior management positions in various departments like marketing, finance, operations tend to be filled by senior executives within the company or sometimes from within the Industry.

Marketing Analyst

Some of the work here is administrative but you are welcome to drop in an honest idea. There is a lot of pondering over the sales figures and a lot of analysis goes into the figures, expenses, ratings, ORG Marg's data. Compensation varies depending widely on where you went to Business School and previous experience if any.

Product or Brand Manager

You rule the turf and you can't let the team down. You pull out fantastic strategies out of your magic hat so that competition takes a beating and you win thumps up. You create catchy names, try 4 Ps, along with its distant relative - 5th Project i.e. packaging. You try to get maximum, prominent shelf space. You try to make the product irresistible so that it should disappear from the shelf by popular demand as soon as it appears. You are an MBA or you have worked your way up - the hard way. You are really in demand with placement agents.

Market Researcher

If you have studied psychology in your graduation you are a dream for this job. Unfortunately for the FMCG industry potential recruits don't do the same mistake twice: those who do Psychology almost never do an MBA (at least we haven't come across any such person). You should be interested in psychology of customer behavior, read numerous courses/literature on customer behavior and should be good at getting the same information from the customers to know their needs and wants. Tools of the trade include questionnaires, focus group discussions(FGDs), Interviews, qualitative and quantitative surveys.

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Introduction | Sweet - The Pros | N' Sour - The Cons |  
Employment Tips | Corporate Recruiters