On November 9th, 2023, students in Professor Mark Burgess’ course Market Assessment and Analysis for Business and Science were invited to step into the role of a marketing consultant for an internationally known furniture and home goods retailer: IKEA. Located in Elizabeth, New Jersey, just a few miles away from Newark Liberty International Airport, students joined Burgess to apply classroom learnings in a real-world environment. Online students visited their local IKEAS—some of whom were local to New Jersey and joined Burgess in Elizabeth!
This event also serves as an opportunity to connect with each other outside of the classroom over IKEA’s famous Swedish meatballs. After dinner, students were ready to go out into the field and gather information for their final projects.
That night, said Burgess, MBS students walked in the footsteps of classmates and alumni.
“I’m always glad to come here,” said Burgess. “Specifically, this is a really good example of experiential learning. [Students are] finding that there’s more to reading about a company in a book or on their website. It's an opportunity to experience the store, to see how it’s laid out, and how the merchandising is done. It all comes together and they see themselves in a role of marketing consultants going through the store and looking at it differently, therefore, than they would as a consumer.“
In groups, students walked through IKEA’s signature maze-like showroom, taking photos, examining furniture, and reading signage. They recognized marketing tactics that they had learned about in the classroom, such as the rooms with designated personas.
In Market Assessment and Analysis in Business and Science, students learn how to develop and implement actionable marketing strategies. They practice target market selection, use of marketing research, and brand-building strategies, all centered around the four P’s of marketing. This is a core MBS business course—and one that students rave about time and time again.
“[This course] is hands-on and practical,” said Daniel Carroll, a student concentrating in Cybersecurity. “It exposes you to a lot of different concepts in unique and directly applicable ways.”
Burgess also hosts a series of accomplished guest speakers in industry to share insight with students. This semester, speakers have worked at companies including Pfizer, Church & Dwight, and Sherlock Bioscience. From these guest speakers, said Carroll, students learn theoretical concepts as well as how these apply to real-world marketing examples.
“This also ties into this IKEA trip,” said Carroll, “where we get to see a lot of the concepts like personas actually used in marketing materials.”
“I’ve learned a lot about different aspects of marketing and the considerations you really need to put forth,” said Aj Rose, a first-semester MBS student with a concentration in Product Design. “I’ve realized there’s a lot of overlap between market assessment, product design, and other parts of the curriculum.”
The Professional Science Master’s program values experiential, job-based instruction. We’ve developed our robust internship and externship programs, and we encourage our students to take part in our on-site field trips—read more about the Fundamentals of Intellectual Property class trip to the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
“I love going in person to things and I’m a very big fan of IKEA,” said Rose. “It really is eye-opening, looking at it through a different lens rather than just a typical customer.”
“Actually getting to go somewhere and see something in three dimensions inherently conveys more than just reading a textbook,” said Carroll. “This largely speaks to one of the things I appreciate about the MBS program overall, which is connecting the theoretical to the practical and connecting the business side to the science side.”
Many thanks to IKEA Elizabeth for inviting us into your store and giving MBS students an experience to remember!
If you would like to read more about our trips to IKEA, check out our blog about the fall 2023 trip.