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Inside the MBA: Deconstructing the MBA brand

Published: 10 September 2011

Now that you spent months arguing over the benefits of doing an MBA with your parents, colleagues, and partners, you should ask yourself if you really came up with your reasoning, or was it planted in your brain?

Nobody can dispute that business schools have done a stellar job of building the MBA brand to the point that almost everyone knows what it is, and most people agree on the major attributes. In other words, if you were to ask a group of people what comes to their minds at the thought of "MBA," their responses are likely to converge to money, ambition, young, competitive, corporate.ÌýThe goal of every marketer is to influence a consumer into subconsciously connecting a brand to a string of desired attributes. Ideally, a consumer will buy the product and find that it fulfills his/her expectations. If it all works together, the brand is reinforced.

One successful example is MD degree. There is no other educational product that so reliably leads to a result which closely matches consumer's expectations. You will be hard pressed to find a doctor who is unemployed or underpaid. Or single, let's face it. Students know how demanding the program is, but the certainty of rewards and clarity of compromises make it an easy sell. MBA schools would like you to think the same way. That grinning young VP you see on your school's website would agree - what could possibly go wrong?

There are two problems with this...

-Article by Vladimir Miladinovic, MBA'11Ìý

Read full article: , September 10, 2011

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