Majors

Many students study business because they are interested in becoming an entrepreneur. CPP has a long history of supporting student entrepreneurship, including this emphasis track which allows students to apply their International Business major to the entrepreneurial context. A minor in Entrepreneurship & Small Business can also satisfy this track requirement.

The Customer Insights and Analytics track provides specialization in marketing research, data science, and consulting. The curriculum provides students with the much-coveted skills of understanding, executing and explaining advanced quantitative analytics techniques. Students are trained in both quantitative tools such as R and SPSS, as well as qualitative research. Signature experiences include a year-long research consulting class where students create and execute a full marketing research project for a real client. Classes are challenging but rewarding, preparing students to be comfortable collecting, analyzing, and applying data to managerial decisions.

The Digital Marketing track is designed to provide students with a comprehensive examination of tools and strategies utilized across established and emerging digital platforms. Through the study of social media, mobile marketing, display, online analytics, and search engine marketing, students develop a thorough understanding on how companies can leverage the constantly changing digital landscape to communicate with target market and achieve business objectives.

This emphasis examines the marketing concept in all venues where consumers spend leisure dollars, notably in such areas as motion pictures, television and radio, music, sports, special events and destinations, travel and tourism. Duly recognized is the fact that the combined consumer expenditures within this exploding industry exceed $1 trillion. The principal focal point of this track acknowledges that this metropolitan area is the entertainment capital of the world and headquarters to the majority of major motion picture companies, record labels, domestic television studios, major theme parks and other related centers. Students are expected to work with actual managers within these venues toward real world projects in the true spirit of the polytechnic tradition as part of their degree requirements, in addition to internship service within one of these industries.

The mission of the General Marketing Emphasis is to focus on breadth across many marketing areas rather than depth within any one area. General Marketing will have strong appeal for students who have an interest in multiple careers and want exposure to a wide variety of marketing areas to satisfy their career goals, or who may want to own their business. Finally, the General Marketing Emphasis may be appropriate for some students who know only that they like marketing and want a marketing career but are unable to choose between the other career tracks. This track is not “take whatever marketing courses you want,” but instead is “take the introductory course from multiple career tracks.”

Careers in promotions and advertising involve variety, compensation based on performance, creativity, travel, satisfaction from seeing one’s personal accomplishments, and much personal contact. The advertising/promotion/media career track helps prepare students for work as copywriters, research directors, media directors, account executives, media sales representatives and advertising managers. Advertising jobs are found in advertising agencies, media organizations, advertising departments in business firms, nonprofit organizations and marketing research firms, and frequently interface with related careers in promotions, public relations, direct marketing and sales.  These jobs encompass activities such as writing advertisements; scheduling, buying, and selling advertising time and space; managing clients’ accounts by advertising agencies; conducting research; hiring commercial talent; managing a company’s advertising program; doing photographic and artistic work for advertisements; publishing and broadcasting advertisements; and producing video, film and print advertisements.

The Professional Selling career track examines the marketing concept of consultative selling from a business-to-business (B2B) perspective. As an element of the promotional mix, B2B selling is where many companies invest the bulk of their marketing dollars. As a result, this offers opportunities for lucrative professional selling careers. The successful implementation of sales strategies allow firms to create a venue where customer feedback is immediate and often actionable for the selling firm to generate revenue and/or build key partnerships. Cal Poly Pomona faculty members not only provide highly interactive instruction in these classes, but they also have extensive industry experience in B2B sales to incorporate the same standard sales training models and best practices currently utilized by the Fortune 500. There is an additional emphasis on honing soft skills (e.g., rapport building, body language, presenting, customer relationship building) to better prepare students for a successful career in professional selling. Students will be exposed to frequent guest speakers from notable worldwide firms, who actively recruit for open internships and full-time job opportunities upon graduation.