In 2007, Dr. Valérie Philippon set up Master's degree program in Health Food Marketing at the ESC Dijon Bourgogne group. Today the twelve students of the first Master class are attending their six-month internship, slated to end this fall. This is an opportunity to report on the program in an interview with Kisy Adjoua, a graduate engineer in the Science and Technology of Food Industries from Polytech'Montpellier. "This one-of-a-kind course has opened my mind, in the field of marketing," summed up the young woman who is currently a consultant intern at Alcimed, a fast-growing advisory consulting firm. Interview by Jean-François Desessard.
BE France - How did you find out about the Health Food Marketing Master's?
Kisy Adjoua - By thumbing through a magazine for undergrads and post-grads, I saw an article about all the postgraduate courses. As I compared the Health Food Marketing Master's with other master degrees in the field, many of which focus on 'marketing and food-processing technologies' or on 'marketing and international trade', I realized that this master's had an original outlook and fully met what I was looking for, i.e., twofold qualification in nutrition and in marketing. In the course, marketing is taught with a strong focus on nutritional science. All the connections between the two fields are examined. Not to mention, of course, all the minors such as finance or accounting which are essential for interacting in the corporate world and exchanging with the different stakeholders in the food-processing industry.
BE France - The Master classes began on October 8, 2007 and ended on April 1, 2008. What are the strong points of the program?
Kisy Adjoua - What appealed to me most was the quality of the lecturers. At Polytech'Montpellier, part of the courses are given by academics. For the Health Food Marketing Master's, industry and advisory consulting stakeholders and people in the business shared their experience and talked with us. It is critical for a young engineer to meet professionals with tried-and-true field experience and to acquire a very concrete outlook on their job. This was sadly lacking in my training as an engineer when I only discovered the corporate world during my internships. Another asset of the Health Food Marketing master program is the small size of the class, meaning we enjoy outstanding guidance and supervision. All these different ingredients make up the original recipe of the Health Food Marketing Master's that opened my mind, in the field of marketing.
BE France - Last May 5, you started a six-month internship at Alcimed,a booming advisory consulting firm. What do you do there exactly?
Kisy Adjoua - At the outset, the Alcimed management told me that, although it was an internship, they still expected me to provide them with consultant's work. I mostly do a large amount of survey work because little data is available. You have to find the right contacts so that you can collect the information that will serve to build different feasible scenarios for a given project. The amazing diversity of the projects forestalls monotony. For a young and curious engineer, the field of advisory consulting is an excellent training ground. I'd like to add that having taken the Health Food Marketing course played an important part in Alcimed's decision to take me on as an intern with their team. The issues that this type of company is increasingly tackling prompt them to look for people with twofold qualifications, as what is provided with the Health Food Marketing Master's degree.
