International Marketing and Management postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

The returns form I was asked to translate into Portuguese last spring had a box headed 'Reason for dissatisfaction'. The literal translation was accurate, but a colleague from Porto told me it sounded like an accusation. We changed it to something closer to 'What could we have done better?', and over the following weeks the Portuguese-language forms came back with fuller, calmer explanations. It was a small change, made in a customer service office rather than a boardroom, but it captured what I want to study: how organisations speak to customers in markets they do not fully understand, and how management decisions shape whether that communication works.

I graduated last year with a 2:1 in Modern Languages, studying Spanish and Portuguese. My year abroad in Seville, where I worked part-time in a language school's front office, first made me notice how differently familiar brands presented themselves to Spanish shoppers. For my dissertation I compared the own-label packaging of two supermarket chains operating in both Spain and Portugal. I photographed around sixty products in stores and on retailers' websites, then coded claims about origin, price and health. One chain used almost identical designs in both countries and changed only the language. The other emphasised local sourcing far more heavily on its Portuguese packaging. I could describe these patterns confidently, but I could not explain the commercial reasoning behind them. My supervisor pointed out that my analysis was strongest on language and weakest on strategy. That gap is the main reason I am applying for a postgraduate course combining marketing and management rather than continuing in languages alone.

To prepare, I have read Geert Hofstede's work on cultural dimensions. I found it a useful starting point, but I was uneasy about treating whole nations as single profiles when my own dissertation showed two neighbouring countries handled by the same company in quite different ways. I have also worked through introductory material on the marketing mix and on the debate between standardising and adapting products across markets. That debate gave me a vocabulary for what I had observed on supermarket shelves. I would like to test these frameworks against real cases with proper training in research methods, particularly quantitative analysis, where my experience is limited to basic spreadsheet work.

My current job at a parcel courier's customer service centre has taught me more about management than I expected. I handle queries in English, Spanish and Portuguese, and I now keep a shared log of recurring complaints from international senders. Most concern customs paperwork that customers do not understand. My team leader used the log to argue for clearer guidance on the website, and I helped draft the Spanish version. Seeing a minor operational problem turn into lost goodwill, and then into a proposal that required budget approval, showed me how marketing, operations and management depend on each other.

Outside work, I coach a junior badminton session on Thursday evenings at my local leisure centre. It has nothing to do with marketing, though it has made me better at explaining things simply and at planning around twelve children with very different levels of patience. I also keep up my languages by reading Portuguese news sites, which sometimes turns into an informal study of how the same international story is framed for different readers.

I am applying because I want to understand the decisions behind the communication I already work with every day. I bring practical multilingual experience, a dissertation that taught me to gather and organise evidence carefully, and a clear sense of what I still need to learn. In the longer term I hope to work in international brand or market entry roles, where knowing how something sounds in another country is treated as part of the strategy rather than an afterthought.