Studying Business, Management and Commerce

Studying Business, Management and Commerce

CV, resumes and cover letters… a much valuable and valued written message, especially for business students. Indeed, business, management and commerce students are among those who benefit mostly from introductory courses, since those are the classes and lectures which teach future managers to write CVs, resumes and cover letters. In contract, introductory courses in such as area as psychology, represents perception and introduction to behavioural neuroscience, which hardly prepares one for the job market, at least from the CV writing perspective.

So what do business students study in introductory courses aside from guidelines on how to write a proper cover letter and how to answer interview questions? Of course, the answers go beyond the scope of the present paper, but introductory courses in a typical bachelor of commerce program include Introduction to Marketing, Business Communication and Introduction to Business Statistics, among other things.

Studuying Business, Management and Commerce.  Photo by Elena

Introduction to Marketing covers such as basic concepts as the Marketing Mix or product, price, place and promotion; referring to the fact that in order to be valuable to consumers a product or service must first be invented (research and development), then patented and produced (hence microeconomics and costs of production), then its existence and availability has to be broadcasted to the target audience (potential consumer base) and, finally, the product or service must be sold. Adequate pricing corresponds to adequate demand, an economics concept.

Thus, economics, and supply and demand represent the buyers and consumers’ preferences for a given product or service. Firms stay in business to make money and, consequently, adjust production accordingly. Also, any business, no matter how great the business idea, requires a healthy cash flow to succeed. Indeed, all business operations involve expenses, such as advertisement, administrative and selling expenses, and factory overhead in manufacturing firms. Hence, microeconomics studies the behaviour of individual firms, such as fixed and variable costs of production. Alternatively, macroeconomics focuses on behaviour of large economic entities, such as nations (GDP), central banks and large, multinational corporations.