Marketing Manager
Main Topic: Human Geography
Secondary Topic: Environment and Society
Overview: Marketing managers estimate the demand for products and services that an organization and its competitors offer. They identify potential markets for the organization’s products.
Marketing managers also develop pricing strategies to help organizations maximize their profits and market share while ensuring that the organizations’ customers are satisfied. They work with sales, public relations, and product development staff.
For example, a marketing manager may monitor trends that indicate the need for a new product or service. Then he or she may assist in the development of that product or service and to create a marketing plan for it.
Geography skills and awareness are crucial for marketing managers. Large components of their job are understanding consumer behavior and trends, customer needs and satisfaction, and predicting future product placement or change, all of which are tied very closely with, and change with, location. The successful marketing manager understands their markets, and they need to be culturally, socially, and economically sensitive to how those markets can change dramatically with location.
Geographers at work: Business geographer, industrial geographer, cultural geographer, economic geographer, environmental geographers, human geographers
Recommended College Courses: Business geography, urban geography, economic geography, cultural geography, industrial geography, human geography
Skills: Understanding of economics, finance, markets, human behavior, as well as how marketing is influenced by geography (people and places); computer and database systems; critical thinking; teamwork
Occupation Group: Management
Learn more about Marketing Managers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and U.S. Department of Labor: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/management/advertising-promotions-and-marketing-managers.htm#tab-2
Written by Christopher Anderson