French Touch Tour
The Master of Science International Business includes the "French Touch Tour" in its curriculum each year, an experiential module to discover the French heritage (visits to wine estates, monuments, cities, etc.). It includes visits to exporting companies, conferences led by international trade professionals, academic challenges integrated into the curriculum, etc. One of the key components of the 'French Touch Tour' is the Export Market Survey: an export market study on behalf of a regional SME representative of "made in France" that wishes to develop its sales abroad.
A learning-by-doing module
For this three-month project, the students work in groups, collect data and formulate operational recommendations to the managers of these SMEs. This year, for the 11th edition, 16 companies on our Bordeaux campus and 8 companies on our Marseille campus are taking part. Our international and French students help them to analyse the following markets: Germany, Denmark, Austria, China, Spain, Taiwan, California, Sweden and Switzerland.
The objective is to help them penetrate a foreign market while promoting their French "know-how". In groups of 4 to 6, the students work specifically with a local company on its export project. Throughout this module, they are supervised by CCEs (French Foreign Trade Advisors), company managers and permanent KEDGE professors. On 19 April in Marseille and on 3 and 4 May in Bordeaux, the students will present their final market study to a jury of professionals and KEDGE professors.
During this experience, I worked with a company that wants to set up in Côte d'Ivoire, a country that is of great interest to me as I am currently doing business in this country. With my group, we were confronted with the difficulties of the West African market, notably the lack of data, which taught us to know how to retrieve useful data by other means than databases. This experience led me to go further in my research on the Ivorian market, to master the distribution channels, to have a better analysis of the needs of the population, to know the offers of the communication agencies etc. I think "learn by doing" perfectly describes the programme teaching mode, especially for modules such as this one.
This module illustrates the experiential pedagogy of the MSc International Business, which combines solid academic teaching with an immersive experience. The programme thus allows students to be constantly confronted with the current challenges of international trade while giving them access to a vast network of partner companies.
Discover the MSc International Business
