Anja Janoschka
Seraina Mohr

Cooperation with university staff

The cooperation with the lecturers was very pleasant and collegial not only during our stay but also before and even afterwards. This helped us in preparing lecture material quite easily, which went along with the well-organized and prepared modules at NUST. We appreciated the trust our NUST colleagues showed by involving us beforehand in the evaluation of a newly developed NUST curriculum for a Master in Marketing. The fact that we share the same profession, being lecturers, both eased and enriched our exchange and discussions. We quickly discovered common topics and even discussed how we can collaborate in future research projects.  

Apart from the lecturing staff, we also had a stimulating exchange with the Marketing Department. This happened rather spontaneously. There was a lively exchange about possibilities, trends and challenges of the marketing and communication departments of universities. Another highlight was the public speech in sports marketing about community-oriented sponsorships, which brought an interested audience from far beyond the university's borders into the auditorium, showing how big the interest in professional sports marketing actually is.

Cooperation with students

Most of the students took an active role in the lessons, asked a lot of questions and showed a great interest not only in everyday life, the political system and economic environment in Switzerland, but also in the technological developments in marketing. They were inspired by examples of chatbots and artificial intelligence in service marketing and sports marketing. They developed creative ideas and presented them with great enthusiasm when developing local service ideas and positionings of sport brands. Their curiosity and their numerous questions were gratifying and once again enabled us to take a critical look at our own everyday existence. The most important differences we detected were related to the difficult living conditions and poor job perspectives. The high unemployment rate is a permanent topic and bothers students a lot. The biggest difference was the very short teaching units, which make longer group work difficult to integrate. The tight timetable also leaves little room for a more intensive exchange.

Impact and win-win 

It was our first assignment for B360 and the exchange was a wonderful experience: the encounter with colleagues from another university, the exchange with the students, the great interest in cooperation from all sides and also the many similarities despite very different conditions. We were able to give the students an insight into topics that have been in use in Europe for some time, such as the high proportion of self-service services and the importance of platforms in service marketing, sponsoring as well as topics in International Marketing. The discussions about Brexit as well as trade agreements between the US and China in international marketing, the importance of partnership relations in sponsoring, sports brand positioning and the benefit of public relations in sports marketing or the use of influencer marketing in digital marketing were topics that we taught and discussed.

Personal message

Due to the sound curricula and also the competent lecturers on site, we were not sure whether our inputs really added value. However, the gratitude of the students, of which only a few can do a semester abroad, the many questions and extensive feedback clearly showed that they appreciated having new people on site who could provide different perspectives and also offer a new view to their reality. This new perspective was also inspiring for us. The astonishment about everyday issues, the interest in technical developments and the curiosity students showed were inspiring, such as the interest of students for an exchange semester in Switzerland. In addition to our colleagues in Switzerland providing us with additional teaching material, they were interested in our stay abroad and substituted for us during our absence in Lucerne. Thank you so much. This was great.