Five days to learn marketing through real-world experience, work alongside international teams and discover the local culture
Universidad Europea de Valencia has hosted the 15th edition of International Marketing Week (IMW), an annual initiative that brings together marketing students from 12 European universities to spend five days immersed in a practical, multicultural project. This year, the event took place at the Chozas Carrascal Winery, a setting that helped to create an immersive experience on both a professional and personal level.
The IMW was established twenty years ago with the aim of enabling students to learn marketing through practical experience, working in the same way they would in an international company. In this edition, 50 students from universities in countries such as Ireland, Belgium, Finland, Germany, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Austria, Latvia, the United Kingdom and Spain formed multicultural teams to gain first-hand insight into the host company, understand its objectives and draw up a proposal for an Internationalisation Plan.
The initiative is based on a challenge-based learning methodology, which encourages students to research, debate, make decisions and seek real solutions to a real-life case study.
The project culminated in the presentation of proposals to an academic and professional jury, which named the winning team as the group comprising Luis Fradejas and Nina Slivchková, students at Universidad Europea de Valencia, alongside Marion De Wouters de Bouchout (EPHEC Brussels), Leah O’Shea (MTU Ireland), Lucas Dusault (HAN Netherlands) and Eline Verbiest (UCLL Leuven). Their proposal was commended for its strategic soundness, clarity of approach and ability to connect with the company’s real needs.
Beyond the academic programme, International Marketing Week is also an opportunity to build a sense of community. Students live together, share customs, compare working styles and discover the local culture, turning the week into a sort of ‘mini-Erasmus’ that combines learning, socialising and making new friends.
The event was organised by lecturers Javier Muñoz de Prat and Victoria Martín Laguarda from the Department of Business at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Universidad Europea de Valencia, who highlight every year the importance of this type of initiative in developing key skills for an increasingly globalised market: teamwork, intercultural communication, critical thinking and the ability to deal with real-life professional situations.
With over seven hundred students taking part each year across Europe, International Marketing Week continues to establish itself as a transformative experience that combines training, internationalisation and social interaction.