The School of Foreign Studies at Aichi Prefectural University in the city of Nagakute invited Tatsuo Hirase, the head of the business promotion office at the Chubu branch of Mitsui & Co., to hold a special two-day marketing session in June.
This latest business-academia collaboration was organized as part of an effort to nurture students to be more global-minded. A total of 34 freshmen and sophomores took part, learning about real business cases handled by a trading company, such as coming up with marketing strategies for automobiles and smartphones.
"Imagine you're on the sales team at Toyota Motor Corp. and you're trying to sell Lexus cars in Thailand. How would you market the product?" Hirase asked the class on the first day.