Marketmind Award for Tatiana

Hi, my name is Tatiana and I am fresh out of MSc Marketing program. What can I say about the program? – a lot, but I have to keep it short, so: the most vivid experience was my writing master thesis. It is the biggest, the most difficult, and also the last project that I had to do. The first step, quite logical, is to choose a topic. The trick is not just to pick a theme and go on with it, it’s to come up with something new, that no one has done before, and, believe me, it sometimes seems like everything has already been done. Another challenge is to choose a topic that is exciting: I knew that once I’ve decided, the topic will be haunting me for quite some time. Simply speaking, I knew that at some point I will hate my thesis so I needed to make sure I loved it more.

When I started the search for the topic all I knew is that I want to study food. It is a safe call after all. We all love food and we all eat it. At the same time there is so much about it, all the social aspects of self expression, food culture notions, all these traditions of eating together to celebrate and the basic need for food that we all have. I was sure there must be something to pick up, and I was sure it will be interesting; I just did not know what.

Luckily, the institute of Marketing Management was at the beginning of researching the topic of insects as food and I had a chance to join the research and I did. Yes, insects as food, that is quite unusual. I must say it puzzled me and brought some mixed feelings at first. This topic is a cultural clash for many, unless you are from Thailand or something like that. But, to be honest, Austria is my first real “living abroad” experience so by the time I got to master thesis, cultural clashes became my specialty. That is why I took up this challenge and tried to figure out how to get through this cultural clash, through disgust, and to persuade western people to eat insects. And I managed it. It turns out insect on your plate is not always an unpleasant surprise, it can be a conscious choice, you just have to have the right insect and a good reason to eat it. You’d be surprised, but there are countless reasons to eat bugs, for starters: they are tasty, if you don’t believe me, just try it.

This journey was not easy, but it was fruitful and exciting. During the work on the thesis you finally manage to put all that you have learned in different subjects together and at the same time learn more, further, to make the big picture out of the puzzle pieces. You also get a little crazy and only people who are in the same situation can really understand you while others start suspecting that you are a bit of a lunatic. All in all, if you put enough effort into it, and with the help of your supervisors and friends you’ll arrive at something really rewarding. And I don’t mean the winning of the Best Thesis Award, which I did win and, I’ll be honest, it was really cool and I’m very proud and extremely happy about it. But what I mean is that you’ll have your own project done, belonging only to you and you can be proud of it, because you made it yourself.

About the marketmind Best Thesis Award

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