Prepare for a number of career paths that call on your analytical skills and creativity and are critical to business success.

A major in marketing offers many career opportunities. Here are some of the most popular options for students.

Professional sales representatives provide products and services to other businesses. These corporate representatives create value for their business customers by fulfilling needs and helping solve customer problems. In order to accomplish this, the sales representatives develop strong relationships with their customers that are built on trust, cooperation, commitment, and information.

This career path offers a wide variety of entry-level corporate positions:

• Consumer Goods Sales Representative: This sales representative works for companies such as Whirlpool, P&G, American Greetings, Kraft Foods, Google, and Altria and sells household goods, food, clothes, electronics, and specialty items to wholesale and retail customers such as Target, Kroger, Convenience Mart, Lowes, and Best Buy.
• Industrial Products Sales Representative: This sales representative works for such companies as 3M, ArcelorMittal, Cummins, Dow Chemical, and Alcoa and sells industrial products such as adhesives, steel, engines, chemicals, aluminum, and oil to other manufacturers and  wholesalers, such as Toyota, General Electric, Whirlpool, and the U.S. government.
• Business Products Sales Representative: This sales representative works for such companies as Xerox,  IBM,  Hewlett Packard, IGS Energy, and Northwestern Mutual and sells products such as copying equipment, computers, paper products, office supplies, telecommunications equipment, energy, insurance, and furniture to all other businesses.
• Services Sales Representative: This sales representative works for such companies as ADP, InterCall, C. H. Robinson, Coyote Logistics, and CEB and sells such services as data processing, teleconferencing, logistics, industry trade information, and CRM systems to all other businesses and institutions, such as universities and governments.
• Health Care Products Sales Representative: This sales representative works for such companies as GE Healthcare, Cook Medical, and Johnson & Johnson and sells medical equipment, supplies, and pharmaceuticals to hospitals, drugstores, doctors and dentists offices, and other health care facilities.

This career path offers three main entry-level corporate positions:

• Assistant buyers help determine which products to order and in what quantities, making decisions based on customers’ wants, new product trends, and profitability. You’ll also help manage advertising and pricing.
• Planners analyze data and regional differences to determine how much of each product should be sent to each store, ensuring customer demand is met.
• Product developers help create brand-new products, from the raw materials to the finished goods, based on customer research, market trends, and profit goals.

If you are analytically inclined and interested in all facets of marketing, consider a career as a marketing research analyst. You’ll collect, analyze, interpret, and present data for managerial decisions. In a consulting role, you’ll help managers and clients with new product launches, including pricing decisions, measuring advertising effectiveness, sales forecasting, and other brand related opportunities.

Consumers are empowered by immediate access to information, pricing, manufacturer practices, and an ever-broadening array of media choices, making advertising more important than ever. If you are a curious, creative problem solver, top marketers will rely on you for strategic ideas to reach target consumers with messages and media that match their motivations to pick one brand over another.