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Marketing 325
Taught by

Dr.Sandi Lampo, Lecturer, Mays Business School-Marketing

Overview
         
Marketing 325 is no ordinary class. It is the platform from which students embark in an intense competition for a chance to be a finalist in the Stanley Marcus Retailing Communications Competition. This competition is judged by a panel of retailers from across the country and is currently in its 22nd year of running at Texas A&M. Winning a spot as a finalist in this competition is a valuable achievement which is recognized by retailers from all over the country when hiring college graduates.

From day one, students in Marketing 325 hit the ground running. Their task is to develop a comprehensive retail competitive audit for a business in the Bryan/College Station area as they work in instructor assigned teams of 4-5 students. The audits the teams must complete are complex. Students are required to analyze many aspects of the business they have chosen (e.g., customer base, competition, environment, etc.) and detail recommendations for ways in which the business can be improved. The methods students use to collect data to complete this assignment include interviewing store managers, surveying customers, and observing the practices of competitors. From this data, students put together both a written report and a condensed presentation which outline and justify the recommendations they make for their chosen business.

Details

Marketing 325 is not only a competition, but also one of 3 courses students may take for a certificate of retailing. About 130 students elect to take this 3 credit course when it is offered each spring. The course consists of two 75 minute lectures each week in addition to copious out of class time spent researching and analyzing the business. Providing recommendations for retail owners is a very open ended task. The quality and value of recommendations require a working knowledge of facts and principles involved in retail marketing as well as a creative twist. Students need to dedicate themselves early in the semester to learning the facts and terms presented in class in order to be able to integrate them into their thinking about the recommendations they make for their chosen businesses..

The interactions students enrolled in Marketing 325 have with various members of the retailing community combined with the data collection processes they undertake as well as the written and oral presentations of their recommendations combine to give students an in-depth immersion into the real world of retail marketing. Students are taught valuable critical thinking, analysis and interpretation skills that will help them be successful in whatever they decide to do with their lives. Because of these characteristics, Marketing 325 was considered a wonderful example of inquiry-based teaching. What follows is a description of how the content and methods used in this course focused student learning in each of the ways outlined in the 7 characteristics of inquiry and /or research-based teaching promoted by the QEP Council.

Assimilate Facts

Students in Marketing 325 need to not only memorize and understand facts about retail marketing, but they also needed to be able to utilize those facts in their thinking and writing as they complete their retail audits. Because of this, students need to dedicate themselves early in the semester to learning the facts and terms presented in class in order to be able to integrate them into their thinking about the recommendations they make for their chosen businesses.

Recognize Unanswered Questions

Completing a retail audit for a business, the project students have to complete for this course, is a very open ended task that is centered on the recognition of unanswered questions. Through their investigations students strive to uncover aspects of the business they have chosen to focus on where there is room for improvement. There is no right or wrong answer, students need to use what they know and can do in order to reach a valid and supportable position that may help the business owners they have targeted. Students need to apply a variety of techniques in order to develop their ideas about what recommendations they can make to improve the business they have chosen to work with. The entire premise of developing these ideas is essentially recognizing the implications of questions that have not yet been asked.

Formulate Strategies for Seeking Answers

Completing a large project like the one required in Marketing 325 can be a daunting task for many undergraduates. Dr. Lampo strives to help her students formulate strategies through which they can successfully make valuable recommendations (or in other words, seek answers) for the business they have chosen to focus their efforts on. With the teams, Dr. Lampo reviews their interview and survey questions before they go to the businesses with them in order to help students conduct worthwhile and thorough investigations. Dr. Lampo has learned that students often do not have a good idea of how to pace themselves to complete such a large project. Because of this, early in the semester she asks each team to hand in a timeline detailing the actions they will take to complete their projects so that they are encouraged to think ahead of time about what they will have to do to complete their projects and she can help them think of strategies to use their time more efficiently if necessary.

Investigate Appropriately

Appropriate investigation is central to students’ success in making thoughtful recommendations to business owners. Interviews and surveys need to be constructed in a way that maximizes what students can learn from them. Dr. Lampo spends many hours meeting with groups and helping them to revise the instruments they will use to investigate the businesses they have chosen as well as helping them tailor their overall research design to gaining the most insight possible.

Draw Valid Conclusions

Of course, as has been mentioned before, there is no one right answer students can reach in making their recommendations for any business. The recommendations students make need to be firmly grounded in both retail marketing theory and the evidence specific to the business at hand that they are researching. Dr. Lampo advises her students to make sure that evidence from the data they have collected supports the conclusions they come to and the recommendations they then make.

Communicate Effectively

Effective communication is a central part of students work in Marketing 325. Students not only need to communicate their ideas in their written reports, but also present the essential features of their work in short, conference-like presentations given to their peers, and if they progress as finalists, to a panel of judges from many different positions within the retail marketing community.

Critically Analyze

Critical analysis is central component of Dr. Lampo’s Marketing 325 course. The course focuses on the gathering, analysis and interpretation of data specific to a local business and the use of that data to make recommendations for that business. Students need to critically analyze and evaluate the data they have collected as they apply their knowledge of retail marketing and the local community to it. The quality of their recommendations relies on the depth of their analysis and the support they can derive for it from their data.

    

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