Jones School hosts business students from across the U.S. for competition

Jones School hosts business students from across the U.S. for competition

Business students
converged on campus recently to hatch marketing plans in
a competition that netted the winner $5,000.

Bibi Choa, Chris
Hsu and Ursula Kralova from the Kellogg Graduate School
of Management at Northwestern University won first prize
and the $5,000 at Rice University’s Jesse H. Jones
Graduate School of Management marketing case competition
Oct. 15. The Jones School competition is the largest marketing
case competition held in the United States.

Joe Ewell, John
Magee, Kristen Egan and Marcin Prusaczyk of Tulane University’s
A.B. Freeman School of Business won second prize and $3,000.
Yale School of Management students Stacy Hammond, Brigitte
Majewski and Jennifer Thorn won third prize and $2,000.

Nine schools
sent teams of three to four business students to the competition:
Northwestern, the University of Michigan, Columbia University,
Yale, Vanderbilt University, Emory University, Rice, Tulane
and Thunderbird, the American Graduate School of International
Management. Two second-year M.B.A. students at Rice, Tammy
Morehouse and Heith Rothman, and Assistant Professor of
Management Sanjay Sood organized the marketing case competition.

Each of the
nine teams received the same case, chosen by Sood, Saturday
morning, Oct. 14. They had until Sunday at 8 a.m. to create
a marketing plan and a 20-minute presentation. The order
in which the teams presented to the judges—six corporate
marketing executives—was a random draw.

Compaq Computer
Corp. donated a laptop computer for each team. Teams were
asked to use only the case itself and not the Internet or
online databases for information.

Two of the six
judges were from Compaq, sponsor of the event, including
Hugh Jenkins, director of marketing and communications for
Compaq’s Industry Standard Server Group, and Ron Noblett,
vice president of server storage for Compaq’s Storage
Products Group.

The other four
judges were from additional supporters of the competition:
Gary Sawka, group brand manager, breakfast beverages, Minute
Maid; Paul Galvani, director of marketing, Riviana Foods;
Christie Patrick, vice president of university affairs,
Enron Corp.; and Alan Lobeck, director of marketing, BMC
Software.

Each of the
five corporations plans to support the competition next
year, Sood said, and other corporations have expressed interest
as well. “Next year’s competition will be for
larger prizes. Many of the teams participating this year
said Rice was an exceptional host, so we expect to attract
strong teams again next year,” he said.

Winning-team
members Choa, Hsu and Kralova all are students in the accelerated
four-quarter M.B.A. program at Northwestern University.
Choa specializes in management and strategy, media and entertainment
management, marketing and e-commerce; Hsu majors in finance,
marketing and management and strategy; and Kralova majors
in management and strategy, health services management and
marketing.