Wei Zhang, an assistant professor in marketing, provided the opportunity for his students to present marketing ideas to three, top-named companies in Iowa.

Each of his three classes was divided into ten teams to do a project with the final intent of presenting to company executives.

“I designed it in a way so it was like an in-class competition. I only selected the top three teams, and I called them the finalist teams. So, the three teams get selected to present to a company executive,” Zhang said.

Principal Financial and Casey’s General Store were the companies that the finalist teams presented to.

On April 16, 2013, presentations were given by two sections of Zhang’s classes. The manager of Casey’s General Store, headquartered in Ankeny, arrived in the afternoon to hear three presentations. They then picked the winner of the three presentations.

In the evening of the same day, the manager of Principal Financial came and listened to three different presentations. They then picked a winner from the three finalists.

The idea of involving corporate businesses in the project started last fall. “In term of our students, we want them to learn some real world business knowledge,” Zhang said.

“I was thinking, why don’t we talk to the local companies so that they come in and bring what they are working on right now, and tell our students this the problem we are facing.”

Throughout the whole project that started at the beginning of the semester, Zhang advised the students on how to approach the presentations.

“I will be their advisor throughout the semester to help them, [the students], with the projects. The students will then report back to the company executive and then say, these are our findings,” Zhang said.

There are many benefits to the partnership that was developed for both the company as well as the students.

“In my mind, I thought there were a couple of benefits. One is that the companies… want to contribute to the community. So, through this interaction, they really contribute back to our student body,” Zhang said.

“In a sense that they bring a real world experience, a real word insight, and our students will learn from that.”

The winners of the finalist teams put great effort into the projects that were presented to both Principal Financial and Casey’s General Store.

“The most difficult part of the project was to come up with ideas that Principal hadn’t thought of yet [and] would still be able to implement easily,” said Kellie Morrissey, senior in management.

The final presentation given on site was a great learning experience for all team members.

“It was really exciting to be selected to visit Principal Financial in Des Moines. It was a little nerve-racking to present to a room of employees that ranged from team members, retirement service individuals to their top executives,” Morrissey said.

Amandine Habben, senior in marketing, really liked the project. It was very useful for her and will be even more useful in the future.

“This project was unique in a way because I felt like I was a consultant that Casey’s had hired. We were presented with a problem and needed to find a solution,” Habben said.

“It was nice to finally apply all our knowledge obtained over the last four years and use it to solve a real world problem for a company that makes real world business decisions.”

Habben wants this project to continue. “I think this is a great model for a marketing capstone class. We, as marketing students, have sat in class for the last two years hearing about all these things companies do, and now, we had the opportunity to do that for a legitimate company.”