MBA students win marketing case competition

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - February 23, 2006

CONTACT: Kim Keating - 603-646-2733

HANOVER, N.H.—A team of four MBA students representing the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth; Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley; Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management; and University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School recently won first prize at the seventh annual Marketing Case Challenge held at UNC.

The case topic focused on Microsoft Student, a popular software program designed to help students with study skills and homework assignments. The competition asked teams to determine both a short-term and long-term marketing strategy for the product in a climate of diminishing retail sales of packaged software and rapid growth of online software sales.

The students were grouped into three pools, with four teams in each pool. Judges from Microsoft picked the top team from each pool for the finals. The winning team included T'07 Ravi Prabakaran, from Tuck; Mike Injaychock, from Kenan-Flagler; Greg Yeadon, from Kellogg; and Kim Dao, from Haas. The competitors included students from the University of Chicago, MIT-Sloan, Columbia University, Duke University, Cornell University, and New York University. Final presentations were made in front of the entire participant community and six judges from Microsoft.

"The judges picked us because of our gutsy but strategically sound recommendation, which we supported with data from the case and through convincing arguments," said Tuck's Prabakaran. "Tuck's rigor prepared me well for such challenges. The learning from core courses such as Analysis for General Managers, Competitive and Corporate Strategy, Marketing, and Management Communication helped me approach this real business problem that Microsoft is facing," he added.

Event sponsors included Microsoft, Campbell's, Bayer, R.J. Reynolds, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, Ortho-McNeil, and Apple.  

For more information on the Marketing Case Challenge, please visit:

http://public.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/MBA/Clubs/2006case.

Founded in 1900, Tuck is the first graduate school of management and consistently ranks among the top business schools worldwide. Information about the Tuck School is available at www.tuck.dartmouth.edu.