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Undergrads Win 4th Annual Hartford Financial Services Case Competition

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Hartford Financial Services Case CompetitionCongratulations to Katharine Coulter, Shailee Desai, Giovanni Sornatale, and Patrick Stimola! The four undergraduates kicked off Husky Weekend by winning the final round of an annual campus case competition sponsored by The Hartford Financial Services Group on Friday, April 4.

The UConn team, who placed first in the preliminary round of the two-part competition on February 14 before advancing to the final round, competed against students from Quinnipiac, Boston University, Bentley, and the University of Hartford. The team was mentored by Cari Goldner ’13, Hartford Financial Services, and Kathy Hendrickson of the Business Career Center.

Congratulations to the winning team for an outstanding case presentation.

Bill Ross and Co-authors Receive Prestigious Lehmann Award

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Bill Ross, ING Global Professor, and his colleagues, Sanjay Puligadda (Miami University) and Rajdeep Grewal (Penn State University) were awarded the coveted Lehmann Award for their article, “Individual Differences in Brand Schematicity,” Journal of Marketing Research (February 2012). The Lehmann Award (in honor of Donald R. Lehmann, Columbia University) is given annually to the best dissertation-based paper (within the past 2 years) in either of the two premier marketing journals, Journal of Marketing and Journal of Marketing Research. The article was Puligadda’s dissertation, which he completed at Penn State with Ross and Grewal as his advisers.

If you had decided to buy a camera, would you focus on which brands the store carried? Or, would you focus on the characteristics of the different cameras the store had in stock?

This paper suggests that if you are high in brand schematicity, you would be more likely to attend to the different brands the store carried, whereas if you were low in brand schematicity you would be more likely to attend to the characteristics of the cameras the store carried.

A schema is a set of expectations a person has about what will happen in a certain situation. Most folks, for example, have a schema for what they will experience in a fast food restaurant. Schematicity is the tendency on the part of consumers to process information using specific schema. People who are high in brand schematicity are likely to process products in terms of brands, not product characteristics, whereas people who are low in brand schematicity are likely to process products in terms of product characteristics not brands.

Don’t confuse brand schematicity with brand loyalty. Someone who is high in brand schematicity does not necessarily have a preference for a certain brand; instead, they have a preference to organize their thinking by brands.

In this article, Ross, Puligadda, and Grewal built a theoretical basis for brand schematicity and report on three studies that develop measures of brand schematicity; three studies that consider brand schematicity in the context of associated constructs and establish its predictive validity; and a final study that reveals that a consumer’s brand schematicity influences brand extension evaluations.

OPIM Research Productivity Ranked Among the Best Worldwide

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UConn’s Operations & Information Management Department was recently ranked among the best business schools internationally—and #1 in the Northeast—for information systems research productivity over the last five years.

“These rankings are a clear indicator that we have one of the top research faculty groups in the country and around the world,” said Ram Gopal, professor and department head of OPIM. “Some of the most cutting-edge research in areas such as intellectual property rights, healthcare IT, auction markets, and advanced analytics is going on right here at UConn.”Continue Reading

Strategy Competition – winners announced soon …

Posted on by Brian Kelleher

Like the smell of flowers, fresh rain, and cut grass, ANTICIPATION is another thing that is in the air during the spring months, where everyone is anxiously awaiting  announcements listing winners of various competitions held throughout the University.  The CCEI Strategy Competition is one such event.  We are currently calculating the scores from last night’s evening of presentations, and will have the announcement of the winners posted on our website and announced by email tomorrow, 4/23/14.  Everyone did a great job, and congrats to everyone for having such great ideas, and making it to the finalist round – out of almost 60 entries, being a finalist is a victory in itself.  🙂

Making Sure Global Brigades Does Well, So It Can Continue to Do Good

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UConn MBAs Provide Operational Guidance to the World’s Largest Student-Led Social Responsibility Movement.

When you’re the world’s largest global health and sustainable development organization empowered by student volunteers, challenges arise. Fortunately, the UConn MBA program excels at approaching these types of challenges as opportunities for experiential learning, business process improvement, and making a positive impact.

The UConn MBA Case Challenge gives students the opportunity to strengthen their strategic decision-making skills as managers, understand and reflect the interplay between organizations and their environment in the formulation and implementation of strategies, and learn how an organization integrates strategic management with its operational functions.

For 2014, the Case Challenge focus was on non-governmental organizations (NGO’s). Invariably excluded from the mainstream world of corporate diaspora, NGOs are increasingly playing a vital role in providing support to communities which otherwise remain neglected and unable to sustain themselves due to the lack of access to basic necessities to engage in business or care.

Global Brigades has mobilized almost 30,000 graduate, undergraduate students and professionals through nine skill-based programs that work in partnership with community members to improve quality of life in under-resourced regions of Africa and Central America. The task for UConn MBA teams was to think through some of the implications of the complexity Global Brigades endures in its operational space and to review the following:

  • Recommendations on improving the Global Brigades model in a framework of their mission, considering both financial and humanitarian objectives.
  • Recommendations on strategic management of Global Brigades and potential growth and expansion tactics.

 

The winning team, Jaimin Bhatt ’15 MBA, Xiaoying Gan ’15 MBA, Ashish Kumar ’15 MBA, and Carlo Rivieccio ’15 MBA, presented Global Brigades with recommendations for segmenting its services into three distinct categories based on its core competencies, creating a stronger value proposition for donors, and diversifying income and investments.

“Our client representatives [Tanya Svidler, director of impact investing for Global Brigades, and Cole Hoover, director of the Global Brigades Institute] were very impressed with the quality of students’ presentations and recommendations,” said Rajendra Shirolé, MBA program director.

The Case Challenge is a program requirement for UConn MBAs. “In this exercise we were able to bring together all our newly learned academic knowledge and combine it with our practical experiences in order to deliver valuable recommendations to Global Brigades. I hope that we can continue to participate in such experiential activities as they solidify class learning,” said Kumar.

Bhatt added, “This was really a very exceptional experience.”

MSFRM 3rd Annual Risk Management Conference, “The many faces of Enterprise Risk Management (ERM)”, March 20, 2015

Posted on by Brian Kelleher

Save the date:

The MSFRM Program will be hosting its 3rd Annual Risk Management Conference on March 20, 2015 entitled “of “The many faces of Enterprise Risk Management (ERM)”.  More details will be posted to the MSFRM website as soon as they are available.

MIS Students Place 2nd in 2014 CoMIS Competition

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CoMIS

Imagine having just 24 hours to solve your company’s most pressing IT challenge. Imagine, then, presenting a solution to your executive board immediately thereafter. This scenario mirrors the challenge that student teams faced at the third annual Competition on Management Information Systems (CoMIS), held at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management April 2 – 5.

Joining top teams from around the United States, including Arizona, Arizona State, Emory, Georgia Tech, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan State, Minnesota, Texas-Austin, and Texas-Dallas, the UConn team—led by assistant professor of OPIM Dmitry Zhdanov—was represented by three undergraduate upperclassmen: Tyler Campbell ’14, Dan Marquis ’14, and Yue Zhu ’14, all MIS majors. Sean Priest ’15 was instrumental on the practice squad.

After two days of educational and networking events with corporate sponsors, each team was presented with the case and given 24 hours to deliberate. Cases were submitted the following morning, and the CoMIS judging panel evaluated each team on a 20-minute presentation of their recommendations followed by a 10-minute Q&A session.

The top team from each group presented in the final round on Saturday afternoon, and winners were announced at an Awards Banquet on Saturday evening.

For the second time in three years, the UConn team placed in the final round, taking second place to the University of Minnesota for 2014. Indiana University came in third.

Please join us in congratulating the UConn team on their achievement!

Pictured (left to right): Yue Zhu, Tyler Campbell, and Daniel Marquis

Internships in Marketing, Sales and Social Media

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Caitlin Taylor

Internships offer our students excellent opportunities to get hands-on experience in all aspects of marketing. During the summer of 2013, Caitlin Taylor ’14 completed an internship in marketing and social media at The Blaze, a multi-platform news, information, and entertainment network headquartered in New York City and Dallas. Caitlin worked to identify new cable affiliates and assisted the marketing department on “Get The Blaze” projects, including crafting call-to-action posts for Facebook and Twitter, organizing a media discussion panel in Washington D.C. with U.S. Congressmen and Senators, and traveling to the National Cable Television Cooperative Conference in San Diego. Caitlin found her internship by initially connecting on LinkedIn with UConn alumnus Christopher Balfe, President and COO of Mercury Radio Arts, who currently heads up The Blaze.

Caitlin credits the UConn School of Business for providing her with a solid foundation of coursework which led to her success in this position. She stated, “I had to personally sell the network in person and over the phone—my sales classes gave me the tools and experience through the semester long role plays to successfully connect with affiliates to close the deal. Before my internship, I never really considered the media industry. I enjoyed the dynamic environment so much so that I wish to seek out other full-time opportunities in the media world.”

If you or your company are interested in hosting a summer marketing or sales intern, please contact William Ryan, Marketing Instructor in Residence,william.ryan@business.uconn.edu

2nd Session added to Pitch Competition!!

Posted on by Brian Kelleher

Monday night was a great time at the CCEI Startup Challenge Pitch Competition – in fact, we ran out of time before everyone had their turn to pitch!  So, we have scheduled a second session to allow everyone who showed up last night the opportunity to pitch their idea, but also if you were unable to attend on Monday, this will provide you one last opportunity to participate in this fun event.  We hope to see you there!

4/9/14, 6:00pm
UConn Storrs Campus
GENTRY 131 (School of Education Building – DIFFERENT LOCATION)
**Pizza, refreshments, and soda provided** 

The CCEI Startup Challenge Pitch Competition is the first  of two events that comprise the CCEI Startup Challenge initiative.  At the Pitch Competition,$10,000 in prize money (ten $1000 prizes) will be awarded to individuals or teams across multiple categories.  Individuals or teams can pitch more than one idea, and you could win in more than one category.  This competition is open to all UConn Students (all majors, levels, campuses), and the idea can be for anything – we encourage you to get creative!  Five of the prize categories are listed below; the other five will be revealed at the event. Pitches will be limited to 90 seconds and will be followed by up to two minutes of Q&A.  Have an idea?  Pitch it!

First Five Prize Categories Revealed:

  • Best Pitch Presentation
  • Best Product/Invention Idea
  • Best Mobile App Idea
  • Most Socially Responsible Idea
  • Best College Targeted Idea (“Most Likely to Succeed at UConn”)