Co-Winners Share $2,000 in Target Case Competition

Two teams of University of Nebraska–Lincoln College of Business Administration students were named co-winners of the Target Case Competition held April 25. The students, who were awarded a total of $2,000 in prize money researched how the retail stores could drive sales using online and mobile marketing. Then they presented their findings to representatives from Target.

The students said examining an actual company and creating a realistic proposal forced them to do more research than a typical class project.

“When we do case studies in class, we get a lot more background information handed to us,” said Hannah Bates, a senior marketing major from Lincoln, Nebraska, who competed on one of the winning teams. “For this competition, it was our responsibility to find the information we needed and to apply it. Instead of having 15 pages of information,we only had two or three, which meant we had to do a lot more research.”

Courtney Bulin, also a senior marketing major from Lincoln, said the competition showed firsthand why companies value marketing research.

“You have to get the word out, because if you haven’t created awareness of the services you already have in place, there’s no point in introducing new ones,” said Bulin.

“We learned Target already has great integration of online and mobile presence for their customers,” added Bates. “The key is creating awareness, so customers know those web features and apps are available.”

Charlsie Bastian, a senior marketing major from Arlington, Nebraska, valued having the Target professionals in the room.
“When we do projects in class, we don’t get the same feedback,” said Bastian. “The value of this competition is we talked with people from Target at length about our proposals and saw how our research actually applied to their situation.”

Co-Winning Teams:
Charlsie Bastian – senior marketing major from Arlington, Nebraska
Madison Barbee – junior finance major from Lincoln, Nebraska
Kara Leachman – senior accounting and business administration major from Larkspur, Colorado

Hannah Bates – senior marketing major from Lincoln, Nebraska
Courtney Bulin – senior marketing major from Lincoln, Nebraska
Kelly Fynboh – junior marketing major from Thief Rivers, Minnesota

Facebook Photo Album of the 2014 UNL Target Case Competition