UWG
News Item
Contact: University Communications & Marketing
Phone (678) 839-6464, FAX (678) 839-6645
ucm@westga.edu
Marketing course named one of top three
June 24, 2004
CARROLLTON, GA - The Decision Sciences Institute has chosen a marketing course designed by Dr. Beheruz N. Sethna, president of the University of West Georgia, as one of the nation's top three best instructional innovations of the year.
The Institute hosts an annual national Instructional Innovation Award Competition to promote innovative teaching and pedagogy in the decision sciences. After two levels of review by a national panel of judges, four entries are selected for presentation at the national meeting scheduled in November in Boston.
“The
Marketing Carnival” provides marketing or marketing research students
a unique methodology for data collection other than the typical administration
of mail or telephone questionnaires.
According to Sethna, student teams set up stalls or booths (as in a carnival), which represent new ideas or concepts. Visitors to the fair go to each stall, and play games of skill or chance to win prizes. In the process of doing so, they knowingly reveal information about their preferences, which is recorded by the students. Statistical analysis is then performed on the data, and reports are presented orally and in writing to the class and to the client.
“Approximately 300 students, freshmen through seniors, have taken this course over a 16-year period at three different business schools in New York, Texas and Georgia,” he pointed out. “The only prerequisite to taking the course is a spirit of inquiry, independent work, and individual initiative.”
A team of three UWG students who completed Sethna’s Honors marketing course in Fall 2002 received the award for Best Student Research Paper at the annual meeting of the National Social Science Association. The team utilized the “marketing carnival” strategy for the project titled “Papa John’s Pizza — A Cut Above the Competition.” This team also won the UWG research competition known as Big Night to represent the Richards College of Business, and, in a previous year, another team was a Big Night finalist.
Sethna noted that students design projects around real business problems and the projects have led to actual implementation of recommendations and considerable praise in three states from local banks, national restaurants and food chains such as Arby’s, Burger King, CiCi’s Pizza. McDonald’s, Papa John’s Pizza, Pizza Hut, and TCBY. Other clients included athletic facilities such as Gold’s Gym, local movie theatres, soda bottlers such as Coke and Pepsi, and others.
This is the seventh time that Sethna’s courses have been nationally recognized by the Decision Sciences institute, all for different innovations.
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