Undergrads win top marketing prize
Derek Moscato, 778.782.5038; drmoscat@sfu.ca
May Yu, mly2@sfu.ca
Marianne Meadahl, PAMR, 778.782.3210; marianne_meadahl@sfu.ca
Simon Fraser University Business undergraduate students May Yu and Emily Chua have won a top prize at one of Canada's most prestigious university competitions.
Hosted by Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario and held from Jan. 6-8, the Inter-Collegiate Business Competition (I.C.B.C.) is Canada's premier undergraduate business case competition.
To take first prize in the marketing category, Yu and Chua trounced a staggering 170 preliminary round submissions from 41 leading business schools across Canada and around the world.
In the finals, they beat the National University of Singapore, Concordia University, Saint Mary's University, Memorial University and the University of Regina.
The student team was coached by Jason Ho, assistant professor of marketing at SFU Business with additional assistance from PhD student Todd Green.
Both SFU students are in their fourth year in the Bachelor of Business Administration program. Yu's academic focus is marketing and management information systems while Chua studies accounting.
The case was about a profitable automotive detailing shop start-up with both business-to-business and business-to-consumer operations. The SFU team's solution focused on building the brand equity and leveraging the firm's competitive advantages before franchising the business model to a select group of franchisees.
"I think our ‘Go Big or Go Home' mentality helped us stand out above the rest," said Yu, a Sentinel Secondary School graduate from Vancouver's North Shore. Teammate Chua is a North Surrey Secondary graduate from Surrey.
The I.C.B.C. competition was established to unite, challenge, and enrich undergraduate business students and empower them to become future leaders.
Organizers attribute a 30-year history and student success and passion as the underpinning for what they bill as the most prestigious, largest and longest-running undergraduate business case competition in the country.
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