Let teams of master students work on strategic marketing challenges. These include anything linking to i. analysis of the relevant market, ii. segmentation, targeting, positioning, iii. crafting competitive advantage and a value proposition, iv. category expansion, new product launch, repositioning.
In this challenge, master students work on a challenge to analyze a product’s or service’s competitive advantages and strategically position it in the market, including thorough customer and competitor analyses. They will come up with practically relevant analyses and recommendations supported by collected data, desk research and relevant (academic) literature. They will receive training and guidance by lecturers from VU University.
✅ Key features of the challenge
Program: Master Marketing
Course: Marketing Strategy
Students per team: 5 students.
Teams per challenge: 8
No. of hours spent per team: 150 hours
Duration: October-November
Supervision: Student teams are supervised and guided by senior lecturers.
Deliverables: Presentation and report (in the form of slides) with recommendations.
Company time investment: 8-12 hours in total (e.g. kick-off meeting, Q&A sessions, final presentation, etc.)
Costs: Free of charge
📑 Challenge Examples
For example, during the previous two rounds of the course, students worked on:
Analyzing the meat alternatives market to craft a positioning strategy for "The Vegetarian Butcher"
Addressing "The Vegetarian Butcher" questions of how to grow the meat alternatives category further.
Crafting approaches to deal with innovation in insurance to combat upcoming challenges such as drought and the rise of autonomous vehicles, in collaboration with the Dutch “Verbond van Verzekeraars".
🏢 Company requirement
Any company (startup/scale-up/corporate/incubator/NGO) with a product or service innovation that requires a go-to-market analysis or aiming to re-position an offering.
💰 Costs
Free of charge.
📨 How to apply
You can submit the challenge directly through the website. Provide a title that summarises the challenge. Subsequently, briefly elaborate on your challenge. See link for a template you could use: https://link.masterchallenge.me/challenge-template or use the challenge generator: https://masterchallenge.me/challenge-generator
🗓 Planning
August 15: Deadline for submitting your challenge
September 1: Receiving message if your challenge is approved by the Course Coordinator
October 6-9: Matching phase (in case you use our matching feature)
October 10-15: Kick-off meeting with your teams
December (first week): Final presentations