MBA Students Wrap Up Their Digital Marketing Consulting Project With Samsonite North America
This past semester, MBA students participated in the Digital Marketing Consulting Project course as part of the Digital Marketing Certificate Program curriculum (MBA 664). This year, the course was led by adjunct professor Chelsea Rothman, senior brand marketing manager at Samsonite North America. Students were given the assignment to research up to two strategic recommendations to strengthen Samsonite’s email marketing performance over the course of the semester and present these recommendations to Samsonite leadership including Lynn Berard ‘93, president of Samsonite North America.
Many digital marketing and managerial decisions—regardless of their functional orientation—are increasingly relying on data and business analytics. This course provided an opportunity for students to integrate and apply the analytical skills and knowledge learned in previous courses in marketing and digital marketing to a real-world business project in marketing.
The class was split into small teams for this consulting project. Each team was given the opportunity to present to both professor Rothman and Jackie Elcik, senior associate dean of the School of Business. Three teams were selected to present their strategic recommendations to Samsonite leadership in the Ryan Center for Business Studies on the last day of class.
One of the teams selected to participate in the final presentations included Bridget Anthony and Abigail Wylie. This team provided recommendations to Samsonite pertaining directly to their current email marketing strategy, recommending Samsonite incorporate more eye-catching and interactive graphics such as gifs and animations to stand out among competitors.
The second team finalists included Corinne Maier and Molly Pellicano who took a broader lens focus on Samsonite’s long-term digital marketing strategy. Their strategic recommendations were for Samsonite to invest in building out their in-house email marketing team, as well as implement artificial intelligence into the team’s daily operations by partnering with enterprise-scale marketing platform Phrasee.
The third and winning team consisted of Emilia Mendez and Jack Mahoney. The two provided the most cost-effective and easily integrated strategic recommendations to better segment Samsonite’s 2,000,000+ email subscribers.
All students attended the final round of presentations and mingled with Samsonite executives at a reception on May 4. Students left the class having experienced a real-world consulting project and participated in an invaluable networking opportunity.
If your organization would be interested in partnering with the Providence College School of Business to work on a real-world consulting project with PC students, please contact the Dean’s Office at pcsb-dean@providence.edu.
