Team Will Travel to New Orleans in April to Present in Final Round

A team of students from the Cleveland State University chapter of the American Marketing Association (AMA) is among the Top 10 finalists in the AMA’s International Collegiate Case Competition.

The members of the CSU team are:

Adam Bollinger
Michelle Coon
Kristen DeSantis
Chris Grzelewski
Michael Jugler
Matt Kulik
Heather Machles
Jonathan Mason
Kevin Metz
Snjezana Selak
Gina Stem 

In April, the CSU team will travel to the 36th annual International Collegiate Conference in New Orleans for the final round of the competition, in which the team will make its presentation to a panel of judges.

“I am in awe of the hard work of our students,” said team faculty advisor Michael Wachter, a doctoral candidate and instructor of marketing at CSU’s Monte Ahuja College of Business. “The students put forth an enormous amount of effort to complete this case, and the final product is absolutely amazing.”

The International Collegiate Case Competition is a yearlong event that allows top marketing undergraduate students to work on a real-world marketing challenge submitted by a sponsoring organization. The Hershey Company sponsored the 2013-2014 competition, in which students were asked to develop a comprehensive integrated marketing plan for the relaunch of Hershey’s Take 5 candy bar.

The CSU team advanced to the finals based on the evaluations of 113 professional and academic judges. Among the other finalists chosen by the AMA Collegiate Chapter Selection Committee are British Columbia Institute of Technology (Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada); Ferris State University (Big Rapids, Mich.); North Central College (Naperville, Ill.); Temple University (Philadelphia); Texas State University (San Marcos); University of Arizona – Tucson; University of Maryland (College Park); University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia); and University of Wisconsin –Eau Claire.

Last year, Cleveland State University’s AMA chapter earned an honorable mention in the competition.