Major Module Business Project

Business Project in Marketing: Disruptive Marketing Solutions with L'Oréal

Project

 Instructor: Dr. Jens Paschmann
 Date, Time & Room: see KLIPS

Content

The main learning objective of this course is to acquire experience in solving an applied marketing case, which will prepare students for possible challenges in their future working life. Substantively, students will be confronted with realistic issues from the marketing department of a multinational company. Thereby, the course will facilitate a deeper understanding of real-world marketing problems and their solutions in business practice. Moreover, the course will train social and communicative skills as a presentation has to be prepared in teams.

Requirements

The main objective of the course is to solve an applied marketing case in a defined frame of time. The examination of the course is done in the form of a final presentation given in front of a group of L’Oréal managers as well as the course instructor from the University of Cologne (if the COVID-19 situation and corresponding regulations allow it, at the L’Oréal headquarters in Düsseldorf). A 15- minutes’ question session will be held to further discuss the case solution. To train the presentation and to receive detailed feedback on the case solution, students will give a (trial) mid-term presentation. The mid-term presentation does not enter the grading and is not part of the examination. Accordingly, the grade will be based on the final presentation, including students’ performance in the Q&A sessions following the presentations. The course language is English. The course is eligible for 12 ECTS.

Presentations

Presentations are prepared and held in teams. For both the mid-term (trial) presentation and the final presentation, the task is to present the case solution in 30 minutes. The presentation should start with a brief market analysis and then continue with the presentation of the concept. It is important that the presentation does not take longer than 30 minutes. Time will be kept and overrun will not be accepted. After the final presentations, the instructor from the University of Cologne and L’Oréal managers will ask questions regarding the case solution in a 15-minutes discussion session. Therefore, after the mid-term presentations, the course instructor will ask a few questions about the case solution to familiarize students with the question format for the final presentations. Both parts of the final presentation (presentation and the related Q&A session) will be evaluated and count toward the final grade.
The learning objective is to acquire the necessary skills and experience to present and defend a self-developed concept in a real-world business setting in front of a professional audience.