Wednesday, April 9, 2003
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Wednesday, April 9, 2003 |
CCSU marketing management students experiment on Heinz ketchup
Never let it be said that education at Clayton State is confined to the classroom, or that all learning comes out of textbooks. Case in point: Dr. Russell Casey, assistant professor of Marketing in the School of Technology and his Applied Marketing Management class. Casey and his students recently visited Clayton County's Mt. Zion Elementary School to conduct focus groups on different types of Heinz Ketchup. The participants in the focus groups were Helen Rikers' kindergarten class, Terri Lindeman's third-grade class, and Sherry Reynolds' fourth-grade class. Conducting the focus groups were a number of Clayton State students, including Eleanor Goss and Leslie King of Fayetteville, April Childs and Curt Foster of Morrow, Aisha Johnson of Ellenwood, DeAngelo Evans of Stone Mountain, Evaughn Rainy-Hood of Stockbridge, and Brenda Lumpkin, Brad Riker, Crystal Smith and Adina Lofton of Jonesboro. Actually, the idea for the experiment did come from a class assignment found in the class' textbook. The assignment consisted of an article about Heinz ketchup, and its success with launching different-colored varieties of ketchup to children. The class discussed what colors they would add to the Heinz menu, and after further discussion, Casey decided to have the class conduct their own experiment based on student ideas from the class. The goal of the exercise was to gather and report the results of the focus group in a portfolio that will be sent to the brand manager of Heinz, for consideration for future research and development ideas. The Applied Marketing Management students predicted that different colors may appeal to children. Some of the color ideas were: pink ketchup (for girls), light blue ketchup (for boys), Stars & Stripes ketchup for the Fourth of July, and Mystery ketchup (multicolored and comes out different with every squirt). Students from the Applied Marketing Management class prepared for the focus group by setting up displays of actual hotdogs on buns with the different colored ketchup in the elementary school's hallway. The elementary students were led individually to the display table and asked which ketchup they liked best. The marketing students also had prepared pictures of designed ketchup bottles and asked the students which packaging they preferred. "My goal for the project was to teach students how an idea for a brand extension is formulated, and the type of marketing research that is needed to help determine the validity of the idea," said Casey. "What I like most about this type of exercise is the students get to see and be involved from the beginning of the marketing research process for a possible brand extension. Hopefully, we will hear something from Heinz so the students can be recognized for their contribution. "The students from my class really worked hard on this. They made the ketchups pink/blue etc., created ketchup bottle designs and helped to plan out this whole process. I am proud of them." The teachers at Mt. Zion also felt this project was worthy of their students' time as well. "This was perfect timing, I just went over with my third graders some beginning economics and we are calculating survey results for math, so this project fits right in," explained Lindeman.
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