When a Case Study Turns Into a Real-World Experience
Imagine being a student and having to complete a team project analyzing a brand from the perspective of marketing strategy and performance management. And imagine, at the end of your project, having to present your findings not just to your classmates and professors, but straight to the board of administration of the company you studied. Well, this is exactly what happened to the approximately 130 students enrolled in the Bocconi course in Brand Building and Performance Measurement headed by Andrea Dossi and co-taught with Bruno Busacca, with the support of Cristian Chizzoli, Gianfranco Stamerra and Raffaele Grimaldi.
It all stems from a collaboration with the Prometeon company, a tire brand established as a spin-off from the Pirelli industrial giant that is still working on developing its own specific identity in relation to the parent brand and industry competitors. Hence the idea of having Bocconi students, with the support of their course tutors, work on 12 marketing performance management topics and then propose solutions to the company’s managers. Thus, some worked on tools to measure and strengthen the brand —from perceived value to competitive benchmarks, brand-building KPIs, brand strength and positioning compared to market competitors — while others focused on the brand's economic impact, from financial valuation to investment decision criteria, all the way to managerial incentives and the connection between brand and profitability.
"It's a business simulation that exposes students to a real-world interaction with a company, forcing them to apply the theoretical knowledge they've accumulated in other courses to a real-world case study within a specific deadline, similar to what happens in the business world," Andrea Dossi explains. "The live interaction with company management helps them understand how to apply knowledge pragmatically and, in particular, allows them to understand what is truly useful to a given company and what is not."
Amina Rivelli, a first-year International Management student, was in the class working on performance management: "Putting what you learn into practice by presenting in front of four members of a company board is certainly a very intense experience," she says. "The company directors provided us with documentation and interviews with executives related to our study on their platform. In the end, we managed to put forward ideas that were absolutely applicable in a real-world context."
In essence, it's a course where real-world situations truly become real: theory ceases to be an abstract exercise and turns into responsibility, dialogue with decision-makers and concrete proposals for the company being studied.
