What Exactly is the “Target Effect”? NYU Stern Prof Looks Deeper – New York News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from New York business schools this week.
Why It’s So Hard To Buy “Just One Thing” At Target – Refinery29
Speaking with Refinery29 writer Cait Munro, New York University’s Stern School of Business marketing professor Tom Meyvis elaborated why consumers have such a strong impulse to buy more things than they intended when shopping at a big-box store.
“Stores have an idea about the path [shoppers take],” he says in an interview. “Walmart was once famous for doing things like putting like Band-Aids next to fishing hooks and things like that. Something you don’t naturally associate, but once you see them there, it makes sense. So when people come in for something in one category, you can cross-sell, you can sell them something that compliments in the next product category by making sure they’re right next to each other.”
What is the so-called “Target Effect” that makes people buy more products than they intend to?
“Meyvis also notes that stores like Target have extensive data on which products customers typically buy together, and they’ll often employ those numbers to decide what should go where within the store’s layout. Some are obvious, like placing flip flops next to sunscreen, while others are so subtle that you might not even notice what’s going on when you pick up hot sauce and Pepto Bismol in the same motion.”
You can read more of Munro’s piece with Refinery29 here.
A Masters in Governmental Accounting? Five Reasons It’s Time to Make the Investment – Rutgers Business School Blog
Offered completely online, the Rutgers Business School Master of Accountancy in Governmental Accounting program may be perfect for working professionals “in the field of public financial management or transition to the public sector from private industry.” The school outlines five the biggest reasons why you may need to consider it, too:
- Opportunities – Projections indicates that there will be governmental vacancies galore due to the fact that “nearly a third of the government workforce will qualify for retirement.”
- More than just numbers – The interdisciplinary degree combines “public policy, public administration, ethics, government accounting, and auditing.”
- Quality instruction – Instructors include former New Jersey State Auditor Rick Fair and Dean Michael Mead, senior research manager at the Governmental Accounting Standards Board.
- Valuable connections – Rutgers “works hard to build connections with local, state and federal employers who can provide job opportunities and advancement to students and graduates.”
- Uniquely accessible – The online program means “you can benefit from the quality of instruction and the Rutgers connections … no matter where you are.”
You can read more about the RBS program here.
5G mobile Communication in China: From Imitator to Innovator – Johnson Business Feed
Baohong Li, an Associate Professor at the School of Economics and Management at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, and visiting scholar at the Emerging Marketing Institute, recently wrote a piece for the Cornell Johnson Businessfeed, in which they discussed China’s incredibly rapid mobile technology advancement and the future of 5G connectivity.
Specifically, Li laid out five reasons why China has an vastly important role in the implementation of 5G, including:
- Institutional innovation and reform
- Strategic planning and policy innovation
- Imitating innovation and gaining advantage
- Encouraging patent and international standardization
- Creating co-opetition innovation ecosystem
Click here for a more in-depth review of Li’s work.
Improv, Luxuries, and Napoleon: Check out These 10 Unique MBA Courses
Business can often be unfairly characterized as a dry field. But not every business school course fits the stereotype. Check out these 10 unique and interesting MBA electives.
Napoleon’s Glance
Columbia Business School offers this fascinating course in strategic intuition. The curriculum uses the teachings of early strategy literature as its foundation, though the bulk of readings and lectures are based on the content of two contemporary books on the subject: Napoleon’s Glance and The Art of What Works. William Duggan, the author of both books, leads the course. Duggan is a strategy expert and won the Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence in 2014.
Food and Agribusiness
This Harvard Business School course allows MBA’s to delve into the study of the global food industry. This course is helpful for B-schoolers specifically seeking a career in agriculture, or simply those pursuing consulting or investment banking, since the food industry is so expansive. The course explores the nuances of agribusiness, including how the once strictly local industry has become increasingly globalized.
Luxury Marketing
Another eyebrow-raising Harvard Business School course, Luxury Marketing helps students understand the nuances of luxury brand management. Specifically, the class will be structured in terms of three larger topics: The art of creating luxury brand equity, understanding the luxury sector, and the future of luxury. The course has seen lecturers like world-famous fashion blogger Chiara Ferragni.
HBS doesn’t just offer traditional MBA courses. Students interested in the finer things can also study Luxury Marketing.
Improvisational Leadership: In the Moment Leadership Skills
Improv as a means of facilitating team building and creative thinking is a growing trend in business. That’s why MIT’s Sloan School of Management offers an entire course on improv in business. The first two weeks essentially function like an Improv 101 course, with students learning the fundamental principles of improvisational performance. The subsequent four weeks focus on application, allowing students to practice applying improv principles to real-world business decisions.
Sure, it’s not Second City, so don’t expect students to make a Comedy Bang! Bang! appearance any time soon, but the course can help one develop skills not actively taught at most other business schools.
Leveraging Neuroscience for Business Impact
At University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, the faculty understands the value of understanding the human brain in honing business acumen. This course demonstrates just that, as it educates MBA’s in the most recent neuroscience breakthroughs and how this information can be used to predict consumer behavior, manage employees, build teams, and enhance workplace productivity, as well as honing leadership skills.
Next Gen Fashion Retail
Though clothing fads aren’t the first thing people usually associate with MBA education, fashion is its own industry, and a cutthroat one at that. As part of its Luxury and Fashion MBA, New York University’s Stern School of Business offers a course on the future of fashion retail. In this course, students learn about the ever changing fashion landscape and the challenges that lie ahead as the internet cuts out the middleman between brand and customer.
Creativity
Though analytical thinking is important for many aspects of business, creativity is the driving force behind most innovation and problem-solving. NYU Stern’s Creativity class nurtures students’ potential for true out-of-the-box thinking in both work and life. MBA’s learn about the science of creativity and experiment with different creative approaches to problems.
Nobel Thinking
In the Nobel Thinking course at London Business School, students use actual Nobel Prize-winning topics to explore what makes a groundbreaking idea and how to emulate the type of thinking that leads to real breakthroughs. Each session chooses a topic, led by a faculty member, and explores the idea, motivations, and contributions that led to the Nobel award. The elective makes full use of LBS’s notable faculty as well as a number of guest lecturers.
The Nobel Thinking course at LBS utilizes the school’s vast array of celebrated guest lecturers.
Self Awareness
London Business School also offers a Self Awareness course that helps B-schoolers learn about themselves, and their own needs and motivations. Though studying self awareness may seem more like therapy than school, more and more MBA programs are emphasizing the value of authenticity in business. Relationships are essential in business, and the Self Awareness elective trains students to understand how they are perceived by others, so they can build connections and trust as they navigate their industry.
Cleantech to Market
At UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, MBA’s who take the Cleantech to Market course get to team up with scientists from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to work on marketing advances in in solar, biofuel, battery, and smart grid/energy management tech. Business students help scientists commercialize the latest advances in sustainability.
The UC Berkeley Haas School of Business Cleantech to Market bridges the talent’s of the schools MBA candidates and scientists from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Best MBA Internship Opportunities in the Northeast
There’s no doubt that summer internships play a critical role in an MBA student’s education and career. Not only do internships provide students with the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in the workforce, but they’re also known for helping students develop professional connections and earn top-tier salaries.
But not all internships are made equal, especially for talented business school prospects. For example, working at Apple would likely have a very different effect on an MBA’s resume than working for a small, unknown startup company down the street. And if you’re looking at the top cities across the U.S. where companies actively recruit talent, you can’t go wrong with Boston, New York City, or Philadelphia for your location. But which is the best?
In this article, we highlight the top internship destinations in each city along with the top two schools in each area that will get you where you want. Continue reading…
Yankees Draft Stevens Finance Student, and More – New York News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from New York business schools this week.
From Ducks to a Dynasty: Yankees Draft Stevens Ace, a Star on Field and in Business Classes – Stevens Institute of Technology News
For the first time in nearly half a century, a student from the Stevens Institute of Technology was selected in the MLB Draft.
Charlie Ruegger, a junior in the school’s Quantitative Finance program, was drafted by the New York Yankees in the latter rounds of the 2018 draft, going in the 33rd round, 997th overall. In the midst of a demanding QF course load, Ruegger managed to earn Pitcher of the Year honors in the Empire 8 Conference with an 8-2 record. Stevens Ducks coach Kristaps Aldins prepared Ruegger “for the professional scouts who traveled to Dobbleaar Field to watch the Ducks and their star pitcher in action.”
Ruegger notes, “I learned to not overthink or try to do something I wouldn’t ordinarily do just because scouts are watching. You have to stay within yourself and keep your focus.”
While Ruegger’s focus turns to the Yankees, he is still very much interested in pursuing a QF career down the line.
“The professional minor-league life can be long and taxing. It’s important to me that, when the time is right, I can walk away from playing baseball and be able to move right into the business world.”
You can read the full article here.
Putting a Business Idea to the Test – Rutgers Business School Blog
The Rutgers Business School‘s Sulis team, whose innovative solar-powered water purification system recently swept the Hult Prize regional competition, is now crowdfunding to “pilot the business in India this summer.”
Team member Anurag Modak was the catalyst for the idea, which he hoped would “address the global issue of water scarcity through technology.”
The article notes that the Sulis team hopes to “market the technology to parts of the world plagued by inadequate water supplies or lacking adequate water purification.”
You can read the full article here and learn more about Sulis and the team’s crowdfunding campaign here.
Professor Anindya Ghose Comments on Facebook’s Effectiveness as a Crowdfunding Platform – NYU Stern News
The Wall Street Journal recently interviewed NYU Stern Professor of Marketing and IOMS Anindya Ghose about value of Facebook as a platform to get the word out about crowdfunding initiatives.
“An average Facebook user logs in multiple times a day… and if [the campaign] is right up in your face every time you log in, the probability you see it is high. So, I give a lot of credit to a platform like Facebook for amplifying content like this.'”
You can read the full Wall Street Journal article here (paywall).
Columbia Finds Surprises That Hurt Advertisers, and More – New York City News
What’s going on in New York business schools this week?
Study by Columbia Business School Finds Search Tools Like Broad Match Can Hurt Advertisers More Than It Helps – Columbia Business School Blog
New research co-authored by Columbia Business School associate professor of business Kinshuk Jerath calls into question the efficacy of search tools like broad match, which automate the process of “figuring out all the possible keywords that consumers might search for.”
According to the article, paid search ad spending will reach nearly $40 billion in the U.S. alone by 2019. Jerath writes, “Tools like broad match have led to too many advertisers competing over the same keywords, because now bidding on keywords is so easy. The result is that the search engines are actually the only real winners.”
In a paper entitled Keyword Management Costs and “Broad Match” in Sponsored Search Advertising, Jerath and co-authors Wilfred Amaldoss from Duke Fuqua and Amin Sayedi of UW Foster found that “broad match is only effective to a point, a threshold driven largely by the accuracy of broad match that is controlled by the search engine, not the advertiser.”
“Anything that makes advertising cheaper creates more competition—and can ultimately hurt your return on investment. “
You can read more of the research here.
Deloitte CEO Cathy Engelbert to Lehigh Graduates: ‘Do What Hasn’t Been Done’ – Lehigh College Business and Economics Blog
Deloitte CEO Cathy Engelbert, Lehigh College Business and Economics ’86 graduate, used her recent commencement address to share three life lessons that stressed to graduates of Lehigh’s 150th Class the importance of “always remembering what matters to them most.”
Engelbert advised students to “do what hasn’t been done” and “find creative, impactful ways of using new technologies for good.” She said, “I encourage you to stay optimistic and play an active, key role in carving the path leveraging your uniquely human skills—like creativity, empathy, communication, and complex problem-solving.”
Her second piece of advice was to “schedule your personal updates,” just as one might update “various devices to ensure they are operating at peak performance.”
Engelbert’s third and “most important” lesson was to “stay anchored on what matters to you most.”
“I’m sure many of you have a purpose you’re passionate about. That doesn’t end today with graduation. You can carry that through whatever you’re going to do next … from graduate school to entering the workforce. There’s a push to come together as social issues grow in depth, severity and priority. I challenge you to take a bold stance and make a difference in your day-to-day work.”
Read the full commencement report here and footage from the ceremony below.
Professor Scott Galloway discusses how Walmart is positioning itself to compete with Amazon – NYU Stern News
NYU Stern School of Business professor of marketing Scott Galloway was recently interviewed as part of a CNNMoney piece on Walmart’s plan to take on Amazon as the country’s preeminent universal retailer, particularly when it comes to online grocery delivery. Galloway writes:
“Walmart is the only firm that has the management, capital and the scale to compete with Amazon. They’ve probably done as good a job of getting off their heels and on their toes as any retailer in the world.”
You can read the full story here.
June MBA Deadlines You Need to Know
Don’t be left behind, and get a jump on the MBA application process this June! Here’s your guide to this month’s MBA admissions deadlines in our top metros. Continue reading…
