Yale SOM Students Work with Center for Customer Insights to Complete Consulting Projects for Major Corporations

Each year, a handful of students are chosen by the Yale Center for Customer Insights to collaborate with major corporations to find ways to improve their marketing, brand awareness, and customer relations. Students work closely with YCCI faculty and top leaders from clients such as Visa, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, and Sears, to provide solutions for real-world problems. But how they go about formulating and presenting their ideas is entirely up to the students. This year, students were assigned to work with one of three companies. For Campbell's, they evaluated how social media is being used for marketing purposes and helped chart a way forward for the food producer. For Sears Canada, students developed a social marketing, or cause marketing, campaign as a means for the retailer to tie together its philanthropy in a way that could drive sales in its stores. For IBM, the group helped develop a way to measure insurance claim fraud for one of its divisions. "These are much higher-level questions than MBAs just out of school are asked," said Ravi Dhar, the George Rogers Clark Professor of Marketing and the center's director. "We’re forcing them to go beyond what we’ve taught them. The expectations are very high. It's a discovery process at many levels for the students." To see the video, please click here.