PSUC students finalists in marketing event

Five Plattsburgh State students returned to PSUC Wednesday as finalists in the Price Chopper Ultimate Innovation Competition in Schenectady.

Chair of the Marketing and Entrepreneurship department Nancy Church brought her Creativity Process in Marketing class to Price Chopper headquarters April 24 to compete in the finals of the competition.

Seventy-one teams from across the region submitted the basics of their ideas for innovative marketing in a one- to two-page abstract. Eighteen of those teams were selected to be semifinalists and expand their ideas into up to 15 pages.

She said a PSUC team was one of six teams to converge on Price Chopper headquarters for the finals to compete for a chance to win up to $30,000 in prizes for their innovative ideas.

Church said she first heard of the Price Chopper Ultimate Innovation Competition one year ago when she received an email directly from Price Chopper. She introduced it to her Creativity Process in Marketing class and had one team enter the competition. They made it to the 2011 semifinals.

She said she felt that was impressive for the first year of trying the competition.

Church said she liked the competition so much that she made it a part of the class this year.

She said her class was split into 10 teams. Each team handed in the abstract. Four of the teams made it into the semifinals, and only one made it to the finals.

Church said the team that made it to the finals was a very diverse team.

“They came together as a team,” she said. “They worked very hard together.”

PSUC student Amin Ross was one of the members who went to the finals competition.

Ross said though one student came up with the idea his team settled on, all of the students built on it and made it better.

“Teamwork is essential,” he said.

Ross said that while some of the other ideas that were presented by his classmates were interesting, they seemed too futuristic and thus not very realistic.

He said his team asked itself one question:

“How do we make shopping fun?”

Ross said his team decided to make a game.

He said the game will be called “Price Prize” and will consist of a product of the week being hidden somewhere in the store. If shoppers find a product labeled with the price prize tag, they can buy it, log on to Price Chopper’s website and be entered into a competition where they could win some kind of prize.

Ross said he felt his team was prepared for the presentation because the members had a lot of experience giving presentations in their marketing classes.

Ross’ teammate Yuliya Petsyk said she thought the competition felt like a real business proposal.

“We were drilled by their questions,” Petsyk said. “Some of them were very challenging, and they were testing how confident we were in the success of our campaign.”

Church said she hopes to continue with this competition.

“As long as I’m still teaching this class during the spring semester, I’ll do it (the competition),” she said.

Currently, the team is awaiting the official results of the competition. The tentative date for the awards ceremony is May 10.