Drowned in Beer - 1st year MBA Case Competition

That title just summed up the kind of effort that went into the MBA case competition over the past weekend. A record 30 student teams(each had 4 students and Fisher's class size is just 141!!)competed for best team, individual speaker and individual Q&A. Winning teams and individuals were to be part of the teams that would be representing Fisher at the Big-Ten & CIBER case competitions as well as various other such events around the world. Enough reasons to set the stage perfectly for what had eventually become to be 2 ultra-competitive days since starting out on my MBA here.

The case revolved around a fictitious beer company which had a stronghold in the Lager sales in the east-central region of the US but was facing a declining overall market. It was now faced with a decision of whether or not to launch into the "light" beer segment and target a new growing market of Gen Y'ers while at the same time trying to revive sales for its main product, the Lager. Some of the issues that the company faced were the competition with industry behemoths viz. Annheuser Busch, Miller etc. , investment/financing decisions in lieu of launching new project & cannibalization / brand erosion of existing product. Obviously, some strategy, some financial analysis and lots of marketing concepts thrown into coming up with our recommendations to the company management.

The whole exercise was exhaustive and some of my peers agreed that the routine for the 2 days was typical of "A day in the life of a management consultant". Nevertheless, it was fun and also, a new experience working with a different team. Well at the end of it all, we did not win and it was surely difficult to digest that given the work that we'd put into the case :(. After we had feedback from the judges and had observed overviews of the winners' presentations, it became very clear that the actual presentation mattered the most simply because most of the teams had similar recommendations and supporting analysis. Giving presentations is definitely one area to work on forever.

Apart from the event, things are pretty much moving smoothly for the quarter. Mid-terms are due in the next two weeks so that should keep me interested. Oh..well!!

RS