Abstract:

The department of business administration of Münster University of Applied Sciences (MUAS) has a long tradition in realising practice-oriented research projects in cooperation with industry. The objective of these cooperative projects is to offer the students a real-life experience and to make the theoretical know-how of the university lectures more tangible by using it in an actual business case setting.
Affiliated to the department of business administration is the “Science-to-Business Marketing Research Centre” (www.science-marketing.com) whose manager is the author of this paper. The aim of the research centre is to transfer marketing principles to the “research market” in order to improve the relationship between universities and research clients. The research clients addressed are mainly coming from the industry area. The knowledge created by the projects of the Science-to-Business Research Centre Germany is directly incorporated in the educational cooperation projects that are carried out at the department of business administration of MUAS.

In this paper, three best-practice examples for university-industry cooperation in the education of students in the special field of marketing resp. market analysis will be presented:
1. The first project was a study for an international parcel service provider. It was realised with a group of 18 students participating in the study module “International Marketing”. The project used innovative creative techniques and online research methods in order to define the characteristics of the “future parcel”. An own project website was designed and the opportunities of the internet were widely used to detect ideas all over the world. The innovative approach of this project is the usage of the web2.0 for the fulfilment of the project requirements − including blogs, You Tube and e-mails.
2. The second project dealt with the development of a marketing concept for furniture designed for the young generation. The research client of this project was an internationally operating decor printer who among others produces decors for furniture. The special feature of the project was that in this case, a supplier of the furniture industry intended to scout trends of the furniture industry in order to provide the furniture manufacturers with targeted product and communication strategies. The project group was formed of 13 students of the study module “International Marketing”. The innovative approach of the project was the definition of six different youth segments − by characterising exemplary representatives of the segment (e.g. Marie, 12 years, etc.)
3. The third project was a market analysis realised for an international manufacturer of household and garden products. The company was seeking for information on acceptance, quality reception and willingness to pay regarding a specific product range (food storage). The project was conducted with a group of 11 students of the study module “market research”. The specific feature of the project was the realisation of more than 400 face-to-face interviews in different countries.

The paper will highlight the different methodological approaches of the three projects, focusing on their specific innovative features. On the one hand, things that went especially well will be described but also lessons learned from details that went not so well will be presented. In a concise conclusion, the most important results of the projects will be described briefly.

Keywords:

university-industry cooperation, marketing education, collaborative research projects.