Company Project Work | BBS Bologna Business Management | Retail Management and E-Commerce

15 July 2022

The Master Business Management includes a curricular activity that Professor Angelo Manaresi, Master’s Scientific Director, and Professor Barbara Lorenzini, marketing expert, and lecturer in the Master’s program, have designed and attached to the classroom courses: the Company Project Work.

The core of the project is the will to make it easier for the students to get into the business world, supported by company executives and teachers: three challenges proposed by leading companies, and three real cases which the students have to work on during four weeks with the aim of developing skills, such as the ability to work in a team, negotiating, and presenting their results. Essential skills in the working world that only a practical course can guarantee.

For the Retail Management and E-Commerce track, the second project of the year came to a close on Wednesday 29^th of June at Villa Guastavillani. The students met Roadhouse Grill of the Cremonini Group, a brand operating in Italy with several steakhouses in the territory and in the delivery branch, characterized by offering grilled meats. The challenge for the students: is to engage the young people of Generation Z in terms of loyalty to Roadhouse and BillyTacos, the group’s new format inspired by Mexican cuisine.

For the Roadhouse brand, the work of the first team started with benchmarking research, analyzing best practices on the dynamics of acquiring new customers through Apps and digital channels, and finally proposing engagement strategies and evolutions of the community through new trends and possible partnerships. The students provided a wide range of suggestions: from the use of augmented reality in marketing (in the US Pizza Hut, Oreo, and McDonald’s), to partnerships with Buddyfit, a home workout App, with the aim of engaging the sports community. From competitions to win concert tickets, to the creation of a virtual reality section in the App with the Roadhouse story and thematic games with weekly national rankings. In addition, co-marketing with Calimoto, an itinerary app for motorcyclists, with the involvement of influencers (YouTubers dedicated to the world of motorbikes) and Fortnite, a company with a turnover of 5.8 billion in 2021, to connect with the gaming world.

The team that worked on BillyTacos studied competitors such as Tacobell and Mcdonald’s and the key players in digital communication through apps. After defining some communication guidelines for the GenZ youth (tone of voice, identifiable hashtags, eye-catching colors) and examining the competitors’ apps (gamification, point collection, event calendar), the students unleashed their creativity, launching into the metaverse. The team suggested creating scheduled events on a digital platform, selling exclusive NFTs for online and in-store meeting tickets, and creating delivery catering in connection with events. It deepened the analysis of the different social channels, with influencers suitable for the different platforms, and designed an App with events, menus, bookings to get loyalty points, QRcode loyalty cards and wallets to charge credit, geocaching to offer promotions. It devised potential collaborations with the fashion world through the sale of items produced in partnership BillyTacos + fashion brands exclusively through the App, with in-store pick-up and giveaways of tacos to promote the in-store shops.

This was a very detailed and creative project work, which involved Roadhouse executives, who were interested in the ideas offered and spoke to the class after the two presentations.

Another objective of the Company Project Work is to give students the opportunity to meet, during their year of study, companies that could become the location of their stage. MGIncontri was also designed with this in mind: informal meetings after class time with managers describing their companies and former students talking about their experiences.

By combining lectures, Project Work, and MGIncontri, as well as a transversal Master Project, aimed at simulating the creation of a start-up whose mission, vision, projects, and actual Business Plan are to be presented at the end of the course, the Business Management Master’s program aims to transform the classic university Master’s course into a real pathway into the business world.