The Google online marketing challenge and research opportunities

The Google Online Marketing Challenge is an ongoing collaboration between Google and academics, to give students experiential learning. The Challenge gives student teams US$200 in AdWords, Google’s flagship advertising product, to develop online marketing campaigns for actual businesses. The end result is an engaging in-class exercise that provides students and professors with an exciting and pedagogically rigorous competition. Results from surveys at the end of the Challenge reveal positive appraisals from the three—students, businesses, and professors—main constituents; general agreement between students and instructors regarding learning outcomes; and a few points of difference between students and instructors. In addition to describing the Challenge and its outcomes, this article reviews the postparticipation questionnaires and subsequent datasets. The questionnaires and results are publicly available, and this article invites educators to mine the datasets, share their results, and offer suggestions for future iterations of the Challenge.

Action learning of online marketing via a global contest

Introduction: The Google Online Marketing Challenge is a global competition in which student teams run advertising campaigns for small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) using AdWords, Google’s text-based advertisements. In 2008, its inaugural year, over 8,000 students and 300 instructors from 47 countries representing over 200 schools participated. The Challenge ran in undergraduate and graduate classes in disciplines such as marketing, tourism, advertising, communication and information systems. Combining advertising and education, the Challenge gives student hands-on experience in the increasingly important field of online marketing, engages them with local businesses and motivates them through the thrill of a global competition. Student teams receive US$200 in AdWords credits, Google’s premier advertising product that offers cost-per-click advertisements. The teams then recruit and work with a local business to devise an effective online marketing campaign. Students first outline a strategy, run a series of campaigns, and provide their business with recommendations to improve their online marketing. Teams submit two written reports for judging by 14 academics in eight countries. In addition, Google AdWords experts judge teams on their campaign statistics such as success metrics and account management. Rather than a marketing simulation against a computer or hypothetical marketing plans for hypothetical businesses, the Challenges has student teams develop and manage real online advertising campaigns for their clients and compete against peers globally.

The Google Online Marketing Challenge: A Transnational Comparison of Classroom Learning with Real Clients, Real Money, and Real Advertising Campaigns

In 2008, a collaborative partnership between Google and academia launched the Google Online Marketing Challenge (hereinafter Google Challenge), perhaps the world’s largest in-class competition for higher education students. In just two years, almost 20,000 students from 58 countries participated in the Google Challenge. The Challenge gives undergraduate and graduate students hands-on experience with the world’s fastest growing advertising mechanism, search engine advertising. Funded by Google, students develop an advertising campaign for a small to medium sized enterprise and manage the campaign over three consecutive weeks using the Google AdWords platform. This article explores the Challenge as an innovative pedagogical tool for marketing educators. Based on the experiences of three instructors in Australia, Canada and the United States, this case study discusses the opportunities and challenges of integrating this dynamic problem-based learning approach into the classroom.

Effectiveness of online marketing tools

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

A Study Of The Marketing Channels Of Natural Rubber With Special Reference To Co-Operative Marketing In Kerala

The study is designed to gather, record, analyse and critically evaluate data on natural rubber production, consumption and marketing in Kerala. The scope of the study also covers the processing of natural rubber by rubber growers, especially small growers. Taking into consideration Kerala’s supremacy in natural rubber cultivation, a detailed study of marketing channels of natural rubber in Kerala, by giving special reference to co-operative rubber marketing has been given importance. Attempt has also been made to collect secondary data of the last 15 years

Structure of marketing channels of selected manufacturing industries in Kerala

The study evolved from the basic premise that the existing distribution structure is not adequate or adaptive to meet the needs of the expanding manufacturing sector and the emerging mass market. The hypothised causes of the problem are the following: marketing channels are not used for strategy differentiation by manufacturers: there are too many intermediaries in the channels; the distributive institutions are not adaptive; and there is very little control over the flow of products through the channels. These assumptions about the causes of the problem have been translated into specific hypotheses and tested with data. Empirical analysis, while supporting some of these hypotheses, challenges certain widely held notions. The ensuing summary presents the important findings, in the sequence in which they are discussed in the study.

Marketing Channels in Ornamental Fish Trade in West Bengal

A lucrative export market and high domestic demand has made ornamental fish industry in West Bengal a potential source for income generation. The study aimed to identify: (i) the commercially important size groups of main ornamental fish varieties available in the state; (ii) the existing supply chain; (iii) major constraints for development of the industry; (iv) and to anlayse price spread of commercially important varieties; and (v) to evaluate the profitability of operation at different stakeholder levels in the marketing chain. Export market of ornamental fishes in the state followed a single supply channel while three different distribution channels existed in the domestic market. High electricity charges was the major problem faced by breeders (producers/rearers) whereas lack of technical knowledge regarding transportation was the major constraint for wholesalers. Lack of knowledge on proper health management inhibited the growth of retail industry. The fresh water catfish, angel, molly, arowana, gold fish, tetras, and gouramis showed comparatively higher breeders’ share in consumers’ rupee. Wholesalers were earning comparatively higher annual profit than the other stakeholders due to moderate initial investment and also due to the comparatively lower risk involved.

A model of web use in direct and online marketing strategy

There has been less than a decade of rapid diffusion of the Internet and related technologies into the commercial world, with resultant changes in business processes, business structure and financial valuations of adopting businesses. Advocates and critics of new online business models are still addressing the relationship between online or electronic marketing using the Internet (Net) and marketing and financial outcomes. There remains a need for empirical research into specific aspects of online marketing strategy beyond click-through analysis, Web audience analysis and scrutiny of website properties to mention the most widely examined elements. This paper discusses conceptualizations underpinning development of a model of Web use in marketing strategy. The aim of the paper is to aid both business practitioner and academician alike in connecting direct and online marketing using the Web with performance outcomes

Small business peceptions of online marketing research

Concerns over the overall cost of marketing research and the cost per usable response have in large measure caused marketing practitioners to turn to online marketing research techniques, either as a solus technique, or in a mixed mode application. However, the use of e-mail and mixed mode surveys such as postal invitations to complete online questionnaires present both familiar and new issues, as the extant literature illustrates. This paper examines an earlier study before reporting findings from the present study, which employs a method that ascertains the probability of commissioning and/or responding to four survey research methods, described in scenarios and delivered using e-mail and the World Wide Web (Web). It is evident that while perceptions of e-mail, the Internet, and privacy have changed since early use of the Internet and more particularly the World Wide Web, and there is acknowledgment in the literature concerning the lower costs and faster response speeds of online marketing research, small businesses do appear to discriminate in favour of targeted online survey methods over postal surveys, portrayed as scenarios in this study. They indicate a greater likelihood of responding to targeted, hybrid email/Web surveys than traditional postal surveys.

An exploration of the marketing readiness of websites

The aim of the reported study was to assess the marketing readiness of websites using a tool developed from studies in the late 1990s. The research hypotheses suggest that, in line with earlier studies, government websites are more marketing ready than commercial service organisation sites in Australia. The paper reports findings that commercial service organisation websites are not as marketing ready as might be expected. The research hypotheses are partially supported in that Victorian local government websites show evidence of more sophisticated marketing capability than those of commercial service organisations in Australia and that the service organisations sampled are less likely to employ the Web as a marketing channel than local government.