SFU undergrads win prestigious marketing prize

SFU Business undergraduate students May Yu and Emily Chua have won top prize in the marketing category at one of Canada’s most prestigious university competitions.

Hosted by Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario and held from January 6-8, the Inter-Collegiate Business Competition (I.C.B.C) is Canada’s premier undergraduate business case competition. In taking top billing, Yu and Chua beat out a staggering 170 preliminary round submissions from 41 leading business schools across Canada and around the world. In the finals, they beat out National University of Singapore, Concordia University, Saint Mary’s University, Memorial University and the University of Regina.

Both SFU students are in their fourth year in the Bachelor of Business Administration program. Yu’s academic focus is in marketing and management information systems, while Chua studies accounting. The student team was coached by Jason Ho, Assistant Professor of Marketing at SFU Business – with additional assistance from PhD student Todd Green.

The case was about a very profitable automotive detailing shop start-up with both business-to-business and business-to-consumer operations. The SFU team’s solution was focused on building the brand equity and leveraging the firm’s competitive advantages before franchising the business model to a select group of franchisees.

“I think our “Go Big or Go Home’ mentality helped us stand out above the rest,” said Yu, who is a Sentinel Secondary School graduate from Vancouver’s North Shore (teammate Chua is a North Surrey Secondary graduate from Surrey).

The internationally-renowned I.C.B.C. competition remains true to its spirit which is to unite, challenge, and enrich undergraduate business students so to empower them to become the leaders of tomorrow. Organizers attribute a 30 year history and decades of success and passion as the underpinning for what they bill as the most prestigious, largest and longest-running undergraduate business case competition in the country.