This 2nd-year International Business bachelor's course is aimed at discussing in an integrative manner how a supply chain makes available the products and services that marketers have promised to consumers. Marketing research is an essential first step for understanding customers demand and needs. The MRP, therefore, is an essential part of the course – within 7 weeks students learn about the principles of marketing research and get to design as well as implement full-blown marketing research to examine an SCM-related problem from a consumer point of view. The generated insights are then used to develop concrete and managerially relevant recommendations for optimizing and streamlining SCM processes.

After a successful first edition last year, Zalando decided to let our students work on yet another managerial challenge they are currently facing: the European fashion online retailer would like to know what kind of additional benefits to offer around its new service Zalando Plus to attract more customers. Currently rolled out in Germany and Switzerland, Zalando Plus is an all-round service tailored to their needs and includes elements such as exclusive offerings, premium delivery, easy return handling, and personal style advice. Zalando intends to integrate the insights provided by the students when rolling out the service to more markets across Europe.

Christian Klein, Operations Manager Process Management, introduced the management challenge in the opening lecture of the course. Throughout the course, 39 student teams across 12 tutorial groups were busy with translating the management challenge into a researchable problem statement, identifying relevant research questions, developing an appropriate research design, collecting data by means of an online survey, analysing gathered data in SPSS, and interpreting the research results to formulate recommendations for Zalando. Congratulations to the winning team composed of Indrė Butaitė, Melle Evers, Julien Marro, and Luisa Wortmann.