Case Study: Teaching secondary students marketing concepts with MixPRO

About The Educational Facility

St. Thomas Aquinas Regional Secondary School is a Catholic independent school offering students courses from Grades 8 to 12 in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, with an enrollment of approximately 630 male and female students.

About Course and Learning Goals

Students are undertaking a Grade 11 secondary school subject, Marketing and Promotion 11, as part of the school's Business Studies curriculum, with most students preparing for entry into postsecondary education. 

The Marketing and Promotion 11 course aims to provide students with an insight into the world of marketing and the key principles behind successful marketing, thereby enabling them to better market themselves and contribute to the marketing efforts of future organizations in which they will be employed. Students learn the key roles of marketing in customer acquisition and retention in public, private and non-profit organizations.  They learn about the 4Ps of Marketing (Product, Price, Place and Promotion), the role of market research and market segmentation techniques, as well as customer buying behaviours. This further extends into branding, brand positioning as well as the role of ethics in marketing from both a national and international perspective.

Their teacher Mr. Phillip Ryan has a postgraduate Master of Marketing and MBA. During his own tertiary studies, he was exposed to the StratX Markstrat marketing simulation software at the Melbourne Business School, University of Melbourne, Australia.

The advantage of the MixPRO simulation is that it integrates all the marketing mix four P’s into a single market simulation where students are required to simultaneously modify each of the 4P attributes in a coordinated manner in order to achieve increasing market share and profitability for their company.

This is the third consecutive year the school has utilised the StratX MixPRO marketing simulation program.

How They Integrated the Simulation

Prior to the introduction of StratX MixPRO, students will have been exposed to several basic simulations during their studies in order to apply and test their newly acquired theoretical knowledge of concepts such as ethical behaviour, product pricing, and distribution options. 

The MixPRO market simulation is only introduced and conducted after students have learned all of the key theoretical frameworks applicable to marketing and additionally prepared their own comprehensive Marketing Plan for a new product or service for an established organization with which they have an interest. 

Students are purposefully placed into pre-allocated MixPRO groups by their teacher based upon an earlier standard personality assessment. The objective is to mix students of varied personalities into groups so that the students learn what it is like to work with other people who have a different personality and mindset approach to both group work and problem solving, in a competitive environment. This additional oversight helps extend the learning experience for all students. 

Students are prepared for the simulation by a lesson of pre-briefings with some additional orientation materials. The simulation is then integrated into the course agenda over five separate sequential lessons of one hour and 15 minutes each over a period of around 10 days.  A collective group decision is required at the end of each lesson. An additional lesson is used for debriefing the final simulation outcomes and overall learnings from the MixPRO simulation exercise

Student Experience and Engagement

Students very quickly become highly engaged with the simulation and highly motivated by the competitive nature of the simulation. It’s interesting to observe students’ group and individual behaviors in a cross-team and between-team environment. Students learn how to collaborate through often lively discussions and decision-making. Groups are required to process their decisions at the end of each lesson. 

Students watch their own group’s performance on the overall performance index and quickly come to realize the integrated aspects of the marketing mix need to be carefully aligned in order to achieve market success.

Students are overall assessed based upon three criteria: 

1. Their incoming knowledge of the key dynamics of the MixPRO marketplace (brands, segments, product modification criteria, price elasticity, budget carry forwards etc.) just prior to commencing the actual simulation after their initial briefing. 
2. Their group’s overall market performance (as measured by OPI). 
3. The ranking of contributions (involvement, attitude, teamwork, input, quality, punctuality) from each group member as assessed by their other individual group members. 

Outcomes and Results

Students learn how to simultaneously modify each of the 4P attributes in a coordinated manner in order to achieve market share and profitability for their company.

Students learn how to collaborate through often lively discussions and decision-making.

Some students very quickly appreciate that simple price cuts don’t necessarily deliver ongoing profitability.

The winning team is acknowledged amongst their peers. Their performance adds to their overall grade in the subject. Group performances of excellence are also acknowledged in the school’s weekly update to parents. In our first year, our winning MixPRO group of secondary students achieved an overall performance score which was in the Top 10% of all MixPRO simulations ever conducted globally amongst university-level students.

We conduct a post-participation student survey of all MixPRO participants in order to assess student enjoyment, realism, main marketing and group dynamics learnings, recommendations for continued usage etc. 

Reflections and Advice

The only challenge so far has been to introduce some university level terminology to Grade 11 students who are just secondary school students prior to commencing the simulation exercise e.g. the finer concepts of distribution margins, unit transfer costs, brand contribution, and terms such as EBT (specifically for those who haven’t as yet studied Accounting).

All secondary marketing teachers across the globe should seriously consider using this specific simulation in their courses because of the learning opportunities and student engagement created by the MixPRO simulation. As a school we have now run the simulation for three years in a row with varying class sizes and we envisage its ongoing usage and benefits. 

We very much appreciate the ongoing support provided to our school by our North American StratX Account Manager, Mr. Michael Crouch based in Massachusetts who has greatly assisted us in both the introduction and implementation of MixPRO in our school.