Four students from the business department won $1,000 scholarships for a strategic proposal they designed for Target.

Last semester, business strategy classes spent the semester developing strategic proposals for the company's home goods department.

"We had to propose something for Target to implement to increase sales and come out on top of their competition," said Sarah Kuhlmann, senior in marketing and management.

Kuhlmann, one of the team members of the winning group, along with Carson Coffman, senior in marketing; Nate Kohake, senior in finance; and Katrina Cotter, senior in marketing, proposed selling Behr paint.

Target was looking for a viable proposal. Kuhlmann said Behr had the right quality and was also cheap enough to compete with other stores. Colors for the paint would match products that Target currently sells in the home goods department.

"We picked paint because Target does a really good job in their home decor department." Kohake said.

The proposal was worth a test grade, but the quantity of work the students needed to put into the project took a large amount of time. Coffman said the group had weekly meetings, but, as the strategic proposal slowly reached its conclusion, meeting frequency increased.
The project required detail, and the group had to do an entire financial analysis of its proposal. The students picked 10 test cities where home building was high. Then they determined how much it would cost to pay for employees, paint and shipping of the paint.

Marne Arthaud-Day, assistant professor in management, also suggested Web sites that would help the group conduct market research on its product.  

Since there were about 80 people competing for these scholarships, the different groups had to come up with ideas that would give them an edge.

The winning group created a logo for the paint department by coloring the white part of the Target bull's-eye with rainbow colors and making the inside dot look like a red version of Earth. Underneath the logo, Target's slogan was amended to become, "Expect more, pay less, color your world."

To advance in the competition, groups first had to present to their professor and several graduate students. The winning group wore red and white clothing, and put its logo on paintbrushes that the students gave to the judges.

The "color your world" group was picked along with four other finalists to present to Target executives, and the group won, although Target has no plans to implement the idea.

"I think we just knew a lot about the company; I think that's what they liked," Coffman said. "That's what they told us, that we really knew and had researched Target."