Students in Professor Zhu Zhu\u2019s business consulting experience course were chugging toward the finish line of their MBA program, they had an opportunity to apply the knowledge they\u2019d acquired to a real-world project by consulting to one of the nation\u2019s largest insurance companies. \u201cWe have this relationship with Prudential, and I figured it would look good on my students\u2019 CV, so we worked with them,\u201d says Zhu, associate professor, Department of Management, Feliciano School of Business.<\/p>\n
The goal of the project was to drum up excitement for Prudential\u2019s life insurance packages with individuals from Gen Z, most of whom aren\u2019t actively shopping for life insurance. \u201cThat\u2019s always been an issue with insurance companies, getting young people to think about life insurance,\u201d says Zhu. \u201cMy MBA students were tasked with figuring out what would help Prudential with this problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
To provide her students insight into the insurance industry, Zhu designed assignments in which they interviewed seasoned insurance veterans to assess Gen Z\u2019s life insurance knowledge and needs. They analyzed and compared the offerings of Prudential\u2019s key competitors to those of Prudential and generated a set of reports. \u201cThey did a lot of analysis before they could make a recommendation to Prudential,\u201d says Zhu.<\/p>\n
Students then developed marketing campaigns for three distinct personas and presented their top ideas to a small team of Prudential executives. So impressed with the presentations was Prudential\u2019s CMO, Phillip Edwards, he asked Zhu\u2019s students to present their ideas to the entire Prudential marketing team. \u201cThis was a really good networking opportunity for my students. They got to know a lot of people who work at Prudential. Hopefully they can even get job offers,\u201d says Zhu.<\/p>\n
As a scholar, Zhu is adept at obtaining useful information from a variety of databases, as are her graduate students. Undergraduate students, however, tend to be intimidated by data. \u201cThey see research articles and they\u2019re confused and scared,\u201d says Zhu. To allay their fears, she demystifies the research process by sharing her research methodology with students and helps them find a passion for asking questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Students in Professor Zhu Zhu\u2019s business consulting experience course were chugging toward the finish line of their MBA program, they had an opportunity to apply the knowledge they\u2019d acquired to a real-world project by consulting to one of the nation\u2019s largest insurance companies. \u201cWe have this relationship with Prudential, and I figured it would look […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":359,"featured_media":3974,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-management"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/359"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3973"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3975,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3973\/revisions\/3975"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}