Five members of Howell High School’s marketing club, DECA, will compete at the DECA state competition March 11 – 13, 2016 at Cobo Hall in Detroit. The students qualified based on their scores at a district event held in January. The students who qualified for the state competition are Holly Goad, Ruth Kemppainem, Andrew Lindlbauer, Joe Minor and Madyson Woods.
DECA is a marketing club that allows high school students who are interested in pursuing a career in business an opportunity to explore several different areas of the business world such as marketing, finance and management. At competitive events, DECA members are presented with a real-world scenario that they must apply their knowledge of business and marketing to. Students are given 10 minutes to prepare a short presentation in response to their given scenario which is then presented to a judge.
“Going into the competition, you do not have any prep other than what you learned in the classroom. Your goal is to apply your knowledge to a real world scenario. You are given 10 minutes to take notes and prepare a presentation on how to properly handle the situation,” said Goad, Howell High School DECA president. “The judge scores you on how adequately you met the criteria and how well you handled the situation. It is great for preparing you for these real world scenarios that can and will happen once you get a business career.”
At the district event, Goad was given a retail merchandising scenario where she had to create a marketing strategy to help a major discount retailer reach a younger demographic. Lindlbauer was given a quick serve restaurant management challenge where he had to create a customer loyalty program for a hamburger restaurant. Other categories at the district competition included marketing management, business finance, food marketing, automotive services marketing and human resources management.
Before the state competition, students must complete an online test relating to their area of study and at the competition; they will be given another scenario that they must present a solution to. The top scoring students at the state competition will advance to the DECA International Career Development Conference in Nashville Tenn. in April.
