Student teams from the University of Westminster competed against the clock in the department store to solve 50 challenges related to sensory marketing, digitalisation, customer experience, sustainability brands and other activities, to further their knowledge of consumer insights.
This experience was coordinated by Lecturer and Course Leader of the School of Management and Marketing, Dr Wei Hutchinson, part-time Visiting Lecturer Vaishnavi Jhawar, and Professor of Marketing, Professor José Luis Ruiz-Alba Robledo.
Professor Ruiz-Alba Robledo has been organising gamified experiences at Selfridges for Westminster Business School students for the past five years, with each event taking place during the first week of December. This year, approximately 25 students took part on 4 December as part of their Discovery Consumer Insights module.
About the experience, Professor Ruiz-Alba Robledo said: “Students met at the clock of Selfridges at the scheduled time and received 50 tasks that they needed to complete in small teams. During the following two hours students addressed marketing challenges across the whole Selfridges store, interacting with brands and employees. This was an opportunity to learn about critical analysis of brands and work with time pressure in a real business setting, while getting into festive spirit of the store.”
Dr Hutchinson added: “I found our recent field trip to Selfridges to be a wonderful opportunity for my students to apply their knowledge in a dynamic real-world setting. Engaging in gamified challenges such as activities involving sensory marketing and sustainability brand analysis, they connected classroom theories to real consumer behaviours. The immersive task-oriented games fostered their creative thinking and problem-solving skills. The students felt more involved and excited due to the gamification approach, which made learning not only more fun and interactive but also made it easier to grasp difficult concepts."
Find out more about courses at the Westminster Business School at the University of Westminster.
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