Gage Mauer, one of three Viterbo business students to attend the Midwest Undergraduate Business Summit Oct. 16–18 at the University of Wisconsin School of Business, was a member of a four-person team that won the prestigious Case Competition at the Summit. Hundreds of students representing a number of schools in Wisconsin and several other states attended the event.

Mauer’s team included a student from UW-Parkside and two from the University of Wisconsin.

“It was quite intimidating and we had to present in front of local business executives, UW business faculty, and fellow summit participants,” Maurer said in describing the competition.

The team’s case proposal dealt with the problem of building Target stores in urban, downtown areas, he said. “We had to provide an environmental analysis, figure out which products we would sell in the limited space, create a marketing strategy, and identify why the concept would be successful. Our idea was to propose that consumers would be able to order Target products online and then be able to pick up their purchased items in an underground drive-thru. Our proposal was titled #bigcitylittleTarget which was a theme of our social media marketing strategy. These two concepts were unique and were a large part of why we won the event.”

Other aspects of the summit provided students with the opportunity to network with business executives from large corporations as well as participate in leadership roundtables and professional workshops.