Amman- 28 May 2018

On Tuesday 15th May 2018, In cooperation with the Office for Industry Links (OIL) in GJU, Lufthansa Group and GJU’s School of Management and Logistics Sciences (SMLS), a mutual project has been set up, which took place during the second semester 2018. The project aimed to combine theoretical and practical learning by having the students to implement their academic right away in a real, hands-on project for a company, thus exposing the students early to the realities of the labor market (Dual Studies approach).

The project was implemented in two courses, Fundamentals of Marketing and Consumer Behavior, which are taught by Dr. Aziz Madi, Assistant Professor of E-Marketing and Strategy from the Management Sciences Department in SMLS. The students were asked to develop a guerrilla marketing campaign for Lufthansa in the Jordanian market. The groups’ outcomes were evaluated, and the winning project will be implemented under the co-supervision of Lufthansa management and GJU academics. (“Guerrilla marketing” is non-traditional marketing that usually depends on creativity to get consumer’s attention, and is a low budget technique.)

The students made their final presentations with their solutions to the challenge they have been assigned to. The presentations were evaluated by a panel from Lufthansa group and the course instructor.

After the presentations, three winners have been selected and were handed the prizes for their achievements. Mr. Till Heene – Regional Manager of Lufthansa Group, Lebanon – expressed his appreciation of the creativity of the students, stressing the importance of having fresh thinking out of the box that the students are capable of. Also Ms. Josephine El Wazzan - B2C Marketing Manager, North Africa- Near East & Turkey at Lufthansa Group, was very impressed by the performance of the student groups, pointing out their usage of the trendy and up to date techniques in Marketing, and the efforts they have done to study and understand the Jordanian market. Dr. Aziz Madi –pointed to the importance of such cooperation to enhance the educational process, saying that he has performed a couple of similar cooperative projects, and that every time it adds value to the companies, the university, the students and the course.

The student groups presented in total 10 solutions (one solution per group), they all used none traditional methods to demonstrate their ideas, in addition to power point. The group that won the first place with their idea; “The Honey Moon campaign” are:  Fadi Khalil, Hamad Nabulsi, Katia Saba and Vera Abedrabbo. The idea – as expressed by the group “capitalizes on the materialistic trends in selecting honey moon destinations by the youth in the Jordanian society, and provides them with new, exciting, and affordable destinations by Lufthansa while satisfying consumers needs”. The students expressed their satisfaction in the project, describing their learning experience as: “tough but totally worth it”.

The German Jordanian University (GJU) believes that the integration of education and practice is key requirement in today’s modern education systems. The School of Management and Logistics Sciences (SMLS) has always been keen to cooperate with the industry to enhance the educational environment for its students.

T.S