A group from Gannon University’s Business Policy class presented a new marketing plan for The Knight Club Tuesday afternoon.
The presentation addressed some of the strong points and weaknesses in The Knight Club’s marketing and analyzed the outcomes and student responses to two events held this semester — a showing of the Steelers – Texans game with a hotdog eating contest and a fundraiser for the T.R.A.V.E.L. group going to Germany.
The students in the class concluded that The Knight Club remains popular because of its great food and low prices, but it could increase business by having more activities, increasing its use of social media and extending its hours to be more accessible to commuter students.
A couple of other suggestions included offering a delivery service so The Knight Club doesn’t have to compete with other establishments that offer food delivery and working with first-year seminars to expose freshmen to The Knight Club.
A majority of the students who presented the marketing plan major in accounting. The group’s leader, senior Taylor Shaffer, said the group was introduced to the project about three weeks into the semester. She said from then the group worked on planning the events, the marketing plans and getting together surveys for the events and to receive a general opinion of The Knight Club from the student body.
Shaffer said one of the biggest challenges with the project was handling external communication. Many of the people outside of the group of students who were involved in the project would not always be able to give immediate responses to questions, something that many current students are accustomed to. However, she said on the flip side, it gave the students a chance to experience communication with Gannon’s administration.
“I’ve experienced it from my involvement outside of class, but not many other students have,” Shaffer said. “I think this helped some of the students to realize that working with the administration is pretty easy, in fact it’s a lot like talking to me.”
One of the external resources the group worked with – Sam Hyman, director of The Knight Club – said he would like to pick apart some of the ideas the group had and see if he could make them work.
“One idea I particularly liked was working with the first-year seminar,” Hyman said. “I think that would definitely be worth pursuing.”
Hyman said he also liked the idea of increasing The Knight Club’s use of social media and that he is looking to fill a work-study position specifically made to update The Knight Club’s social media accounts. The Knight Club will also have a student intern in the spring semester of 2015, possibly a couple of internships running concurrently.
Gannon’s Business Policy class has partnered with The Knight Club to create a marketing plan since the spring semester of 2014 and plans to continue to update the marketing plans through the class.
KHADIJA DJELLOULI
