Incorporating Online Auction Selling in an Agribusiness Capstone Course

NACTA Journal, Mar 2007 by Torok, Steven J

Abstract

Adopting online auction selling in an agribusiness capstone course provides students with actual hands-on experience in making agribusiness management and marketing decisions like those faced by brick and mortar agribusiness manufacturers/retailers. The objectives of this paper are to: 1) identify various management and marketing decisions faced by online auction student sellers; 2) provide a brief discussion of the associated business and/or economic decisions that need to be made; 3) identify agribusiness teaching principles associated with student seller decisions; 4) provide suggestions for incorporating online auction selling in an agribusiness capstone course; and 5) provide a discussion of the instructor and student resource constraints. Resource constraints associated with incorporating online auction selling in an agribusiness capstone course are minimal and the benefits to students and agribusiness departments may be considerable.

Introduction

Capstone courses in agribusiness curricula often integrate management and marketing principles and strategic decision-making faced by the firm (Hall et al., 2003). case studies and business simulations are frequently used (Arellano, 2001; Hall et al., 2003) in agribusiness capstone courses to teach and analyze management and marketing decision-making. However, case studies and business simulations often do not allow students to gain valuable hands-on agribusiness decision-making experience that can help "a student to acquire knowledge and skills outside of books and lectures" (Apple Learning Interchange, p. 1, 2003).

Incorporating a hands-on teaching environment in an agribusiness capstone course can be challenging. One example of incorporating hands-on experience in an agribusiness capstone course is the adoption of real world projects (Curtin University of Technology, 2006). However, the identification of suitable agribusiness real-world projects can be challenging. An alternative is the participation of students in an online auction. Selling in an online auction can provide a structured laboratory experience built around the multi-step process typically found in online auctions. Moreover, selling in an online auction can appeal to students who are part of a tech savvy generation who use electronic equipment (e. g., personal computers, cell phones and digital cameras) on a daily basis. Students may also find that the opportunity to make money from selling in an online auction is a financially rewarding entrepreneurial exercise and this may be an incentive for students to improve or enhance their management and marketing decision skills.

Selling in an online auction involves many of the common management and marketing decisions faced by agribusiness managers, for example: identification of a target customer; market research; information search decisions; maximization of search engine ranking; development of labeling and advertising strategies; pricing strategies; considerations of risk in decision making; insurance purchase decisions; marginal revenue/cost decisions; logistic management decisions; and customer service considerations. These management and marketing decisions closely resemble decisions made by many brick and mortar agribusiness retailers and manufacturers. Moreover, these management and marketing decisions are commonly addressed in case studies and business simulations. Hence, an instructor can identify a particular management or marketing decision in an online auction and then use case studies or business simulations to help students better understand or analyze the particular management/marketing decision in more detail and/or in different contexts. This integration of case studies and/or business simulations with online auction selling provides a robust learning environment that includes hands-on participation by students.

Providing information to assist agribusiness instructors in incorporating online auction selling by students, in an agribusiness capstone course, is the focus of this paper. Specifically the objectives of this paper are to: 1) identify various management and marketing decisions faced by online auction student sellers; 2) provide a brief discussion of the associated business and/or economic decisions that need to be made by student sellers; 3) identify agribusiness teaching principles associated with student seller decisions; 4) provide suggestions for incorporating online auction selling in an agribusiness capstone course; and 5) provide a discussion of the instructor and student resource constraints involved with incorporating online auction selling in an agribusiness capstone course.

Discussion

Online auctions such as Yahoo and eBay (the mention of company or trademark names is for information purposes only and does not represent an endorsement by the author) have many characteristics in common including decisions that need to be made by sellers (eBay.com, 2006a; Yahoo!, 2006). EBay is the largest online auction (Andale, 2006; Stewart, 2004) and most people know someone who has bought or sold on eBay (Lynch, 2003). For these two reasons, eBay will be used as the "model" online auction for identifying and analyzing management/marketing decisions made by student sellers throughout this paper.