Volume 17, Number 1 Article by Prasad T March, 2005
Mandi: A Field Sales Campaign for Teaching Personal Selling Skills through Experiential Approach :
Given the messy, irrational complexity of management realities, it is a constant challenge for management educators to expose students to real situations while introducing concepts and theories. Kolb's Experiential Learning Model model depicts learning as a cyclic process involving four modes: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation and active experimentation. For the learning process to be effective, the learner necessarily passes through all the four learning modes. Field experience is one way of maximising students' involvement in all these modes.
The teaching of experiential knowledge like personal selling skills can be approached through field experience, which has the advantage of providing concrete experience of the real world, and a tangible context for improving students' understanding of key marketing concepts and principles. In this article, T Prasad describes Mandi, a field exercise conducted by him as part of the 'Principles of Marketing' course at the National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai. The Mandi project involved real selling of merchandise in the market place with the objectives of reinforcing the concepts of marketing, the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviours that are important for successful personal selling, and the dynamics among the product, prospect, and salesperson.
A detailed pedagogy is provided, including a set of learning objectives, expected learning outcomes, debriefing processes, evaluation and limitations. With 63% of the students rating the project excellent and 95% stating that their interest in the subject had increased, it appears that the Mandi project is an effective learning method.
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