The Star Search Competition is a business case competition hosted annually, designed to provide an introductory start into the world of business case competitions for the freshmen.  Accepting only 16 teams, the race had begun before the actual competition. In the first meeting, interested teams must run with their team names, racing as fast as possible just to get on the list. It was clear that the spirit of competition was presented in each and every one of us right from that point.

We are a team consisting of Chinnakrit Silakong (Bank), Thanut Jadejunprapa (Mooping), Vacharish Chanasit (Job), and Woragun Wattanasakchai (Gun). In regards to our team name, we call ourselves ?Leopard?, a symbol of courage, enthusiasm and strength. When we were doing our case, looking back on our name gave us the motivation, to strive to live up to it.

This year we were presented with The Body Shop, a corporation struggling to maintain its distinctive brand image and the negative press surrounding it. The case requires a blend of marketing concepts and creativity as well as accounting principles. As we are a team from section 3, we consider ourselves lucky to be able to take these two classes beforehand. They have assisted us tremendously.

We worked as a group, starting from the first aspect of the case, from the company profile right down to the recommendations. We believe that through this, any good ideas would not fall behind.  We believe the key to coming up with recommendations lies in the way we analyze each one in detail. Every presented idea is attacked thoroughly, until we are sure that we did not miss out on any significant flaws. After we worked through the entire process as a group, we assigned each person to a different part, to cover them in detail.

We expected high anxiousness and nervousness on the final day, which is why we practiced over and over again in order to familiarize ourselves with our own presentation. We set up Bank?s stuffed animal collection as our audience. Through them, we practiced eye contact and manners. We also found the 20 minute limit to be very limiting. Our initial timing was over 30 minutes, and we all had to practice 7 times just to get the timing right.

Surprisingly, we were not as nervous as expected. We decided that we have devoted our time and effort into the case, and we would be satisfied no matter the outcome. With this state of mind, we managed to channel our energy into enthusiasm.