The national competition challenged teams to create strategic recommendations based on their data analyses for how HanesBrands can win the digital shelf.
An undergraduate team of Elon University students won the 2021 Champion Analytics Case Competition, hosted by Elon’s Center for Organizational Analytics and HanesBrands, owner of Champion athleticwear.
The national competition, held Oct. 21-22, provided teams of undergraduate students with an opportunity to build and demonstrate their data analytics and visualization skills, as well as network with collegiate peers and HanesBrands professionals. In less than a month, teams analyzed a dataset from HanesBrands to identify insights and opportunities for how the company can activate consumers on Champion’s website.
With consumer shopping behavior shifting to online due to the pandemic, teams were asked to create a strategy for how HanesBrands can win the digital shelf – taking a consumer-centric approach to merchandizing the best product available to help drive sales in a digital environment.
Teams presented their analyses and recommendations to a panel of HanesBrands judges, who evaluated the presentations on quality of solution, methodology/modeling and quality of presentation delivery.
Representing Elon were Adam DuBowy ’22, a business analytics and computer science double major, Nina Crocco ’22, a computer science major, and Alex Kisch ’23, a business analytics and computer science double major. Assistant Professor of Economics Tonmoy Islam served as the faculty mentor.
“The Champion Analytics Case Competition was an amazing learning experience,” DuBowy said, who is also a Business Fellow. “I loved being able to utilize the skills I’ve learned in my classes to solve a real-world problem. [Our team] wanted to not just present our findings to the judges, but to give them actionable insights that they could potentially implement within the company.
“Additionally, getting a chance to watch the presentations from the other teams was a great learning experience as I got to see how other teams interpreted and approached the problem and I saw unique ideas that I would love to implement in future case competitions or when doing similar analyses in my future career.”
Teams from Bucknell University, Duke University and North Carolina State University placed second, third and fourth, respectively.
Other participating schools were Appalachian State University, Auburn University, East Tennessee University, Lehigh University and Villanova University.
This is the second year HanesBrands has sponsored a national analytics competition with Elon. The interdisciplinary challenge brought together students from a variety of majors, including math, finance, computer science, information technology, business analytics, supply chain, computer engineering, English, economics and finance.