Product Competitor Analysis for First-Year Engineering Students

This paper presented a learning model for product competitor analysis to first-year engineering students. Students were assigned to watch a video which contained an example before class. In a 45-minutes allotted class time, students were grouped, on-site or online, and assigned to complete an exercise on the product and direct competitor of their choice. The exercise focused on the 4Ps model for marketing implementation - product, price, place, and promotion - of the product and competitor and concluded with the strength, weakness, and unique value proposition of the product. The works were usually rough but acceptable. Students were generally satisfied and 86% found the exercise at least useful in the subsequent design thinking projects. In the future, the ChatGPT could be used to increase the working speed and, thus, reduced the most common complaint of insufficient time while increasing the work quality.