Sasin MBA Students Bring Value Creation to Life in the Bang Pla Community

Sasin MBA students from countries across four continents took their learning beyond the classroom through a field visit to the Bang Pla community in Samut Sakhon. The visit formed part of the Pricing Strategy course in MBA Module 3/2026 and reflected Sasin’s commitment to action learning by connecting academic knowledge with real-world challenges and meaningful engagement with local communities. The field trip began at Wat Bang Pla, where students learned about the community’s history, the cultural heritage of the Mon (Raman) people, and the local way of life. Accompanied by community members, they then traveled through the area by tram, gaining a deeper understanding of the community’s character and economic activities. Working in small groups, students engaged directly with local subsistence entrepreneurs from five businesses in the community. Through observation and interviews, they explored each business’s products, customers, pricing practices, brand identity, and current challenges. The experience enabled students to examine how value is created and communicated in a grassroots business context, where pricing decisions are closely connected to people’s everyday livelihoods. Under the guidance of Dr. Yupin Patarapongsant, students were encouraged to look beyond price as simply a number. They considered how pricing and value creation strategies could help local entrepreneurs communicate the quality and uniqueness of their offerings while remaining relevant and accessible to their customers. Students also explored opportunities to strengthen the businesses through practical improvements to their identities, logos, menus, product presentation, and customer experience. The visit marked the beginning of an ongoing action-learning process. The information and stories gathered from the entrepreneurs were brought back to the classroom for further analysis and discussion. Each student group developed practical ideas based on the needs and strengths of the business they worked with. These ideas were later presented and translated into tangible outputs to be shared with the participating entrepreneurs. Special thanks to Professor Ian Fenwick, Ph.D. for his support of the project and to Sasin alumnus Tanachai Rueangchaisit for helping facilitate connections with the local community. For such an international class, the Bang Pla visit also provided an important cross-cultural learning experience. Students from different countries were able to experience a Thai community firsthand, listen to local perspectives from the ground up, and collaborate within a social and cultural setting that may have been unfamiliar to many of them. The experience also encouraged students to consider broader ESG-related dimensions within the community context. Ultimately, the Bang Pla field trip demonstrated that meaningful learning does not take place only in the classroom. It also emerges through listening, observing, questioning, and working alongside people in real-world settings. Through this experience, Sasin MBA students began transforming their knowledge of pricing strategy and value creation into practical ideas that can create added value for businesses, communities, and society.