/PRNewswire/ - DemandTec, Inc. (Nasdaq: DMAN) today announced the start of the Fifth Annual DemandTec Retail Challenge, a math and science scholarship competition. High school seniors across the United States compete to win a monetary scholarship toward the college of their choice and the opportunity to ring the NASDAQ OMX Stock Market closing bell on January 10, 2011 in New York City.

The DemandTec Retail Challenge began as a local math and science scholarship competition in the San Francisco Bay Area and grew to five regional contests by its fourth year. This year, the competition has flourished to a nationwide event with thirteen regional contests, including the San Francisco Bay area, the Boston area, Chicago, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, and New York City. Upon the conclusion of this year's DemandTec Retail Challenge, more than $250,000 in college scholarship money will have been awarded to high school seniors, including more than $100,000 in this year alone.

The Fifth Annual DemandTec Retail Challenge has secured the highest number of corporate sponsors since its establishment, including the generosity of a new regional sponsorship commitment from FreshDirect in addition to previously announced regional sponsors, Deloitte, General Mills, Giant Eagle, Gunderson Dettmer Stough Villeneuve Franklin & Hachigian, Netezza, Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG), RAM Communications, RetailWire, Target Corporation, and Tops Friendly Markets.

"We are excited to participate in the DemandTec Retail Challenge and be given the opportunity to provide students with a taste of how retailers make pricing, inventory, and promotional decisions," said Marc Rubin, Senior Director Pricing & Category Management of FreshDirect.

The competition is conducted through an online business simulation where students are presented with the sales, pricing, merchandising, and inventory history of a hypothetical assortment of retail products for a fictional retailer. The teams are responsible for maximizing profits by making daily pricing and inventory decisions. Using a modified version of DemandTec retail analytic software, students use historical data to create statistical models of consumer behavior and then make decisions each day as they are given additional information. This year, the DemandTec Retail Challenge is also introducing a promotional element whereby students will need to decide whether or not to invest in product promotion. At the end of a two-week simulation, each team's pricing, promotion, and purchase decisions will be evaluated, and the three teams in each region with the highest profits will advance to the Regional Finals, where the winning team will win a college scholarship.

Each Regional winning team will be invited to compete in the Semi-finals round, consisting of a three-hour contest, after which the top ten teams with the highest profits will advance to the Grand Championship round at NASDAQ in New York City for a chance to win a $10,000 college scholarship, sponsored by Netezza. The Grand Championship final teams will analyze a typical retail problem consisting of both qualitative and quantitative elements and will present their findings to a panel of judges representing the field of retail and consumer products analytics in the NASDAQ boardroom.

"In striving to give back to communities in a meaningful way, we continue to expand the DemandTec Retail Challenge scholarship program. Now in the fifth year, the competition has grown leaps and bounds, expanding our competition location footprint by more than 60 percent in one year," said Dan Fishback, President and Chief Executive Officer of DemandTec. "As we continue to grow the competition, we are thankful for the generosity of the 2010 corporate sponsors, making this year's event our biggest yet."

Learn more about the DemandTec Retail Challenge:

Twitter: twitter.com/RetailChallenge

Facebook: facebook.com/DTRetailChallenge

About DemandTec

DemandTec (Nasdaq: DMAN) enables retailers and consumer products companies to optimize merchandising and marketing decisions, individually or collaboratively, to achieve their sales volume, revenue, shopper loyalty, and profitability objectives. DemandTec software services utilize DemandTec's science-based software platform to model and understand consumer behavior. DemandTec customers include more than 230 leading retailers and consumer products manufacturers such as Ahold USA, Best Buy, ConAgra Foods, Delhaize America, General Mills, H-E-B Grocery Co., The Home Depot, Hormel Foods, Monoprix, PETCO, Safeway, Sara Lee, Target, Walmart, and WH Smith. Connected via the DemandTec TradePoint Network™, DemandTec customers have collaborated on more than 3.5 million trade deals. For more information, please visit www.demandtec.com.

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