Marketing and Retail News - University of SurreyRNewsletterSummer2012.pdf · recent years. Its research and teaching ... Student hoice _, as part of the sustainability track; Nigel

Marketing and Retail News (Summer 2012) Page 1 www2.surrey.ac.uk/sbs/specialism/marketingandretail/

Summer 2012

Marketing and Retail News The Surrey Business School

http://www2.surrey.ac.uk/sbs/specialism/marketingandretail/

In this issue;

Surrey retail entrepreneurs win digital marketing prize

Professional Training news

A conference round-up

Discover the weapon of choice for the internationalising

retailer

Guest speakers from Energizer, McKinsey, Ted Baker,

and Waitrose

Double Success for Retail

Researchers at the Academy

of Marketing Conference.

Marketing and Retail Group members Professors Andrew

Alexander and Christoph Teller enjoyed a double success

at this year’s Academy of Marketing Conference, held at

the University of Southampton. They were awarded the

best paper award in the Retail Marketing track. The paper

is entitled ‘Store Managers – The Sounding Board in

Shopping Centre Environments?’ It represents research

into the role of store managers as an interface to con-

sumers and thus their potential to inform both retail and

shopping centre management decision-making.

At the conference Andrew and Christoph also learned

that they have been awarded the European Journal of

Marketing / Academy of Marketing Research Initiative

Funding award for their project assessing the boundary

spanning activities of retail store managers. As part of the

award the authors are undertaking an extensive qualita-

tive study focussing on store managers in different types

of shopping centre management environments.

Pictured: Professors Andrew Alexander and Christoph Teller

Greetings….

We are very pleased to present this latest round-up

of activities and news items from the Marketing

and Retail Group. Our academic team has grown in

recent years. Its research and teaching makes a

major contribution to the profile of the Surrey Busi-

ness School and to the wider University. This news-

letter is shared with past, present and future stu-

dents, with our many partners outside of the Uni-

versity and with the wider world, via our website.

It provides a flavour of the work of academic col-

leagues in the team, along with several articles

from our current students and some industry per-

spectives. We would like to thank all of the contrib-

utors to this issue.


The AMA/ACRA Triennial Conference, sponsored jointly by the American Marketing Association Retailing and Pricing SIG and the American Colle-giate Retailing Association, was held April 18th through 21st in Seattle. It is the leading conference focusing on retail (marketing) related research topics in North America. As in previ-

ous years the program was both in-formative and exciting. The list of con-ference chairs (Barry Berman, Hofstra University; Anne Roggeveen, Babson College; Dhruv Grewal, Babson Col-lege; Rodney Runyan, University of Tennessee) read like the who is who in retail and marketing research. In 20 sessions more than 50 presentations (of mostly American retail and mar-keting researchers) revealed cutting edge research insights into topics like shopper marketing, consumer behav-iour, social media, global and cross-cultural retailing, e-tailing, entrepre-neurship and sustainability, human resource management). Furthermore representatives of Starbucks and

Nordstrom (both headquarters are located in Seattle) gave insights into their global operations. Our group was represented by Prof. Christoph Teller. Christoph and his co-authors Dr. Ernst Gittenberger (SME research Austria) and Prof. Peter Schnedlitz (Vienna University of Economics and Busi-ness). They received the best confer-ence paper award for their work on ‘Cognitive Age and Grocery Store Pat-ronage Behaviour of Elderly Shop-pers’. The article discusses the moder-ating effect of self-perceived age di-mensions on the grocery shopping behaviour of consumers 60+. Congrat-ulations to the three of them.

Best paper award

for Surrey researcher in

leading American retail conference

A mini-conference at University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, focusing on entrepreneurship and innovation, corporate governance, internationalisation and sustainability was organised in March 2012 by Jane Hemsley-Brown (Associate Dean International and Reader in Marketing) as part of the University Global Part-nership Network (UGPN).

Academics from Surrey Business School, the Centre for Environ-mental Strategy (FEPS) and Research and Enterprise Support (RES) delivered papers at the three day event which took place from 19 to 22 March. Hosted by University of Sao Paulo, the Surrey academics were joined by speakers from North Caroline State University NCSU), who presented papers on the same research themes.

The Surrey line-up comprised: Professor Reinhard Bachmann who presented a paper entitled “Strategic Management, Or-ganizational Analysis and Comparative Management” as part of the “Internationalisation” track; Dr Jonathan Chenoweth from the Centre for Environmental Strategy (CES) in the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences (FEPS) presented a paper on “Water resources management: sustainable development” based on collaborative work with Professor Graham Miller (Head of the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management); Dr Jane Hemsley-Brown, an expert in the marketing of higher education, presented the findings from funded research on student choice of university entitled: “Green Universities and Student Choice”, as part of the sustainability track; Nigel Biggs, the Entrepreneur in Residence for University of Surrey (based in RES) presented a paper on Entrepreneurship, and also ran a

workshop with USP students on the topic.

The UGPN has already set the dates for the next mini-conference event which will be held at Surrey in September (9th – 13th) and will include the same topics, together with an addi-tional theme: consumer behaviour. There are plans across all the faculties to try and extend the mini-conference to include more cross disciplinary work, which encourages collaboration across faculties as well and to extend the workshop to all the Schools in FBEL. The School of Hospitality and Tourism will be running workshops from 11th September to 13th, and the Surrey Business School intend to plan workshops for the early part of the week: 9th – 11th. This event provides excellent opportuni-ties for colleagues from across the faculty to meet academics from UGPN partner institutions, and to present papers and attend seminars on research related to these themes. Col-leagues from University of Sao Paul and from North Carolina State University have already been invited to participate in what is expected to be a whole week of conference workshops across the faculty and beyond.

A conference session at the University of Sao Paulo

Mini-Conference strengthens research collaboration

http://www.ugpn.org/

http://www.ugpn.org/


The inaugural Colloquium on European Retail Research (CERR)

took place at ESSCA, School of Management, Paris, May 3rd and

4th. The University of Surrey was represented on the organizing

committee of the Colloquium, and Marketing and Retail Group

members (pictured) Andrew Alexander, James Bell, Jason Sit and

Christoph Teller all attended to present their retail research to an

audience drawn from across Europe.

The next CERR is scheduled for 2014 at the University of Bremen.

The CERR organising committee from left: Prof Christoph Teller (Surrey),

Prof Neil Towers (Heriot Watt), Prof Herbet Kotzab (Bremen), Prof Peter

Schnedlitz (Vienna) and Prof Xavier Brusset (ESSCA)

Paris in the Springtime

Andrew

Alexander

James

Bell

Jason Sit Christoph

Teller


Undergraduate programmes in our School all offer the

opportunity to incorporate an industry placement, or

“Professional Training” as we refer to it. Students are

strongly encouraged to include this option in their stud-

ies. It provides a fantastic opportunity for personal and

professional development, along with invaluable insight

to the “real world.” Our Professional Training has been

running for over forty years and makes a major contribu-

tion to the employability of our graduates. During this

time we have been very grateful for the support of nu-

merous industry partners, without whom this would not

be possible. Professional Training places are offered on a

competitive basis and the list of industry hosts is subject

to change over time. Many of our graduates are offered

employment with the businesses that hosted their profes-

sional training.

In 2011-12, over 160 students have been out on profes-

sional training from this School. We have been very

pleased to partner with the organisations you can see on

this page to provide exciting opportunities for our under-

graduates in the Marketing and Retail field. We would

like to acknowledge the longstanding and on-going sup-

port that we receive from the industry.

On the next page, you can read about the experiences of

two of our students (one from the Business Management

programme and the other from Business and Retail Man-

agement) as they approach the end of their professional

training year, spent with Tesco.

More about Professional Training can be found at;

http://www2.surrey.ac.uk/sbs/study/pty/index.htm

Professional Training in 2011-12


“When looking back over the past 12 months at Tesco I can’t believe

how much this year has helped me grow not only in my knowledge in retail but also as a person.

My official job title was Mer-chandising Production Coordina-tor for crisps, snacks, nuts and confectionary. This involved liaising with others around the company from commercial, design, supply change and operations as well as suppliers such PepsiCo, Nestle, Innocent and other well known brands. Together we built ranges and merchandising plans that are reflected in stores. It is incredible to think that my work is shown in over 900 stores across the UK and Republic of Ireland. What people don’t realise is the research detail and precision that goes into every change within Tesco. For the past year it has been my job to focus on introducing key new products

and looking into the way a make it an easy shopping experience for the customer, to make sure they have the right product in the right place at the right time.

This year has allowed me to gain exposure to very influential and important people in and around the business. Throughout my year I have been encouraged to take risks and push myself. I have been involved with the development of new concepts which has influ-enced the way we merchandise convenience shopping. I have also been involved with trialling a new technology called virtual mer-chandising which will change the way we operate as a business in the future. As a result I have had the opportunity to present new projects to commercial directors, and have even had feedback about my work from Philip Clarke (CEO Tesco) himself!

Throughout the year I have met so many diverse people and made such great friends. Going into Tesco it shocked me how one place-ment student could be given such responsibility and have the op-portunity to make a difference, within a business of such magni-tude. This year has made me realise anything can be improved and nothing is perfect, hence why a business like Tesco is continually growing as they are constantly striving for perfection.

Being able to immerse myself in these new challenges has instilled me with the confidence and determination to succeed in my final year. I would recommend that if anyone gets the chance of a place-ment with Tesco, that they grab it with both hands!”

Rosie Goodson

“Amelia and Rosie joined Tesco Space, Range and Merchandising on an 11 month Placement Scheme. From day one we provid-ed them both with an opportunity to understand how the business operates by assigning responsibilities which enabled them to network with other areas of the business. In conjunction with this, their respective line managers worked with them to create Personal Development Plan’s to help them monitor their development during their placement period with the goal that both are invited back for the Graduate Assessment day.

Both Amelia and Rosie have been assets to the team. Their thirst for knowledge and desire to improve the business is refreshing to see. They have both demonstrated tenacity and resilience during some challenging times.

It is rewarding to see how they have both developed during their time at Tesco and know that the skills they have learnt will benefit them when they return to University and in whatever careers they choose. It has been a pleasure to work with them both.”

Steve Collier Lead Grocery Merchandising Manager

“When beginning my placement year at Tesco, it seemed to be an integral part of my degree and an opportunity to develop key skills – little did I know it would be the beginning of a career in retail and develop me as a person to the extent at which it has!

My role within Tesco is a Communications Executive for Space, Range & Merchandising. This entails coordinating and producing all internal communications that inform stores about the Space, Range & Merchandising activity that is happening in stores through various different media. Changes are predominantly communicated through period-

ic brochures that are produced on a monthly basis, with which financial aspects of producing documents externally has to be managed as well as securing sponsorship to recover costs. It is important that all documentation sent to stores is consistent, accurate and relevant for the audience. Therefore my role draws upon many different skills including creativity and attention to detail as well as the ability to network and build strong relation-ships with external stakeholders to achieve the best possible result. Tesco as a business strongly encourages project work along side ‘day job’ to introduce stretch and development of personal skills and this is where I feel this placement is very unique. From an early stage I was supported and sponsored to lead a change pro-ject that introduced a new documentation tool for Store Manag-ers. A gap in communication of Merchandising with Store Man-agers was recognised, and therefore the challenge sat with me to roll out a solution. This involved building strong working relation-

ships with 10 trial stores, and visiting them regularly, initially for ideas and suggestions and then for feedback and development. The trail ran for 3 months, which saw the ‘Weekly Planner’ go from an idea, to a completed document that included merchan-dising for the previous, current and following week that was fi-nally rolled out across the whole business in April. The feedback I received was extremely positive, and something that I feel very proud of. Tesco has offered me so many opportunities for my develop-ment, allowed me to make some amazing friends and potentially to carry on after university. I have had amazing support from mentors and managers and with my own drive to succeed, will take back to university a wealth of knowledge that I hope will be the foundations of my career in the future.”

Amelia Harper

I ... have even had feedback about my work from Philip Clarke (CEO Tesco) himself!

Tesco has offered me so many opportunities for my development

Our professional training

experience...


Noel Azirar is an Anglo-Moroccan final year student at Surrey University who graduat-ed on 18th July with an honours degree in Business and Retail Management. Her interest in fashion made Noel leave Moroc-co after her A-Levels in 2008 and move to the UK where she commenced her university stud-ies with an aim to develop-ing further her retail knowledge.

During her summer vacation Noel worked as a Sales Manager at Burberry and for her one year industry placement she worked as a Buying admin assistant for Windsmoor (JacquesVert), where she had the chance to work in different departments: Buying, Sales, Merchandising, Design, Quality Con-trol, Marketing and e-commerce. Furthermore, her passion for enterprise led her to her take over the role of President of Surrey Entre-preneurs during her final year at University of Sur-rey. The focus was to install an entrepreneurial cul-ture among the student body and raise aspirations, along with practical skills, to create student Startups. At the same time, employment and income opportu-nities were provided for those willing to contribute towards successful activities. Two months ago Noel

was awarded "Best Enterprise Champion 2012" by the SETsquared partnership between leading re-search universities in the south of the UK; Bath, Bristol, Southampton, Exeter and Surrey. She also collected the award for the "Best Event of The Year", The 24 Hour Entrepreneur Competition, Surrey En-trepreneurs. This is a programme designed to help students bring their ideas to life and start up their own businesses. This competition gives £9000 to three different businesses. The award was given by NACUE (National Association of College and Uni-versity Entrepreneurs) Whilst Noel was leading Surrey Entrepreneurs she was also developing Azlyn, an ethical fashion brand founded in April 2012. Azlyn, meaning “vision” in Celtic, is a collection of ethical fitted reversible blaz-ers for both business and professional people who want to look smart during meetings and yet look cas-

ual during weekends or when socializing. The gar-ments are made in Morocco. Azlyn is keen to devel-op a transparent supply chain by connecting em-ployees with customer and also provide a different experience for customers when shopping online. The business is dedicated to build worldwide aware-

ness for a sustainable future as well as in-crease employment and develop skills with-in the community. On the 28th June SETsquared Partner-ship organised the Unipopshop competition, which consisted of teams of six students across the five SETsquared Universi-ties. These were given a £300 start-up loan and a stall for a day at Spitalfields Market. Azlyn Clothing represented University of Surrey with a team of pas-sionate and creative student enterprise members. An award for the best digital marketing campaign around the event was won by the University of Sur-rey team, Azlyn Clothing, with their reversible blaz-ers. The prize was sponsored by, The Eleven, a youth marketing consultancy, and awarded by their founder, Ben Gateley, and Azlyn will get to spend half a day with the agency on the 23rd July.

Team Surrey launches

ethical fashion brand

Unipopshop

digital marketing competition

winners!

Best Enterprise Champion

2012

The Unipopshop team from Surrey left-to-right;

Dan Speller, Noel Azirar, Morgan Schofield, Yasmin Azirar, Kevin Patrick and Joseph Wu.


“My time at Surrey …”

Congratulations to Claire Shorrick who has recently graduated with a first-class honours degree and land-

ed a retail fashion-buying role with TESCO. Here, Claire reflects on her experience as a student;

I have recently completed my degree in Business and Retail Management at the University of Surrey, and I have had

four fantastic years!

I originally chose to apply to study at Surrey because of its superb University campus and excellent facilities. I applied

to the course itself because of my interest in retail that was also inspired by several years of part-time based retail

experience in a number of high street establishments. I knew that the course at Surrey had a strong reputation in the

industry and also that it offered students the chance to take part in a professional

training year as part of their programme.

My time at Surrey has given me an invaluable

learning experience where I have been fully en-

gaged throughout the course. What’s been great

about my programme has been the variety of

modules available, and I have been able to tailor

them to reflect my passion for fashion by choosing

to study areas such as Buying and Merchandising

and International Fashion Marketing.

For my Professional Training experience, I was

fortunate enough to spend my year with Marks and Spencer, where I worked as a

Trainee Commercial Manager in a large high street store. My role involved manag-

ing teams of people, making commercial decisions, controlling stock levels, imple-

menting policies and maintaining high store standards. In addition to this, I also

duty managed several stores in the South East region, and completed commercial research projects for the regional

management team. The significant responsibility that I was given also helped me to grow in confidence. I was subse-

quently offered a graduate position with the company, but after much deliberation, I turned it down to pursue my

dream of becoming a clothing buyer. This was not an easy decision, especially due to the current economic climate,

and at the time I realised how lucky I was to have been offered any job, especially one with such a large and successful

company.

Despite this, I decided to

pursue numerous applica-

tions for clothing buying

roles and I carried out work experience in a retailers’ buying department at my own cost. After many months of end-

less application forms, telephone interviews and assessment centres I was offered a job as a Trainee Clothing Buyer

for Tesco’s F+F range. The 18 month graduate training scheme starts in September, and I am

really looking forward to learning and progressing in my chosen career path.

If I could give any advice to those who are applying for jobs for when they have completed their degree, it would be to

persevere, and gain as much experience as possible in the industry that they are entering. I have learned that compe-

tition amongst graduates is extremely high, but it is important to never give up, learn from feedback along the way,

and try and try again!

competition amongst graduates is extremely high

The significant

responsibility that I

was given ... helped

me to grow in

confidence


Dr Jane Hemsley-Brown was the Keynote

speaker at this year’s Academy of Marketing

7th International Conference on Marketing for

Higher Education in March 2012. The confer-

ence was held at University of Nicosia, Cyprus

and sponsored by The Cyprus Institute of Mar-

keting, Cyprus Tourism Organisation and the

Journal of Marketing for Higher Education in

addition to the Academy of Marketing.

Jane’s paper was entitled: “Research on univer-

sity choice: what do we know, what don’t we

know, and what do we still need to find out?”

and was based on a comprehensive best evi-

dence literature review she has recently com-

pleted, where she argues that research in the

field of university choice lacks an in-depth focus

on the consumer behaviour process, relies on

small samples of respondents from a local area

or even one institution, and has a preoccupa-

tion with demographic factors, particularly so-

cio-economic variables. She concluded that

researchers in the field need to look to the con-

sumer behaviour articles in top business mar-

keting journals for inspiration and focus in

terms of future research in the field, and more

research needs to be carried with large samples

across a number of institutions, including stud-

ies across country borders.

Keynote Speaker at

Marketing Conference

Mintel Prize-Winner

The Mintel Prize is awarded every year to the retail student with the

top performance for their final year. This year, the winner is Ursula

Heathcote, who graduated with first-class honours. Congratulations

to Ursula for this tremendous achievement! Ursula is pictured above

with Prof Steve Wood (left) and Prof Andrew

Alexander.

We would like to take this opportunity to

thank Mintel for their longstanding and con-

tinuing sponsorship of this prize.

First Class This year’s graduating retail students may be

relatively small in number, but they lack noth-

ing in terms of their academic achievement.

It was a very strong performance. Pictured

here are Sophie Lynch (left) and Claire Shor-

rick, who were among five students from our

retail programmes who received first-class

honours degrees. We wish Sophie, Claire and

all of our graduates this year, every success in

their future careers.

Chartered Institute of Marketing Prize

The CIM prize is £200 worth of Amazon vouchers, and is awarded

to the final year student achieving the best overall mark on mar-

keting modules. This year the prize went to Stephanie Pollard

who graduated with first-class honours from our Business Man-

agement programme. Congratulations

to Stephanie! Many thanks to the local

branch of the CIM for their sponsorship

of this prize.


When I decided to come to Surrey I thought that I knew what I was looking for; improve my English, life experience, independence and personal growing. How-ever I didn’t know the dimension and the proportions of this challenge. Back home I study in the University of São Paulo (USP), the main University in Brazil, with 88.962 students and 240 different graduation courses. According to the Times Higher Education (THE) USP is in the top 100 Universities in the world. However, to be more specific I’m from the Faculty of Business, Eco-nomics and Accounting of Ribeirão Preto, one of the main cities of the state of São Paulo. I’m a student of business and my graduation is a five-year programme of study that covers all the fields of administration. Different from Surrey in that we don’t have to choose a speciality. We are general managers, since we have to do the same modules and choose an amount of credits of the non-mandatory modules (which is going to differentiate us as students). Another way to differ-entiate yourself from the other students is to do an exchange programme. That’s why USP has agreements with several Universities around the world, to provide opportunities to the students to develop themselves in another country. This was what I decided to do to im-prove my resume. Since the beginning of my University my family and my boyfriend encouraged me to do an exchange for many reasons like for my professional and personal growing, as I have always lived with my parents. However, as for us is quite expensive to come to Eu-rope, I decided to apply myself for a scholarship of the Bank Santander and I got it. It was the first step for my ex-change. After I decided to apply for the scholarship I had to choose between three Universities. Two of them were in UK and one in the Ireland. As I wanted to come to UK I decided to apply for Surrey, because it was not in London and the cost of living was a little bit less expensive. When I arrived in Guildford, against my expectation, I had the most difficult days of my life. Everything was com-pletely new and I didn’t know anything

and anyone. My first difficulty was to take the train from London to Guildford. As we don’t have trains in Brazil, that was my first time and I was with a baggage weighing 32 kg and another one with15kg. Definitely, I was not in the best situation. But, the time was pass-ing and I was getting used to the people, to the Univer-sity, to the city and especially to the weather. I had to learn and adapt to the culture and the habits of the Europeans and the other exchange students, which was really interesting. See how we are so similar in some aspects and so different in others. In this aspect, the friends that I made were extremely important. Talking

I had to learn and adapt to the culture

about friends, one thing that helped me in the begin-ning was the fact that I was in the accommodation of the University and there were other exchange stu-dents in the same flat. So it was really convenient to stay all together as we were in the same situation. With regard to the modules, they brought me a wider, different and, sometimes, practical view comparing to the modules that I have done in Brazil. For example, in the module of Retail Logistics coordinated by James Bell I went to the Distribution Centre of The Co-operative in Andover. I have never been in something similar in Brazil and it was interesting to see how a dis-

tribution centre works. Another exam-ple is the group work of the Project Management module coordinated by Peter Robinson. This was the most challenging for me, since I had to deal with 5 people with different nationali-ties and completely different back-grounds, what added a lot of experi-ences in my personal life. Finally, to summarize, it was everything and more what I was expecting. It was the better experience that I had in my life and, for sure, I will remember this forever with great affection.

An amazing experience with amazing people One of our in-bound exchange students in Spring 2012 was Bárbara Queiroz Silva from Brazil. Here

Bárbara reflects on her time with us;


Cross-border Retailing

An insight from McKinsey Students studying International Retailing modules were given an insight to “Cross-Border Retailing: How should we make sense of the opportunity?” Knowledge Expert Dr Simon Bills from McKin-sey categorised retailers as ‘replicators’ such as IKEA taking the same format across international boundaries, as ‘(re)-inventors’ like Tesco or Carrefour adapting their business model to suit differ-ent environments, or as ‘portfolio managers’ such as Kingfisher or Ahold owning a mix of different businesses in different countries. He noted that

the weapon of choice....

compared to some other sectors the globalisation of retail was starting from a relatively low base. Operating across international boundaries was a long-term strategy with no quick or easy returns. On the map of the globe, the centres of economic activity are shift-ing eastwards. To date, the hypermarket format has been the weapon of choice for the international retailer.

Simon has a PhD from the University of Southampton which fo-cused on airport retailing. He has previously worked for Verdict Research, where he says he developed a grounding in applying academic findings to the wider retail world and with Tesco in site assessment, where he was heavily involved with the roll out of the Express format. The McKinsey organisation now has 18 000 em-ployees and 100 offices across 54 countries. We would very much like to thank Simon for his contribu-tion to our international retailing programmes.

Prof Steve Wood (left) introduces Dr Simon Bills

Monica Hope and Jason Sit (pictured) attended the 2012 Retail Symposium at the Lancaster Ho-tel (London) on the 26th June, organised by the British Retail Consortium

http://www.brc.org.uk/brc_home.asp). This annual event brings together the biggest names in the UK retail industry including Kingfisher, Hotel Chocolat, Starbucks, Aurora Fashions, John Lewis and Fat Face. For anyone interested in the retail sector it is a key event offering a high powered line-up, along with genu-ine debate, insight and interaction. The Symposium themes were aligned with the challenges and opportunities retailers face today. Keynote speakers

were Marc Bolland from Marks and Spencer and Ian Cheshire from Kingfisher, Richard Reed from Innocent Drinks and An-gus Thirwell from Hotel Chocolat. In Jason’s view, ‘it was some-

what a surreal experience as I got to meet and listen to all these retail execu-tives up close and personal’ with Monica adding…”It was the best line up of retail-ers I have ever seen, and all willing to discuss genuine issues that their busi-nesses were facing today.” Consistently, all the retail executives indicated four major issues currently facing the retail industry, namely, digitalisation, personali-sation, growth (domestic and internation-al), and sustainability (environmental and economic).

BRC Retail Symposium 2012

At the end of March, we were delighted to wel-come Mr Craig Smith (pictured above right), Brand Communication Director, Ted Baker as a guest speaker. Craig gave an extremely stimu-lating presentation on the brand history and com-munication strategy of the fashion retailer. Stu-dents were encouraged to engage throughout the session and to discuss the issues facing the busi-ness.

We would like to thank Craig for his contribution to our Retail Marketing classes, developed by Dr Jason Sit (above left).

Brand Director

from Ted Baker

http://www.brc.org.uk/brc_home.asp


Retail Operations In March 2012 our Level One Undergraduates taking the module, Retail Operations, bene-fitted from a presentation by executives in the recruitment & training function within the John Lewis Partnership food retailer, Waitrose. George Flint and Alison Knight– both of whom are Graduates of Surrey Business School – gave their perspectives on the bridge be-tween retail studies within a university setting and the practical reality of working in the in-dustry.

George, who graduated in 2009, led the presentation and provided students with insights into managing and co-ordinating shopfloor retail operations and customer service from the perspective of a successful national retailer. In doing so, he reflected on the competencies and capabilities that leading retail businesses look for in recruiting staff. It was an interesting and in-formative session that engaged students and provided considerable food for thought and reflection – not least given that most students will spend the third year of their university programme working in industry, taking advantage of the Professional Training Placement Scheme. We thank George and Alison for visiting SBS and look forward to working with them in the future.

George Flint

For many years students on our

Business and Retail Management

programme have aspired to be-

come retail buyers when they

graduate. One of our graduates,

Simon Spicer from Energizer, gave

an insight to such ca-

reer prospects from his

own experience, to our

final year undergradu-

ates. Simon has previ-

ous experience of both

retail buying with com-

panies such as M&S and the for-

mer Virgin Megastores, and of the

supply side of the negotiating ta-

ble with United Biscuits and now

with the Energizer business. Si-

mon was joined by Kerry Flynn, a

colleague with current responsi-

bilities working with leading food

retailer accounts.

The presentation included a fasci-

nating perspective of the trading

relationships between suppliers

and their retailer customers. For

example, recent negotiations

have included moves to supply

shelf-ready-packaging designed to

facilitate replenishment

and reduce in-store costs

for the retailer, but not

without some cost impli-

cations for the supplier.

Students were given a fla-

vour of how the power

exerted by the largest re-

tailers in the UK translates

to the negotiating table.

For the budding retail buy-

ers in the audience, Simon

and Kerry spent time ex-

ploring the appropriate

skills that are required for

such a career. Simon spoke of the

tremendous benefit from group

working and developing expertise

in making presentations whilst at

University, and how extremely

valuable this had been in the “real

world.” He spoke enthusiastically

about how he had

used his theoreti-

cal knowledge

and understand-

ing of retail from

his studies, as a basis to engage

with a great many business con-

tacts over the course of his career

to date. We would like to thank

both Simon and Kerry for a most

interesting retail industry per-

spective.

The Power of the Retail Buyer….

Kerry Flynn and Simon Spicer from Energizer,


Current members of the Marketing and Retail subject group at the Surrey Business School, from left to right; Dr Jason Sit, Monica Hope, Sree Beg, Prof Chris-

toph Teller, Dr Christine Rivers, Prof Andrew Alexander, Dr Jane Hemsley-Brown, Prof Steve Wood, Dr Arne Floh and Dr James Bell.

This newsletter is published twice a year. We would welcome

contributions for inclusion in future editions. Please contact;

Dr James Bell

The Surrey Business School

University of Surrey

Guildford GU2 7XH

+44 (0)1483 686338

[email protected]

Further news items and other information are available from;

www.surrey.ac.uk/sbs/specialism/marketingandretail/

Whilst I have made every effort to be accurate, kindly forgive

any errors or omissions.

James Bell

Undergraduates from our retail pro-

gramme visited the Co-operative

Group’s brand new composite distri-

bution centre at Andover in Hamp-

shire. As part of their “Retail Logis-

tics” module, these students were

given a guided tour of the centre, in-

cluding the chance to see the opera-

tion of the ambient and chilled cham-

bers and a very

brief experience

of the freezer,

running at minus

23°C! The centre

runs both pick-by

-line and voice

operated, pick-by-store systems.

After the tour, General Manager

Graeme Evered gave a presentation

to the students, which provided an

insight both to the planning and de-

velopment of the site, and to its cur-

rent operation. The Co-operative

Group have to comply with on-going

restrictions to the access routes and

the volume of vehicle movements to

and from the Andover site. The cen-

tre forms part of the food retailer’s

major investment in supply chain. It

employs around 1000 people and

serves over 400 stores across central

southern England.

The centre has state-

of-the-art green credentials address-

ing energy and water consumption,

waste reduction, along with noise

and light pollution.

We would like to acknowledge the

generous support of the Co-operative

Group and thank them for hosting

this site visit.

Final Year Students

visit new Regional

Distribution Centre

Footnote

Documents

Marketing and Retail News - University of SurreyRNewsletterSummer2012.pdf · recent years. Its research and teaching ... Student hoice _, as part of the sustainability track; Nigel