WHAT IS RETAIL MANAGEMENT?
‘Retail Management’ is a study that relates to the retail industry. Also includes its challenges, the supply chain, and its associated business partners. Hence, one of them is New McGill School in Canada of New McGill University. This also covers marketing, consumer marketing, marketing behaviours, Retail marketing, & Marketing research. There are many business schools in this world that are involved in the technical training of the retail sector. The industry is vitally important as the industry is termed one of the highest revenue generators in many countries. The number of investments in the retail sector is huge. Highly rated for profitability in the region of North America. Immense focus and attention to details are given in the fashion industry.
Similarly in Canada, Retail Industry is of paramount business importance. It holds importance in almost all provinces especially, in Ontario and British Columbia. Considered as a huge profit-generating sector, the retail industry is always improving its standards every day.
SCHOOLS OF RETAIL MANAGEMENT- NEW MCGILL CANADA:
Bensadoun School of Retail Management will cover such areas as sustainable consumption. Montreal’s McGill University has officially opened a school of retail management with a goal. The goal is to tackle the many transformative challenges facing retailers. These include some of those unique to the grocery.
Named after Canadian shoe retail icon Aldo Bensadoun. The Bensadoun School of Retail Management will cover all aspects of retail. The focus is on sustainable consumption and healthy societies, drawing on expertise from all faculties across the university.
CHALLENGES IN THE RETAIL INDUSTRY:
The retail sector in Canada holds many challenges in the industry. These challenges relate to food research, nutritional aspects, product development, and pricing & delivery issues. Yet another huge area where the challenges hold immensely is the supply chain industry. The extreme cold weather conditions in most parts of Canada has been yet another cause of supply chain and distributions. However, the issue is not only climate hazards or extremely cold conditions, but there are also certain problems that relate to sustainable consumption and some transformative challenges that are unique to the grocery.
“The retail industry is affected by grand challenges such as nutrition and food or sustainability, which cannot be tackled through siloed thinking,” said Saibal Ray, academic director, Bensadoun School of Retail Management and James McGill professor in supply chain management.
“The Bensadoun School of Retail Management can bring together expertise from various faculties to ensure the right people are around the table to fix these issues.”
RESEARCH IN FOOD INDUSTRY:
Food is one of the main research areas at New McGill school, with research underway related to the nutritional aspects of food, product development (within the faculty of agriculture), pricing, and delivery issues.
Some of the high level, seemingly unrelated research work at the university could have a real impact on the grocery sector.
“For example, AI can be useful in issues like personalization and product assortment optimization while neuroscience can help understand the decision-making process from the consumer perspective,” said Ray.
“One of the things we want to work on is how we can nudge consumers towards healthier behaviours, in a way that is sustainable in the long term from the consumer side as well as financially sustainable on the retailer side,” he said.
Aside from Bensadoun, the school has received a number of corporate contributions from the likes of Saputo, Walmart, and Couche-Tard. Nespresso has also signed on as what the school calls a post-launch “collaborator.”
UNDERSTANDING THE CONSUMERS:
Understanding consumers through consumer research is an essential part of the retail management study. This includes consumer dynamics, consumer behaviours, understanding the changing behaviours through shopping habits and patterns. The consumer dynamics are studies via detailed research related to demographics, and understanding the likes and dislikes of consumers through surveys and online research. Hence, online buying patterns and behaviours are highly helpful in determining consumer behaviours with regards to products. An example is how to find shopping behaviours for the clothing Industry for people in Toronto. Market research can tell what percentage of people love to buy online and how much percentage of people love to buy in-store. This is with due respect to all the available statistics, i.e. Age of respondent, Sex of the person, and location he is residing in.
“We are living through a period of tremendous change in retail and to succeed, future industry leaders will need to fundamentally understand consumers’ changing behaviours and expectations,” said Aldo Bensadoun, in a release. “It is my hope that by working with industry partners and leveraging McGill’s breadth and depth of research in fields such as accounting and finance, as well as others like psychology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and sustainability, we will succeed in reinventing the future of retail management.