Retail Newsletter

Winter 2008/09 Retail Newsletter School of Management Welcome to the Winter 2008/09 edition of the Newsletter of the Retail Group at the School of Management, University of Surrey. Over the past few months we have been busy with all kinds of activities both in the UK and overseas. We aim to keep you in touch with our interests and if you are potentially joining us in the next academic year, give you an insight into some of the activities of the group. Research News ESRC Business engagement cluster award for retail group Professor Michelle Lowe from the Faculty of Management and Law has been awarded £1.5 million over the next five years as part of a partnership business engagement cluster between the Universities of Southampton, Leeds, Oxford and Surrey. Led by Professor Neil Wrigley at the University of Southampton the retail industry business engagement network (RIBEN) includes funding for CASE studentships, knowledge transfer partnerships, business vouchers and placements. Michelle is Deputy Director of RIBEN, which is one of four ESRC capacity building clusters with the aim of creating a new generation of high quality researchers committed to direct engagement and co-production of knowledge with the business sector. The Retail Group Works with Hospice Charity Retailer Drs Andrew Alexander and Steve Wood have been working with Mr David Cryer, Retail and Trading Manager, Helen & Douglas House, Oxford, UK on a study designed to reveal the main locational drivers in charity store retailing. Their findings have been published recently in the International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management (see bibliography below). They find that alongside the usually significant aspects of potential customer base and key competition there are also important matters to consider relating to the supply chain and to workforce availability. The research was based upon a detailed case study of the Helen & Douglas charity which in 2005 set out upon a strategy to develop a chain of charity shops. At the time of writing Helen & Douglas has 17 charity shops with more due to open soon. For more information on the charity see: http://www.helenanddouglas.org. uk/index.html One of the Helen & Douglas new store openings 
 This issue: The Retail Group Works with Hospice Charity Retailer Student News Staff news 
 Retail Newsletter - Research News Nuffield funded research Britain in 2009 Editorial Board project for retail group Appointment Professor Michelle Lowe’s AIM research Dr Steve Wood (working with Dr Jonathan Reynolds at University of Oxford) has recently received a funding award from the Nuffield Foundation to conduct a research project entitled: ‘Data, Intuition and Social Context: Managing Knowledge in Retail Location Decision-Making’. The project aims to understand how retailers combine both quantitative and qualitative insights when they plan developments in their store portfolio. The work will commence in January 2009 for an 18 month period and will involve a survey and interviews with retailers. currently features in ESRC’s Britain in 2009 magazine, which went on sale in WH Smiths, Borders, Waitrose and Sainsburys in November. Michelle’s work appeared under the title ‘Hidden Innovation – Tesco’s US experiment’. Designed to appeal to those who enjoy informed debate and current affairs and have an interest in social sciences and UK society, the magazine celebrates the diversity of ESRC funded research and offers a readable, concise analysis of current issues concerning Britain today. Congratulations to Dr Alan Hallsworth who has accepted, a place on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Town & City Management. Also, to Dr Andrew Alexander who has accepted positions on the Editorial Advisory Board of the journals Place Management and Development and the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing. ESRC Virtual College Professor Michelle Lowe has been invited to join the ESRC’s Virtual Research College which was established in 1997 to provide a structured interface between the ESRC and the academic community, specifically to contribute to the direct assessment of small research grant applications (applications under £100k) and provide a channel for the community to contribute to the development of ESRC policy and practice. Michelle’s appointment will run from 1st October 2008-30th September 2011. Drop in Summer Retail Sales Provides an Early Indication of Economic Downturn In June 2008 UK retail sales dropped by nearly 4% on the previous month; this was the largest single comparable fall over the 22 year period that such records had been kept. Little surprise then that it sparked media attention. The economy was still growing, if slowly, and retail sales figures in May had been relatively strong, but the “writing was on the wall.” James Bell, from the School of Management appeared on the BBC’s Southern Counties “Drive Time” Radio show to answer questions on likely implications for the High Street. With masterly understatement James predicted that the downturn, “had further to go”. With a number of high profile retail business failures ensuing before Christmas 2008, and a difficult New Year in prospect this projection still stands. Media appearances Reflecting Dr Alan Hallsworth’s pre-eminence in the area of the future of small shops, BBC South arranged an interview with him at Milestones Museum, Basingstoke with collaboration from Basingstoke College of Technology. Part of the ongoing BBC TV “Clone Town” theme, Alan explained the pressure of rent, rates and red tape in restricting independent retailer health. 2 www.surrey.ac.uk Conference News Preparations continue at the School of Management for this coming July when we host the prestigious conference of the European Association for Education and Research in Commercial Distribution (EAERCD) from Wednesday 15 July to Friday 17 July 2009. Full details of the conference can be accessed at www.som.surrey.ac.uk/ eaercd2009. The deadline for full papers is 31 January 2009. 
 Retail Newsletter - Student News Student News Module convenor Dr Andrew Alexander reports that students on the Retail Development module of the MSc Retail Management (2007/08) gained a fascinating insight into the opportunities and challenges for UK town centre management through a series of talks and a guided town centre walk given by Guildford’s Town Centre Manager and representatives from Surrey Police (Guildsafe) and Westfield’s Friary Shopping Centre. The event was staged in meeting rooms at The County Club, Guildford. Our thanks to all those who contributed to the event and particularly to Chris Howard (Guildford Town Centre Manager) for organising the programme of speakers and the guided walk and to our hosts at The County Club for providing the splendid location for the meeting. Our second year retail management undergraduates taking the Managing and Marketing Retail Locations module have also enjoyed an excellent insight into store location decision-making with former Sainsbury’s head of location planning, Andrew Tasker. Andrew, who now runs his own location assessment consultancy, Optimum Locations, reflected on his experience of different forecasting predicaments and at different spatial scales which contributed to our students’ understanding of this dynamic field. Students from the MSC Retail Management with Chris Howard, Guildford Town Centre Manager (front row third from right) and Dr Andrew Alexander (back row, furthest left) Staff News Two academics – Wance Tacconelli and Jason Sit – both with expertise in retail marketing and management have been appointed to the University commencing January 2009. Their research and teaching interests will complement those of existing members of the Retail Group. Full profiles of our new colleagues are located below. Jason Sit has recently been appointed to the School of Management at the University of Surrey and will teach Retail Marketing. Jason has moved from Australia where he taught at the University of Southern Queensland (Toowoomba campus) and Griffith University (Gold Coast campus). His teaching areas include consumer behaviour, marketing communications, services marketing, and retail marketing. Jason’s current research interests are shopping centre image, experiential consumption, event marketing, and shopper loyalty. He has published widely on these topics. Future research will focus on fashion marketing, retail branding, and retail sponsorship. Jason was the recipient of the Emerald Literati Outstanding Paper Award, presented by the International Journal of Retail and Distribution Management in 2004. He expects to submit his PhD on shopper experience with free entertainment events to the University of Southern Queensland (Australia) shortly. New retail academic, Jason Sit www.surrey.ac.uk 3 Retail Newsletter - Staff News Another of our new retail academics, Wance Tacconelli, taking a break from fieldwork in China Wance Tacconelli holds a BA in Sociology with 1st class honours from the University of York and an MSc in Local Economic Development with merit from the London School of Economics (LSE). At present, he is completing his PhD in Economic Geography at the University of Southampton with a thesis on the internationalisation strategies of food retail TNCs in China. His research interests reflect his multidisciplinary background and include, but are not limited to, the following topics: the globalisation of retail, retail-driven global value chains and their impacts on supply networks in developing countries, restructuring processes of retail systems, brands and their relation to identity formation, and consumer culture. His geographical area of expertise is China. Prior to his academic career, Wance worked as a marketing and sales manager for an international trade company and as a research consultant for the International Labour Organization (ILO), an agency of the United Nations. In his spare time, he enjoys playing guitar, taking photographs, doing yoga, travelling, and supporting his hometown football club, AS Roma. We are also delighted to welcome a new member of the retail team as temporary lecturer in retail management, Dr Michael Wortmann, who is providing maternity cover for Dr Hayley Myers. Michael has extensive experience both in academia and in consulting on retail-related issues. Before joining SoM, Dr Wortmann had been working at the Social Science Research Center in Berlin and at FAST e.V., a research and consulting organization he co-founded in 1986. He holds a PhD in political science, but his main research topic has been Dr Michael Wortmann multinational companies. During the last years, he has increasingly focussed on the retail industry: on the special characteristics of German retailing, where hard discounters like Aldi increasingly dominate the market, on the development of European retail multinationals, as well as on the evolution of global apparel sourcing. Dr Anna Watson left the University of Surrey during the summer to take up a post at the London College of Fashion. We wish Anna well for the future. 
 Recent Academic Publications by the Retail Subject Group: 2008 A Alexander “Format development and retail change: Supermarket retailing and the London Co-operative Society” Business History Vol. 50 (4) 489-508 2008 A.Alexander, D. Cryer and S. Wood, “Location planning in charity retailing” International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management Vol. 36 (7) 536-550 2008 J. Hamlett, A.Bailey, A.Alexander and G. Shaw “Ethnicity and consumption: south Asian food shopping patterns in Britain, 1947-1975” Journal of Consumer Culture Vol. 8 (1) 91-116 2008 A. Alexander, S. Phillips and G. Shaw “Retail innovation and shopping practices: consumers’ reactions to self-service retailing” Environment and Planning A 40 (9) 2204-2221. 2008 Wood, S. “Reinterpreting the great US department store bankruptcies of the 1980s - a catalyst to strategic structural change”, Journal of Management History, Vol. 14, No. 4, 404-423. 2008 Wood, S. and A. Tasker, A. “The importance of context in store forecasting: the site visit in retail location decision-making”. Journal of Targeting, Measurement and Analysis for Marketing, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 139-155. 2009 Tacconelli, W. and Wrigley, N. “Organizational challenges and strategic responses of retail TNCs in post-WTO-entry China”, Economic Geography, Vol. 85, No.1, pp. 49-73. 2009 Okeahalam, C. and Wood, S. “Financing internationalisation–a case study of an African retail transnational corporation”, Journal of Economic Geography, doi:10.1093/jeg/lbn056. School of Management, University of Surrey, Guiford, Surrey, GU2 7XH, UK T: +44 (0) 1483 686300 E:som@surrey.ac.uk www.som.surrey.ac.uk/retail 1849-0209