Retail Management and E-Commerce

Course

URL study guide

https://studiegids.vu.nl/en/courses/2024-2025/E_MKT_RMEC

Course Objective

This course focuses on retailing and e-commerce. Upon completion of this course, students:
- Demonstrate a critical understanding of the concepts and theories used, as well as key topics covered, in the top academic journals on both consumer shopping behavior as well as retailers' marketing and channel management.
- Effectively apply consumer shopping behavior and retail management theories to understand real-life retail problems and to design solutions to those problems.
- Communicate and collaborate effectively with an international cohort of classmates to design and produce case solutions or other presentations, provided in English, to both academic and professional audiences.

Course Content

Without retailers, consumers would need to visit or contact every manufacturer separately. Retailers provide convenience and play a big role in the economy. Retail management, however, is far from an easy task. The world around us is changing and managing a retail store – whether offline or online – is ever more challenging. For example, many “traditional” retailers, both large and small, are struggling with the rise of the pure online retailers (e.g. Amazon). Omnichannel strategy is often seen as the panacea, but as we discuss in this course is not suited for every retailer. Success of different strategies depend on multiple stakeholders, such as customers (e.g. do they accept a different price through the online versus offline channels), competitors and manufacturers. That there is not a one size fits all, is best shown through Walmart, which can be seen as the success story in how to shift the balance of power from manufacturer to retailer. On the other hand, due to a variety of reasons they failed to be successful in many attempts to expand internationally. For example, in Germany they misjudged their (price) positioning in the market, and in Japan they refused to adapt to local preferences. In this course, to answer several of these challenges and opportunities that retailers face, we discuss the basic retail concepts. We start with the relation between retailer and manufacturer, where we amongst other things discuss the balance of power. Second, we look at consumer shopping and browsing behavior, and how retailers can manage the customer journey. In the topics following, we discuss the five retail management elements, i.e., pricing, promotion, assortment, channel management, and store/website design. As said before, there is not one uniformly successful combination and it depends on multiple factors to design the optimal strategy, which is part of the goal in the course. Finally, we cover the challenges for retailers to grow and stay ahead of competition. Although the course is based on (and looks at) some founding principals in retail management, the focus of the course is on the state of the art and current developments, e.g. omnichannel strategies, mobile targeting (i.e. geoconquesting). The course is relevant for students who aspire a job in retailing but also for those who aspire a job in which retailers have to be dealt with regularly, such as jobs in brand management, account management, etc.

Teaching Methods

Lectures Tutorials, where the focus of tutorials is a real-life case.

Method of Assessment

Written examination: 70%; Assignment: 30%; each to be completed with a minimum score of 5.0

Literature

Academic articles

Recommended background knowledge

Consumer and Marketing Analytics Consumer Marketing
Academic year1/09/2431/08/25
Course level6.00 EC

Language of Tuition

  • English

Study type

  • Master