If you work for a UK retail company, this is an opportunity for you.
The ESRC’s “Retail Research & Data” initiative, which involved commercial companies proposing projects for Masters’ students, was a real success in both 2012 and 2013, and Professor Paul Longley & I are pleased to report that the ESRC has decided to support this initiative in the longer term.
We are therefore seeking proposals for new projects as soon as possible.
This presents a great opportunity to get a Master’s student to help you to make progress with:
- Major current issues, such as multi-channel marketing and customer insight, store networks, transport, social media, and many others.
- Projects that you’ve long had in mind, but not had the resource to carry out.
- Working with data – both your own customer data, and also maximising the value to be obtained from government initiatives such as http://www.data.gov.uk/, and the arrival of more 2011 Census statistics (including Daytime and Workplace populations) for the whole UK.
If you have a project in mind, please email me ASAP (ideally by this Friday 31 January) at dugmore@demographic.co.uk and I’ll send you a Project Proposal Form.
It’s essential to move quickly on this, to publicise projects early and get the choice of the best students.
Our previous experience illustrates the main features of the initiative:
- ESRC’s publicity for the 2013 scheme, including a list of the 11 projects that ran: http://www.esrc.ac.uk/collaboration/business-sector/retail/retail-masters/
- Presentations by two prize winners at the 2013 DUG Conference: http://www.demographicsusergroup.co.uk/23.html
- Presentations by 12 of the 16 students at the 2012 DUG Conference: http://www.demographicsusergroup.co.uk/22.html