Schulich launches MBA specialization in Global Retail Management
TORONTO, ON – Friday, August 8, 2014 – Will Target figure out the Canadian market? Will Lululemon be able to succeed worldwide? The Schulich School of Business at York University wants to teach future business leaders how to help both companies succeed. Next month, the school is launching one of world’s first MBA specializations in Global Retail Management to prepare students for the unprecedented leadership opportunities that exist within this fast-changing sector.
The retail sector in Canada accounts for $480 billion in sales. It features leading Canadian companies such as Canadian Tire and Loblaw Companies, and well as global competitors such as Target and Best Buy. “Every year, the global retail industry becomes more complex, dynamic and competitive. And Canada’s retail industry needs our best cutting-edge thinking,” says Robert Kozinets, Professor of Marketing and founder of the new specialization. “We designed Schulich’s Global Retail Management specialization to help students become retail managers who can meet the massive challenges and opportunities of retail today.”
Globally, the retail sector is pegged at about $13 trillion. Global retail presents tremendous career opportunities for managers, as growing markets in developing nations and the rise of technological innovations continually open up and develop potential new markets to savvy retailers.
“Worldwide, the entire sector is in flux, as retailers from North America, Japan, and Western Europe expand and then fiercely compete in growing markets such as India, China, Brazil, and the Middle East,” says Kozinets. “As well, technology is changing the picture. We continue to see major growth in online sales. We see more sophisticated uses of technology such as vending machines that can change prices depending on the temperature or time of day. We see cultural innovations, such as the export of Black Friday shopping hysteria to Canada. We see ubiquitous retail, such that even an airplane flight becomes a shopping mall experience. And everything is competing with everything else. Global retail may well be at a tipping point.”
To adapt to this potent mix of competition and computers, retailers are investing heavily in learning how to better leverage technology and information. The new Schulich specialization captures and conveys these evolving insights by focusing on how retail analytics, brand insights, and supply chain innovations are applied to the ongoing challenges of retail strategy.
As a result, the new specialization includes specialized courses on retail analytics and retail market strategy, alongside supply chain management. It offers a range of courses, from experience design to selling to environmental supply, that will allow students to customize their educational experience in the program. Student will be able to apply insights from the specialization in a range of industries within, and related to, retailing.
With the new Global Retail Management specialization, Schulich now offers 18 MBA specializations, among the highest number offered by any business school. Global Retail Management joins a growing number of industry-specific specializations, including Health Industry Management, Real Estate and Infrastructure, Nonprofit Management and Arts & Media Management.
About Schulich
Known as Canada’s Global Business School™, the Schulich School of Business in Toronto is ranked among the world’s leading business schools by a number of global surveys. Schulich’s MBA program is ranked #1 in the world by Corporate Knights, the world’s largest circulation magazine with an explicit focus on Corporate Social Responsibility, and #2 in the world by the Aspen Institute (a Washington, DC-based leadership think tank) in global surveys that identify which schools are doing the best job of preparing future business leaders for the environmental, social and ethical complexities of modern-day business. Schulich’s MBA program is also ranked among the world’s leading schools by The Economist, Forbes, Bloomberg Businessweek and Expansión (a Time Warner publication based in Mexico City). The Kellogg-Schulich EMBA program is ranked #1 in the world by The Economist, #5 in the world by The Wall Street Journal (as part of the Kellogg global network of EMBA partner schools) and #1 in Canada and 26th in the world by the Financial Times of London. For complete ranking details, please visit www.schulich.yorku.ca.
Global, innovative and diverse, Schulich offers business programs year-round at its state-of-the-art complex at York University; at its Miles S. Nadal Management Centre located in the heart of the Toronto’s financial district; and at its new campus in Hyderabad, India. Schulich also operates a number of satellite centres in Beijing and Shanghai, China; Mumbai, India; Seoul, South Korea; Mexico City, Mexico and Sao Paulo, Brazil. Schulich offers undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate business degrees that lead to rewarding careers in the private, public and nonprofit sectors, and has more than 25,000 alumni working in over 90 countries. The School pioneered Canada’s first International MBA (IMBA) and International BBA (iBBA) degrees, as well as North America’s first ever cross-border executive MBA degree, the Kellogg-Schulich Executive MBA. In addition to Schulich’s Master of Finance and Master of Accounting degrees, the School recently launched one of the world’s first Master of Business Analytics degrees. Schulich’s Executive Education Centre provides executive development programs annually to more than 12,000 executives in Canada and abroad.
Contacts:
Robert Kozinets,
Co-ordinator, Global Retail Management
Marketing Chair
Phone: (416) 650-8167
Email: retl@schulich.yorku.ca
Elayne Shapiro
Marketing and Communications Co-ordinator
Phone: (416) 736-5546
Email: eshapiro@schulich.yorku.ca