In 2019, the Sam M. Walton College of Business hosted “What’s Next for Retail – Research Opportunities and Challenges: Academic and Practitioner Perspectives,” a thought leadership forum organized by Dr. Dinesh Gauri.
Representatives from more than 30 companies and universities from around the world attended the conference to generate ideas for research and turn those ideas into articles for a special issue of the Journal of Retailing.
During this event, teams of academics and practitioners formed to focus on thematic research opportunities in retailing. Each team wrote a paper that was recently published in a Journal of Retailing special issue, co-edited by Gauri.
The special issue has eight articles focused on topics in retail: AI, Technology, Format, Private Label, CRM, Promotions, Merchandising and Sustainability. We spoke to Gauri and Dr. John Aloysius of the Walton College faculty and alumni Dinesh Hegde, Erin Rosa and Rand Waddoups.
Gauri is a professor and the Walmart Professor of Marketing in the Department of Marketing at the Walton College. His research and teaching interests include retailing, pricing, branding, marketing analytics, shopper marketing, e-commerce and revenue management. He serves on the Walton MBA committee and has been teaching retail strategy for the Executive MBA and full-time MBA programs.
Gauri says he played a small role in helping organize the thought leadership conference, and credits Walton College Dean Matt Waller, Shannon Bullock, David Speer, Drew Stephens, Cody Jendro, Vikas Anand, Pam Heinzel, Hailey Swalve and many others who helped organize the forum. “It also was my pleasure to serve as one of the editors on the special issue, as well as to work on one of the teams that produced an article on future of retail formats,” he says. “I’m confident that these papers will advance the theoretical study of retail marketing, while also leading to practical changes as we move into the industry’s next frontier.”
Aloysius is a professor and the Oren Harris chair in logistics in Walton’s Department of Supply Chain Management. He serves on the promotion and tenure and the research and human subjects committees of the Walton College as well as the research council and institutional review board of the University of Arkansas. He began teaching analytics in the full-time MBA program in 2002, and in the Executive MBA program in 2004. In addition to the core analytics class, he has also taught a class in predictive analytics in the supply chain concentration.
“Retail has been pervasive in almost all my research and the What’s Next for Retail forum was an exciting and unique event,” Aloysius says. “The difficulty was choosing an area in the forum in which to engage in more detail.” His primary engagement at the forum was in the cluster on sustainable retailing. “To me the best part was the discourse between industry practitioners and academics,” Aloysius says.
Hegde is the associate chief information officer of IT Services at the University of Arkansas responsible for areas focusing on enterprise systems and infrastructure. Hegde brings more than 20 years of information technology leadership, including 14 years in various roles at Tyson Foods. Hegde is an active alumnus of the Walton College and Walton MBA programs. He has a B.S. in engineering from the University of Mumbai, an M.S. in engineering technology from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and an MBA from the University of Arkansas. He is a member of the Walton MBA Alumni Advisory Board.
“I was invited to participate in the forum as a steward and practitioner of technology,” he says. His background and experience are with several innovative and applied technologies in manufacturing and supply chain, new product development technologies and retail in-store execution technologies. He offered insights and experiences about the practical aspects of these technologies, time-to-maturity and adoption of some of these technologies,and general lifecycle management of these technologies since new technologies are constantly emerging.
Rosa is a director of sales with more than 15 years of experience in home entertainment. She currently oversees a team of sales managers responsible for the management of Warner Media’s #1 digital transactional customer, Amazon. Rosa earned her MBA from the University of Arkansas in 2019. She studied media production and marketing at Quinnipiac University. Since graduating from the MBA program in 2019, Rosa got married on Leap Day 2020, right before the world shut down and was happy to spend lockdown with her husband, Josh Moody, another University of Arkansas alum. They were married on campus at Carnall Hall, across the street from where her name appears on the University of Arkansas’ Senior Walk on Arkansas Ave. “I loved being involved with the University while attending and was nominated to sit on the MBA Alumni Advisory Board,” Rosa says. “I am thrilled to have the opportunity to support and advise the program as well as provide mentorship to current full-time MBA students.”
Rosa was placed on the data insights team, where academics and professionals discussed real-world experiences with data and how the retail environment is changing quickly as a result. Rosa says, “I played a minor role in the earlier stage of the process. The credit for the work should go to the team of academics I was paired with: Manfred Krafft, V. Kumar, Colleen Harmeling, Siddharth Singh, Ting Zhu and Jialie Chen.” She enjoyed the opportunity to discuss her experience interacting with customers and how the retail landscape continues to evolve with the increase in access to consumer data. “I am proud of what the team was able to put together,” Rosa said.
Waddoups is the senior director of omnichannel (digital & new venture acceleration) at Walmart where he oversees innovation in technology and logistics to produce a seamless customer experience both online and in store. Prior to his current position, Waddoups was senior director of electronic accessories, where he led the merchandising efforts and senior director of business strategy and sustainability where he worked to incorporate sustainability in Walmart’s global business strategy. Before his time at Walmart, he worked in public accounting for KPMG. Waddoups received his bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University in economics and his MBA from the University of Arkansas. He is an active member of the Walton MBA Alumni Advisory Board.
Waddoups said he was grateful to spend time discussing how omnichannel and technology will change the future of retail. The group crossed many types of stakeholders and because of that diversity of thought came up with interesting views. His role with the group was primarily to share input from his experience about innovative concepts and how omnichannel has the potential to change much more than just customer fulfillment. “It was an honor to be a part of such a strong multi-functional work group,” Waddoups says.
Below is the list of articles published in the special issue of the Journal of Retailing, co-edited by Gauri.
“Evolution of Retail Formats: Past, Present, and Future,” Gauri, Dinesh K., Rupinder P. Jindal, Brian Ratchford, Edward Fox, Amit Bhatnagar, Aashish Pandey, Jonathan R. Navello, John Fogarty, Stephen Carr, and Eric Howerton
“The Future of Private Labels: Towards a Smart Private Label Strategy,” Gielens, Katrijn, Yu Ma, Aidin Namin, Raj Sethuraman, Ronn J. Smith, Robert C. Bachtel, and Suzanne Jervis
“How Artificial Intelligence Will Affect the Future of Retailing,” Guha, Abhijit, Dhruv Grewal, Praveen K. Kopalle, Michael Haenlein, Matthew Schneider, Hyunseok Jung, Rida Moustafa, Dinesh R. Hegde, and Gary Hawkins
“Insight Is Power: Understanding the Terms of the Customer-Firm Data Exchange,” Kraft, Manfred, V. Kumar, Colleen Harmeling, Siddharth Singh, Ting Zhu, Jialie Chen, Tome Duncan, Whitney Fortin, and Erin Rosa
“Forging Meaningful Consumer-Brand Relationships Through Creative Merchandise Offerings and Innovative Merchandising Strategies,” Roggeveen, Anne L., Dhruv Grewal, John Karsberg, Stephanie Noble, Jens Nordfält, Vanessa Patrick, Elisa Schweiger, Gonca Soysal, Annemarie Dillard, Nora Cooper, and Richard Olson
“How Technology is Changing Retail,” Shankar, Venkatesh, Kirthi Kalyanam, Pankaj Setia, Alireza Golmohammadi, Seshadru Tirunullai, Tom Douglass, John Hennessey, J.S. Bull, and Rand Waddoups
“Sustainable Retailing,” Vadakepatt, Gautham G., Karen Page Winterich, Vikas Mittal, Walter Zinn, Lauren Beitelsphacher, John Aloysius, Jessica Ginger, and Julie Reilman
“Retailer Marketing Communications in the Digital Age: Getting the Right Message to the Right Shopper at the Right Time,” Villanova, Daniel, Anand V. Bodapati, Nancy M. Puccinelli, Michael Tsiros, Ronald C. Goodstein, Tarun Kushwaha, Rajneesh Suri, Henry Ho, Renee Brandon, Cheryl Hatfield, and Bill Courtney
