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Retail Location Analysis (RLA) is an annual executive education programme run by the Oxford Institute of Retail Management within the Said Business School’s programme portfolio, now in its 29^th year. It is designed for retail managers with oversight of or day-to-day responsibility for location planning and development and has become an important date in retailers’ diaries.

For the first time, the Institute has made presentations from two of the contributors available on line. Oxford’s Jonathan Reynolds, Programme Director, talks about ‘Retail 2030: New Challenges for Location Analysis’ whilst Professor Alex Singleton, from Liverpool University, discusses his work on ‘Developments in Spatial Data Visualisation’. Both Jonathan and Alex are directors of the ESRC’s Consumer Data Research Centre.

For the first time in 2015, two CDRC bursaries were made available to support the costs of attending the programme for academics from the UK (University of Cambridge) and internationally (Finland, Turku School of Economics).

At the beginning of May, the Oxford Institute of Retail Management, based at the Saïd Business School, brought together 35 academics and retail practitioners in an inaugural workshop to discuss how data can be better used and modelled to deliver insight into shopping behaviour and to develop thinking on a collaborative research agenda. The workshop was sponsored by the ESRC’s Consumer Data Research Centre, of which the Institute is a founding partner, and by the Local Data Company. The workshop was an opportunity to showcase the results of work taking place between LDC and the Universities of Liverpool, Loughborough, Oxford, Stirling, Henley Business School and UCL.

Presentations ranged from ’Understanding retail places’ and ’Understanding the customer experience’ to ’Modelling catchments & decision-making’.

Read more about the event in the following blogs:

‘What can combining the brains and experience of 35 academics and business leaders for one day achieve? Matthew Hopkinson (CEO, Local Data Company)

‘Retail Thought Leadership’, Leigh Sparks (Professor, University of Stirling)

 ‘Not Lost in Translation’, Jonathan Reynolds (Academic Director, OXIRM)