NASHVILLE, Tenn.–The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has awarded a grant establishing the Vanderbilt University Sloan Center for Internet Retailing at the Owen Graduate School of Management.
The center will study the enormous challenges facing this dynamic and rapidly evolving industry, focusing on the Internet retailing customer chain. This includes examining the way that companies use the Internet to connect with customers and sell products and services, the way that customer returns are managed and the way that companies integrate their offline and online sales and marketing functions.
The establishment of the center comes as online sales are estimated to have grown 48 percent to $76 billion last year and are predicted to reach $100 billion this year, according to a study by Shop.org, part of the National Retail Federation.
The grant for the Vanderbilt University Sloan Center for Internet Retailing was proposed by Owen School professors Donna L. Hoffman and Thomas P. Novak, co-directors of eLab, the nationally recognized digital commerce laboratory that was the nation’s first academic research center dedicated to study of e-business. The new Sloan Center will leverage eLab’s unique virtual lab research infrastructure to pursue much of its research.
With the establishment of this center, Vanderbilt joins the select ranks of prestigious universities with Sloan Centers, among them the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California at San Diego and at Berkeley, Harvard University, Carnegie Mellon University, Rochester Institute of Technology and Columbia Business School.
Sloan centers are dedicated to creating academic communities that understand industries and conduct the highest quality scholarly research regarding the issues these industries face.
Hoffman said that the research priorities of the Vanderbilt University Sloan Center for Internet Retailing include multi-channel retailing, customer experience, loyalty, pricing and promotion strategies and personalization and online marketing strategies.
For example, the center will study how online behavior influences offline behavior. “We want to know more about whether and how online behavior drives traffic to physical stores, changing price and service expectations,” said Hoffman, who, with Novak, will direct the center. “We’re also interested in how the online experience can be made so compelling that customers will prefer it to offline ones,” she said.
The center currently has 14 faculty involved in its activities and is engaged in direct interaction with the Internet retailing industry and academic research that addresses its most challenging issues. Researchers will gather information through direct observation of firm practices, interviews and site visits, behavioral and economic experiments using eLab, quantitative modeling and survey research.
As such, Hoffman said that the new center will provide a range of learning opportunities for Owen School students. “These opportunities will include a course focusing on projects with center partners, participating in local center events and working with center faculty on projects that involve direct interaction with senior management at partner firms,” she said.
Two major corporations, FedEx and Sears, Roebuck & Co./Land’s End, already have signed on as founding partners of the center. “In the long run, we expect—and we think our partners agree—that the new Sloan Center will have a significant impact on business practices in the Internet retailing industry,” Hoffman said.
Owen School Dean Bill Christie added, “The Owen School strongly supports this center and recognizes the long-term value in being the site of a Sloan Foundation center engaged in direct interaction and primary research with leading corporations. The center will result in greater visibility for the world-class research ongoing at the Owen School and will provide unique new opportunities for our students in the years to come,” he said.
Media contact: Susanne Loftis, 615-322-NEWS, susanne.loftis@vanderbilt.edu