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The Institute for Commerce & International Marketing
(formerly: Institute for International Marketing) at the Saarland
University, Saarbruecken, Germany, was established in 1991. Its director
is Prof. Dr. Joachim Zentes.
The first activity of the institute is university
education. The institute is at the same time closely connected to one of
the chairs of business administration at Saarland University. About 150 to
200 students per semester are educated in lessons on retail management,
logistics and IT, international marketing and international business. In
addition to the undergraduate program, the researchers of the institute
are involved in the activities of the so called Europa-Institute at the
Saarland University, a MBA-program, in which graduate students from all
over the world are taught in all aspects of international business, with a
special focus on the European integration process. More information on
that program can be seen at http://www.europa-institut.com.
Besides the educational activities, the Institute
for Commerce & International Marketing carries out complex research
projects and - interlinked with that - is active in management consulting.
In both areas, the focus is on management questions of commercial
companies, especially:
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the management of retail companies
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distribution and logistics
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the internationalisation process of companies
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cooperation, alliances and networks between companies, especially in the
consumer goods sector.
In all of these fields, which have been research
topics of the institute for over a decade now, e-commerce has become ever
more important and has changed processes, possibilities, but also consumer
expectations and behaviour. The research team of the institute has worked
in this field, in research and consultancy and dealt - to give a few
examples - with the following questions:
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How do
the changing methods and approaches to retail marketing, such as
category management and customer relationship management, influence the
requirements towards supporting software? The institute drew a scenario
of future developments in various aspects of retail marketing and
evaluated, in how far retail information systems would need to respond
to the changes that are to be expected.
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What
changes are necessary in e-commerce-tools as a result of the changing
attitude toward value-added partnerships in the consumer goods sector,
i.e. those trends that the ECR-debate have brought about in cooperative
logistics, collaborative customer relationship management and similar
initiatives? The institute worked out a scenario of likely future
development of the networks between consumer goods industry, retailers
and logistics providers and explained the implications for the software
industry.
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Multi-channel retailing has acquired high topicality because of the
increasing significance of the internet as a retail channel. One of the
most important questions in this context is the following: Is the
application of multi-channel systems advantageous or do channels within
the system cannibalize each other? A large investigation of
multi-channel-systems was undertaken to answer this question. The main
focus of this study was the investigation of consumer behaviour in
multi-channel-retailing-systems.
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After
retailers were rather slowly to adopt new technologies in the past - at
least as compared to industrial companies - the institute recently
evaluated, in how far and in which areas IT-support tools in retailing
still have the potential to enhance effectiveness and efficiency. A
large empirical study was undertaken in order to capture the evaluation
of opinion leaders in German retailing on that topic.
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Since
e-commerce (as used to coordinate retail outlets from the headquarters,
but also to coordinate processes between retailers and suppliers) does
not only offer new possibilities to coordinate processes, but also to
control them closer, the institute recently developed - in close
cooperation with a large German software company - a tool called ??Retail
Performance Measurement??. With this tool, the top management of a
retailer can manage the company with 6 key performance indicators, in a
system which is based on the idea of the balanced score card and on
performance pyramids. Only when the key performance indicators display
weaknesses in the performance, the top manager (or the responsible
manager which is identified by the system) has to drill down the
pyramids to find the source of the problem.
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A similar
system has been suggested to manage supplier-relations of a retailer. In
cooperation with a German software company, a software tool was
developed which supports different stages of
retailer-supplier-relations. Core of this tool is a supplier-evaluation
scorecard which displays the performance of suppliers by specific key
performance indicators and serves as a tool for decision support in the
selection and acquisition of suppliers and the
establishment and development of
supplier-relations.
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At the
moment, the Institute for Commerce & International Marketing continues
the development of IT-support tools (always in close cooperation with a
software manufacturer to ensure, that the developed solutions are
eventually offered to the market) and has shifted its focus to CRM.
While many CRM initiatives have been undertaken in the last years, a
comprehensive management tool to evaluate and manage customer relations
of a retailer is still lacking. One research team at the institute is
recently working on this problem.
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Another
topic, which is of interest in the recent research activities, is the so
called 'controlled distribution'. With the increasing importance of the
Internet as a sales channel (but not restricted to that) and with the
power shift from manufacturers to retailers, manufacturers increasingly
try to control their own distribution channels. This can happen either
by direct-selling over the internet, it can be secured by owning retail
outlets or by establishing franchising or similar cooperative systems.
The different facets of this emerging phenomenon have been researched by
the institute for several years now, but have been built into a major
research program this year.
These were only a few examples of the many research
and consulting problems, the Institute of Commerce & International
Marketing is dealing with. Over the years, a lot of experience in the
field of new developments in retail management and marketing and the
necessary innovations in the IT-support tools for retailers as well as in
the application of e-commerce - B2C and B2B - has been accumulated. The
institute has come to notice, that e-commerce in all its forms has become
a major source of change for retail companies and therefore dedicates a
large share of its resources to the investigation of this highly relevant
topic. |
