ARC: Connections: ELMAR: Posting

areas: retailing: contest

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Dear Marketing Colleagues:

American Collegiate Retailing Association (ACRA) is pleased to announce the Fourth Annual ACRA Undergraduate Student Retail Analysis Competition: Location Analysis. This year’s research objective is a location analysis for a new Port of Subs sandwich shop retail location. Faculty are asked to recruit undergraduate students who are interested in retailing to participate. Students (or student teams) will compete by selecting a new site for a Port of Subs franchise store and developing a business plan to support their site selection. The competition is an evaluation of original research papers written solely by undergraduate students.

This year’s competition will be a rewarding experience for students. Students will have the opportunity to not only work on a real case but also have access to SimplyMap, a state-of-art research tool. SimplyMap is a powerful web-based mapping application that allows access to thousands of demographic, business, and marketing variables. Geographic Research Inc. (provider of SimplyMap) will offer free access to SimplyMap for participating students and sponsoring faculty members. Information on Simply Map can be found at: http://www.geographicresearch.com/simplymap.html.

To help faculty members adopt this year’s competition as a class assignment, specific guidelines, information on Port of Subs, award information, and resources are also posted on the ACRA website: http://acraretail.org/. Additional specifics regarding deliverable outcomes will be available by September 30, 2008. Submission deadline is March 6 , 2009.

If you want to serve as a reviewer or have any questions, please contact Doreen Burdalski at dburdalski@alb.edu. ACRA looks forward to receiving many entries for this year’s competition.

Best regards,

Doreen Burdalski, Albright College
Carol Kaufman-Scarborough, Rutgers University
Hong Yu, Ryerson University

   
ACRA Student Competition Committee

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