ACS

ACS has today announced a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with the Oxford Institute of Retail Management, at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford to examine the role local shops play in the community. It will be the first KTP project for the Business School. ACS and Saïd have appointed a Research Associate, based at ACS head office, to work on a two-year project to gather and analyse evidence about the community role played by local shops.

ACS Chief Executive James Lowman said: “We are thrilled to be part of this unique partnership. This will bring real benefits to ACS members because it will help us to better understand the community role played by local shops. It is not enough to talk in general terms about the importance of local shops to communities – this project will help to explain and quantify community value in social and economic terms and with a rigour hitherto missing in this important policy debate.

“Our strategy makes explicit the need to develop the evidence base around local shops, and we are committing more funding year-on-year to doing this. Our partnership with Saïd is the centrepiece of this strategy.”

Dr Jonathan Reynolds, Academic Director of the Oxford Institute of Retail Management at Saïd Business School, said: “The retail sector within the UK today faces unprecedented challenges. For the independent retailing sector and especially for local shops, these challenges build upon longer term threats to their economic success. We tend to assume that such businesses play a critical, positive, role in safeguarding the viability and vitality of local communities. But little objective, authoritative evidence exists to support this view. Working with ACS, Oxford is well placed to use its 25 years’ experience in retail management research to assess the contribution of those businesses to the communities in which they operate and, cumulatively, to the nation as a whole.”

The KTP project will commence on 1 March, and is part-funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) through the Council’s Retail Industry Business Engagement Network (RIBEN).
 

Contacts:

Shane Brennan Public Affairs Director
01252 515001
Chris Noice Communications Co-Ordinator
01252 533013/ 07801 997070
Notes to Editors

1. ACS (Association of Convenience Stores) is the voice of local shops, representing over 33,500 convenience stores. ACS helps local shops thrive through lobbying, support and networking opportunities.

2. About Saïd Business School
Established in 1996 the Saïd Business School is one of Europe’s youngest and most entrepreneurial business schools with a reputation for innovative business education. An integral part of Oxford University, the School embodies the academic rigour and forward thinking that has made Oxford a world leader in education. The School has an established reputation for research in a wide range of areas, including finance and accounting, organisational analysis, international management, strategy and operations management. The School is dedicated to developing a new generation of business leaders and entrepreneurs and conducting research not only into the nature of business, but the connections between business and the wider world. In the Financial Times ranking of MBA programmes (Jan 10) Saïd is ranked 16th in the world. It is ranked in BusinessWeek’s top 10 business schools outside the USA (Nov 08) and in the Wall Street Journal it is ranked in the top 25 business schools in the world (Nov 07). In the UK university league tables it has ranked first of all UK universities for undergraduate business for the past six years in The Guardian and in seven of the last eight years in The Times. For more information, see www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/

About The Oxford Institute of Retail Management
The Oxford Institute of Retail Management combines industry knowledge with analytical rigour and objectivity. Established in 1985, the Institute has worked for 25 years to relate sound scholarship to the practical needs of retailers, service companies and public sector agencies. For more information, see www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/oxirm  

3. Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP) is Europe's leading programme helping businesses to improve their competitiveness and productivity through the better use of knowledge, technology and skills that reside within the UK knowledge base. A Knowledge Transfer Partnership is a relationship formed between a company and an academic institution ('Knowledge Base' partner), which facilitates the transfer of knowledge, technology and skills to which the company partner currently has no access. Each partnership employs one or more recently qualified people (known as an Associate) to work in a company on a project of strategic importance to the business, whilst also being supervised by the Knowledge Base Partner. Projects vary in length between 12 and 36 months. The Associates can be postgraduate researchers, university graduates, or individuals qualified to at least NVQ (Level 4) or equivalent. For more information, see http://www.ktponline.org.uk/.

4. RIBEN brings together four of the UK’s leading retail research groups at the Universities of Southampton, Oxford, Leeds and Surrey. Together these groups have some of the strongest existing research partnerships with the retail industry, plus long-standing records of research funding involving industry. The four groups will seek to foster wider engagement of UK university-based social scientists with the retail industry, both directly, and also via acting as 'hubs' through which other researchers with retail and consumption interests can more effectively engage in knowledge production and transfer with the industry. http://www.riben.org.uk/the_riben_project/  

5. The Research Associate appointed by Said Business School and ACS is Alison Broadby, a researcher with a BA from the University of Kent and an Msc in Management from the University of Southampton.