ACS (the Association of Convenience Stores) and University of Surrey’s Department of Marketing and Retail Management have launched its 2021 Convenience Leadership Programme, building on the success of the first programme completed earlier this year.
The programme is aimed at anyone looking to develop their expertise in convenience retailing, whether it be area managers in retail and wholesale, sales specialists in FMCG companies, rising stars in independent retail or consultants with a keen interest in the sector. Participants in the programme will see course content blending lectures and study with real world experience and learning opportunities at key ACS events like the Summit and study tours.
Those taking part will learn about the factors that influence convenience retailing, the ins and outs of store management and delivering value in convenience formats, enabling participants to look ahead at what the future might look like for the sector.
ACS chief executive James Lowman said: “The 2021 Convenience Leadership Programme will take everything we have learned in our first year and make this fantastic development opportunity available to more of our industry’s brightest people even more valuable. In the space of just a year, this course has become recognised by CEOs around the industry as the gold standard for executive education in the convenience store sector. It gives a grounding in operations, information management, entrepreneurship, innovation and management, all tailored to the specific needs of our sector. I strongly recommend booking now to make sure you are part of this journey.”
Sabine Benoit, Professor of Marketing at Surrey Business School who heads up the programme said: “Launching this programme in 2020 has certainly been challenging and eventful, we had to show great resilience, flexibility and be open to change as we navigated through an unprecedented time. Some of the changes we had to make turned out to be so valuable that they are here to stay, so that the programme will be set up as a mixture of online sessions including the virtual round tables and the classical offline sessions. It would be a pleasure to welcome you onto the programme in 2021.”
Yvonne Smith, Operations Manager at Central England Co-op, who was part of the 2020 Convenience Leadership Programme said: “Overall an excellent programme with so much context and so many learnings to help shape my future and the business I work for. The involvement from the ACS has also been key and you can see the passion from the team it creates such a buzz!”
The detailed course brochure and content breakdown is available here: https://www.surrey.ac.ukhttps://cdn.acs.org.uk/public/2020-12/mba-convenience-leadership202021.pdf
Preferential rates are available for retailer and supplier members of ACS. Please contact [email protected] for more information.
Online booking for the Convenience Leadership Programme is available here.
