Partner With Us

The David Sobey Retailing Centre is part of the Sobey School of Business at Saint Mary’s University. One of Canada’s oldest, most respected and comprehensive business schools, the Sobey School of Business is one of only seven Canadian schools to be accredited by both the AACSB and EQUIS – global agencies that conduct quality reviews on business degrees worldwide.

The David Sobey Retailing Centre Partnership Program builds deep relationships with major retail, service and CPG companies. Our vision is to be a leading source of unbiased expertise for the retail sector.

The David Sobey Retailing Centre focuses on three areas:

Research: We conduct and fund researcher addressing real issues and opportunities in the retail sectors. This research provides actionable insights that help improve business practices and outcomes for retailers.

Innovation: We fund, develops and test new technologies, processes, and methodologies critical to the future of the retail industry.

Education: A leader in retail education, we offer a full suite of professional development and educational programs for experienced executives, mid-level managers and those just beginning their retail career.

Value for Partner Companies

Engagement Opportunities

Competitions

National Retail Case Competition: Engage student teams in solving your pain points. Our faculty will work with your executives to write the case. In past competitions, students have developed insightful solutions for participating companies. Hackathon. Provide your company data (could be POS data, social media data or a combination of data sources) and let our data science students analyze the data and offer you insights.

Events

The David Sobey Retailing Centre hosts a variety of events during the year, including numerous panel discussions, symposia and our annual Distinguished Retailer Speaker Series. These events are a great way to expose students to your company and engage with retail leaders from other companies nationwide. Retail Month – each year in October, the David Sobey Retailing Centre hosts a number of events, including retail tours, speaker events, panels, and our annual Retail Innovation Awards. These events are designed to educate students about retail, and at the same time celebrate the sector and its achievers.

Internships

Participate in our summer internship program, which can be part of your talent pipeline. Hire students for one or two summers. We provide support services to make the process as frictionless as possible.

Student Consulting Projects

Engage a team of students to work on a project. The team is made up of students with skills relevant to the project. A retired executive provides mentorship and a faculty supervisor provides technical guidance for the team. Projects are usually one semester in duration

Research

Engage top scholars and graduate students in research projects to take on significant challenges. Project duration and scope can vary. Our researchers use a wide range of methodologies including surveys, experiments and machine learning.

The David Sobey Retailing Centre has a biometrics lab with eye-tracking, EEG, and facial expression detection technologies. These technologies can be used in the field to provide deep insight into consumer behaviour. Some recent/ongoing projects include:

Impact of Work-from-Home in the Retail Sector
Digital Transformation and Innovations Drivers in the Retail Sector
How AI is Impacting Retail Across Value Chain
Drivers of Customer Engagement in Pharmacy Retail

Innovation Projects

The centre can be commissioned to develop innovations, which can be new technology, a product or retail concept development, a novel fulfillment method and so on. Projects can be funded by partner companies. In some cases, they may be funded by the David Sobey Retailing Centre. Multiple partners can share the cost of an innovation.

Examples of recent/ongoing projects:

Development of a virtual reality store for training and running experiments
Development of a retail robot that can do inventory check, price and planogram compliance in a retail store
Use of computer vision in a retail environment to develop a frictionless store