Oxford Retail Futures Conference: Innovation in Retail and Distribution

8th-9th December, 2014, University of Oxford

Background
The changing business environment, new technologies and demand from customers requires constant responses from retailers. Customers are looking for choice across many dimensions, such as price, quality, range, convenience, location, specialisation, and access via traditional, online and mobile channels (omni-channel retailing), as well as the availability of expert knowledge. Retail and wholesale firms aim to fulfil all of these different requirements. Innovation is part of every-day business in the retail sector, as result of this situation most official measures of innovation tend to significantly under-represent the efforts of the sector. Retailers are involved in open, collaborative and often non-technical innovation, focused on store experience and organisation-related improvements, as well as process innovation across the supply chain, the development of new services, sales channels and store formats

Topic Selection
In this call for papers, we would like to capture the current state of the art and main directions related to widely defined innovation in retail and distribution.

The call is covering, non-exclusively, the following topics applied in the retail context, both at the store-end or in the extended retail supply chain:
• Role of retailers in innovation
• Process, service and product innovation in retail and value chains
• Non-technical and technical innovation
• Organisational innovation
• Innovative city distribution solutions
• Role of global supply chain management in supporting and transferring innovation
• Institutional factors that shape and influence innovation
• Innovation and sustainability
• Technology transfer and development
• Benchmarking and measuring innovation
• Transfer of best practices
• Innovation and imitation
• Cooperation between retailers, logistics providers and research institutions
• Role of SME’s and start-ups in innovation
• Involvement of customers in innovation (co-design, co-innovation , co-creation, crowd design)
• Role of social media in innovation
• Innovative in-store solutions
• Innovative business models and retail trading formats
• Mobile technology and innovation
• Knowledge transfer
• Entrepreneurship, leadership and innovation
• Role of public bodies (city, regional, national, international) in supporting innovation
• Innovation ecosystems
• Innovation policies
• New product and packaging design and development
• History of innovation in retail, transport and distribution

Papers submitted will be peer-reviewed. The conference will be in a panel discussion format. Selected papers will be invited for publication in a journal special issue. Accepted papers will be available to conference participants three weeks before the event.

Important dates
• 15th of August – deadline for paper submission
• 1st of September – feedback to authors forwarded
• 15th September – revised version of papers submitted
• 1st of October – notification of paper acceptance and further feedback
• 1st of November – revised papers submitted
• 15th of November – papers will be available online to registered participants
• After the conference selected authors will be invited to submit paper to the journal special issue

Contact Details

The conference is being organised by the Oxford Institute of Retail Management, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.

Conference webpage: http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/ideas-impact/oxirm/events/oxford-retail-futures-conference-innovation-retail-and-distribution

Paper submission via: https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/OXRFC2014

For academic-related enquiries, please contact Dr Wojciech Piotrowicz at: Wojciech.Piotrowicz@sbs.ox.ac.uk

For conference logistics, please contact Susan Barrington at:
Susan.Barrington@sbs.ox.ac.uk