Tag: retail



Part of a series about summer internships from Olin MBA ’20 students. Today we hear from Felicia Kola-Amodu who worked at T-Mobile as a retail organizational and human strategy intern.

How I prepared for my interview and landed the internship

A few months before school started, I knew a few of the companies I wanted to apply to and T-Mobile, where I ended up interning, was one of them. Therefore, I started researching early. I researched the company, I looked at hundreds of interview questions on Glassdoor, spoke with a highly-qualified friend at length and did mock interviews with him as well.

How I’m using what I’ve learned at Olin during my internship

One of the most profound things I have re-learned at Olin is the power of being myself and building genuine relationships. These were things I knew before Olin, but being in such a business environment and among very knowledgeable people can be daunting.

But by the end of my first year at Olin, I had learned how to be more comfortable in my own skin, be very affirmative while open-minded and to think bigger than what I can see or feel at that moment. I also learned a few “power plays” in Peter Boumgarden’s Power & Politics, that were very useful during my interactions with different people in different positions.

I did not think I learned a lot in Critical Communication, but there were a few things that helped me formulate my ideas and thought patterns better, that I know I learned during Cathy Dunkin’s CritiComm.

How the internship is preparing me for my final year at business school

In the last year, I have mostly worked with students, done school work, and have generally been away from a professional environment. This summer, working on real time, real life projects opened my mind a lot more before. I have learned to be more open minded.

Something I did not think I would learn is building better slide decks and it is safe to say I am now a “slide deck buff.” I am learning to see setbacks as learning curves, not just complete failures that usually wear me down. Lastly, I am understanding the meaning and art of connecting and networking with people.

A day in the life

Interestingly, my days varied a lot. I would either walk in and just get down to a new project or something I had been previously working on. Other days, I walked in with zero clarity or expectations of what I would be working on that day, while on some days I walked in and it was one call or meeting to another and me trying to stay awake all through.

How the internship is shaping my long-term career goals

Something I have been thinking about for a while is how to connect my communications and journalism background and degrees with my MBA, I realize now through a chat with T-Mobile’s EVP for communications and community engagement, that it is more than possible.

Also, a look into the different teams, work streams and people here have expanded my mind to see beyond the traditional MBA career paths. Lastly, “doing good by doing well” is a phrase I latched on to, listening to Ambassador Symington last semester, during his visit to Olin.

I have seen people live this everyday at T-Mobile and it has greatly reshaped the way I think about my long-term goals.




The below post originally appeared on The Source.

Spend $200 on a great Christmas gift at the big box store and get a $50 gift card. Sounds like a great offer. It may, in fact, entice you to spend more than you normally would, warns an Olin Business School marketing expert.

Cynthia Cryder

“Price promotions that feel too good to be true are always an opportunity for consumers to take an extra moment for reflection,” said Cynthia Cryder, associate professor of marketing at Olin Business School. “Instead of thinking about how much money they are ‘saving,’ consumers might want to stop to ask themselves: How much am I actually paying for this product, and am I willing to pay that much?”

Cryder and co-author Andong Cheng, of the University of Delaware, examined the phenomenon of this “mental discounting” in a new paper, “Double Mental Discounting: When a Single Price Promotion Feels Twice as Nice,” accepted in the Journal of Marketing Research.

With certain price promotions, such as a receiving a gift card to spend in the future, consumers mentally deduct the gift card’s value from the initial purchase as well as from the second purchase when they use the gift card. Multiple mental deductions based on a single price promotion result in consumers’ perceptions that their costs feel lower than they actually are, and can increase spending, Cryder said.

“Consider a situation in which a college student purchases a $900 Macbook and receives a $100 gift card to spend in an Apple store in the future,” Cryder and Cheng wrote in the paper. “Feeling confident that she will use the gift card, the student may mentally reduce the laptop cost and think: ‘I am spending only $800 (instead of $900) on this laptop because I am receiving $100 worth of credit back in my pocket.’

“Now imagine that later, the student is back in the store purchasing a $300 iPad. At this point, she applies the $100 gift card, resulting in a final $200 charge for the iPad,” they wrote. “She may think: ‘I am spending only $200 (instead of $300) for this tablet, because my gift card covers some of the cost.’ In total, this consumer has paid $1100 for the laptop and tablet, yet, because she mentally applied the price promotion to both purchases, she may feel as if she paid substantially less.”

According to industry research, Cryder said, businesses will load $14.5 billion onto promotional credit offers in 2017, triple the amount from 10 years ago.

“These promotions create opportunities for retailers, and consumers should carefully consider these offers before taking advantage of them,” Cryder said. “Although consumers might feel like they are spending less, these offers can sometimes encourage them to spend more.”

By Neil Schoenherr, Washington University in St. Louis Public Affairs




Teams of undergrads presented marketing plans last week to Coach CEO Victor Luis as part of Staci Thomas’ Marketing Management course at Olin. The St. Louis Post Dispatch Fashion Editor sat in on the sessions and reported on the encounter that allowed the CEO and students to exchange ideas about the business of retailing. Luis encouraged students to consider retail as a career instead of the more traditional tracks of finance and technology.

Link to article in St. Louis Post-Dispatch
: “Coach CEO gives Wash U students business lesson, subtle career advice,” by Debra Bass,  12/11/16

Photos by Joe Angeles, WUSTL Photo Services




The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports on the opening of a second Nordstrom department store in the Twin Cities. They turned to Olin adjunct professor Martin Sneider, an expert on luxury retailing, for his opinion on the new store in Ridgedale.

“It’s a home run for Ridgedale,” said Mar­tin Sneider, ad­junct pro­fes­sor of mar­ket­ing at Washington University in St. Louis. “They’re ap­peal­ing to the Mid­west­ern cus­tom­er who wants great cus­tom­er serv­ice and good brands in a nice set­ting.”

The Se­at­tle-based re­tail­er, which has been in the Twin Cities at the Mall of America since it op­ened in 1992, is a crown jewel for any mall. Its open­ing at Ridgedale this week is a turn­ing point af­ter near­ly three years of re­con­struc­tion at the mall in Minnetonka.

Link to article.




Jimmy Sansone, BSBA’10, has launched a new brand of casual clothing with midwestern sensibilities called, The Normal Brand. Here’s how Jimmy explains it on the company’s website:

“I started this company because I hated what was out there. There were brands for every area of the country except ours, and I didn’t get it.

Personally, my nine siblings and I don’t vacation at the yacht club up east, fish off the coast down south, or even think about wearing a tie with shorts.  My friends. My family. We go to crystal clear lakes in northern Michigan, we tailgate in cold parking lots around the Big Ten, and we hunt in the fields and woods of the Midwest.  We want versatile and durable clothes with style.

I live in a city but still love the outdoors. I go out to downtown bars but love a great farm party. I wanted a brand that was normal to me and clothes that would let us live our lives, so that’s what our team created.”

The Normal Brand's bear logo may find many fans among Sansone's fellow Wash U alumni.

The Normal Brand’s bear logo may find many fans among Sansone’s fellow Wash U alumni.

 

Read article in the St. Louis Business Journal.