On 1 July, Dr Laurens Sloot of the Marketing department became professor by special appointment in Retail Marketing at the Faculty of Economics and Business. The chair has been inaugurated by the Anton Dreesmann Chairs in Retail Marketing Foundation.
The importance of the retail trade for society and the swift developments within retailing, such as the rise of e-commerce and the impact of social media on the shopping behaviour of consumers, has meant that Retail Marketing has grown into an important field. The inauguration of a chair in Retail Marketing will give the teaching and research in this important field an extra impulse.
Laurens Sloot’s expertise concentrates on issues of the retail marketing of daily consumer goods, for instance food items and chemist’s products. He researches developments in food retailing, retail branding, the rise of new channels, category management, shopping behaviour and buyer-seller relationships. Sloot regularly publishes in academic journals such as the Journal of Retailing, the Journal of Marketing Research and the European Journal of Marketing. He is also a columnist for the professional journal Distrifood, and often gives lectures at practitioner conferences, in-company training programmes and open courses for professionals from the retail sector.
Foundation
The Anton Dreesmann Foundation is a cooperation agreement among prominent retailers in the Dutch retail trade field. The chairholders teach several Bachelor’s and Master’s course units at the University of Amsterdam and the University of Groningen. At the request of the Anton Dreesmann Foundation, one of the Master’s course units Laurens Sloot teaches is in Retail Marketing.
www.antondreesmann.nl
CV
Laurens M. Sloot (1967) studied business economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam, where he subsequently worked as a lecturer in Marketing and Marketing Research until 2007. In 2006 he gained a PhD from Erasmus University with a thesis entitled ‘Understanding consumer reactions to assortment unavailability’. On 1 January 2007, Laurens Sloot joined the University of Groningen as Associate Professor in Retail Marketing.
Laurens Sloot is also the founder and director of the EFMI Business School, which conducts research and organizes courses for businesses in the food sector. EFMI has been allied with the University of Groningen since 2007; one of the courses it organizes is the post-academic ‘Master of Food Management’ programme
www.efmi.nl
