Retail & Services Management (DT343) – (B.Sc.)

This is a broadly based honours degree in business management but with a strong focus on the important retail and service sectors of the economy. These sectors have become complex and demanding business areas, driven by globalisation, information and telecommunications technology and increasingly diverse and sophisticated consumers. The retail sector, in particular, represents a fast-moving and rapidly expanding area of opportunity for business graduates where high performers achieve rapid advancement and excellent rewards. This honours degree programme is an ideal foundation for anyone considering a career in the retail or services sectors or in organisations supplying these important sectors.

Students take a broad range of management subjects such as marketing, law, economics, finance, with retail and services specific subjects such as retail management, services management, premises location, retail buying and retail design. There is a strong emphasis throughout on e-business and information technology. Students acquire excellent communication and entrepreneurial skills and familiarity with a range of analytical tools.

For the second semester of the third year students are offered two choices:

(a) a six-month period of structured (paid) work placement in a retail or services sector company where students have the opportunity to experience, in a real business setting, the application of many of the concepts, methodologies and issues they have previously studied and to evaluate how the theory matches the practice. The activities and learning experiences on the work placement are formally logged and evaluated and the student is also visited in the workplace by academic mentors from the Faculty.

(b) a semester of study in one of the Faculty´s partner universities in the EU or in North America where modules are delivered in the English language. Here the student takes suitable modules from the courses on offer in that partner institution and takes examinations and other assessments there.