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Courses and Schedule

The CFR Research School consists of 4 academic courses and a total of 22.5 ECTS will be offered. In all four courses, participants will have the opportunity to present and discuss their research with faculty as well as practitioners. This will provide the students with a breadth of insights and suggestions for how to further improve their PhD research. Generally, the courses are structured in the following manner:

  1. Preparations and readings at the students' home institutions.
  2. 3-4 days meet-up in Stockholm for lectures, seminars and Business Collaboration Events. 
  3. Students work on assignments at their home institutions.
  4. Possible second meet-up digitally. E.g. presentations of students' work, feedback, further lectures and seminars.
  5. Students finalize course work at their home institutions. 
  6. Examination – either at CFR/Digitally (e.g. paper presentations) or at their home institutions (e.g. take-home exam or paper). 

However, due to the digital tools now being employed by many organizations around the world, this format might be tweaked for one or more of the courses in the school. Below, the four courses are described at a general level. The details are managed by the head teachers together with the research school director.

Past, Present, and Future of Retail Research (7.5 ECTS)

Course Directors: Sara Rosengren, Professor (Stockholm School of Economics) and Anne Roggeveen, Professor (Babson College, US)

Place: Kämpasten, Sigtuna

Date: August 20-23, 2024

This course introduces the retail research canon, spanning early works in in-store marketing to the latest research on sustainability and digitalization in retailing. The reading list is multi-disciplinary with a focus on articles published in the leading academic retailing journal: Journal of Retailing. The purpose of the course is to guide the participants in the many areas of retailing research, discuss the topics and their relevance, and to discover promising avenues for future research in collaboration with industry experts from companies and organizations. 

Methods in Retail Research (5 ECTS)

Course Director: Wiley Wakeman, Assistant Professor (Stockholm School of Economics)

Place: Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm

Date: October 2024. Exact dates TBA

Retail research includes many and varied methodologies, ranging from in-store experiments to big data analysis to case studies and ethnography and more. This course will cover various methods but will have a particular focus on the gathering and analysis of field data, which is increasingly used in order to heighten the relevance of retail research. The course will cover several different methodological avenues when it comes to data collection and analysis, such as experiments, econometrics, as well as more qualitative methods. To achieve this, we invite instructors from different disciplines and universities. These researchers will share their in-depth knowledge of their preferred methods and give the participants an overview of the diverse nature of retail research.

Bridging Theory and Practice (5 ECTS)

Course Director: Fredrik Lange, Assistant Professor (Stockholm School of Economics)

Place: Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm

Date: January 2025. Exact dates TBA.

The course aims to prepare the PhD candidates on how to best plan and manage their research projects so that they become both publishable as well as manageable for the companies. PhD candidates learn more about how to build a research trajectory that has practical relevance to the retail industry. The course has two parts. One part directed at the doctoral students in which different types of industry relevance are discussed. Focus is on outreach and executive education. In the second part, researchers and practitioners are brought together in an executive training module that focuses on the retail businesses' current and future performance. In this 2-day practitioner module, the PhD candidates take part in an executive training module alongside practitioners. This helps build an understanding for contemporary retailing at the same time as it provides unique networking opportunities for both researchers and practitioners.

Managing a Contemporary Research Career (5 ECTS)

Course Director: Jonas Colliander, Associate Professor (Stockholm School of Economics)

Place: Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm

Date: March 2025. Exact dates TBA

Being an academic researcher means being part of the academic community. With this comes many challenges. That includes teaching, reviewing of both conference and journal papers, contributing to internal departmental work, media appearances and creating a research portfolio used to further one’s career at the end of the PhD studies. This can be confusing to PhD students. In this course, students will be taught by experienced faculty on how navigate this landscape. Skills on how to improve teaching, review papers, and discussions of what is required for an academic career will be part of this course. At the end of the course, students will have a better understanding of academic life as well as a set of tangible skills in teaching, reviewing, formulating research ideas that will help further their careers.