The EHI Retail Institute is awarding since 2008 annually technological applied solutions. In 2010 for the categories of Best Customer Experience, Best Instore Solution and Best Enterprise Solution there were chosen each three retailers as winners. In total they are: Albert Heijn/ Netherlands, Coop/ UK, Gerry Weber/ Germany, Intermarche/France, Manor/Switzerland, Otto International/ Germany, Rewe/Germany, s.Oliver/Germany and Sonae/ Portugal.

The occasion of the ceremony was EuroCIS , the annual exhibition of the European leader of IT-solutions and Security for retail, which in 2011 will be as always integrated again into the triennial world leading exhibition EuroShop ." All nine winners are excellent examples of the evolution tornado of retail" Prof.Dr.Hallier (president of EuroCIS and EuroShop) stated.
 

At the stage of 5,000 CDs for blended learning at the Metro-Group in Germany distributed and starting tests in two REWE regions in Germany the EuCoCo Advisory Board decided in its meeting with Prof. Dr. B. Hallier on February 17th 2010 to pass on EuCoCo for the next stage to the headquarter of European Competence Center for Vocational Training (Retail/Wholesale) The future structure will be:

Asking its exhibitors for the main topic at the upcoming EuroCIS exhibition in March in Dusseldorf/Germany the answers are: green IT! Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility are the drivers for the development and implementation of energy-saving products. While the backstage uptil now was seen at retail/wholesale mainly as a question of investment-decision, now the choice is influenced also by the marketing – departments at the retailers which want to use “Green IT” as a part of their communication strategy with the consumer. “Green IT” seems to be a win within the competition.

02.02.10: Inspiration and Motivation

At the CZ Retail Summit 2010 Prof. Goetz W. Werner, founder of the health and beauty chain “dm” explained as a key note speaker his philosophy about leadership: “leadership comes from the individual store where the personnel meets daily with 1.8 million contacts to satisfy customers - the central headquarter has to give the frame and freedom to take the right decisions at the store-level”. Starting with the first store in 1973 in Karlsruhe/Germany the dm-group today has 2,221 dm stores in 11 European countries with a total turnover of 5.21 billion Euro in 2009.

At the photo from left to right Prof. G.Werner, Prof. Dr. Hindls/rector VSE Prague, B.Krasna/blueevents and Prof. Dr. B.Hallier. “Retail and People” was also the topic of a special slot with P.Adam/Ahold, A.Borej/Makro, Prof. B.Hallier, J. Nussbauer/dm, P.Mare /KCH International and M.Vasjskebr/Spengler Fox.
More about Summit in Press release
 

28.01.10: Benchmarking Junior Scientists

Initiated by Leed Metropolitan University together with 5 partner universities a Center for International Research in Consumers Location and their Environment (CIRCLE) had been founded. Its annual conference had taken place in 2004 in the UK, 2005 in Liechtenstein, 2006 in Croatia, 2007 in Italy, 2008 in Cyprus , 2009 in Austria – in 2010 it will be in Portugal.

The CIRCLE conferences have two major goals:

• to check recent development in consumer behaviour and retailing
• to provide the opportunity for young scholars, practitioners and PhD students to have their work validated and benchmarked within the benevolent academic and professional community of colleagues from different international contexts.