Green Hills Market, University of Texas at Austin to Study Consumer Behavior

Green Hills Market’s Center for Advancing Retail & Technology (CART), a live in-store technology lab, is teaming up with two research centers at the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, have formed a partnership with the which will provide access to data about retail technologies, consumer behaviors and other areas of study to faculty and students for research purposes.

Through this relationship, faculty in the McCombs School’s Center for Customer Insight and Marketing Solutions (CCIMS) and Supply Chain Management Center of Excellence (SCMC) will have access to a data warehouse maintained by Syracuse, N.Y.-based CART, which Green Hills developed to test emerging retail technologies and for consumer packaged goods companies to test in-store consumer reaction to in-store marketing and merchandising solutions.

“We are working with CART to leverage its resources to further the research objectives of our faculty in both marketing and supply chain,” said Lamar Johnson, executive director of CCIMS and senior associate director of SCMC.

CART has similar agreements with research entities at Stanford, Cornell, the University of Florida, and Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Business.
“CART’s education mission is filling a longstanding need in the retail industry, and we are thrilled to be partnering with both of these research centers at the McCombs School of Business,” said Schuyler Hawkins, CART’s executive director. “These centers have established opportunities for research and academic growth with a focus on real-world problem solving, and this partnership is evidence of that commitment.”

CART’s mission is to enhance industry learning through hands-on, behind-the-scenes views into new and forthcoming technologies and discussion focused on changing business practices. Data capabilities at CART support relevant marketing and value to each shopper while providing quantitative and qualitative measures for everything happening in-store. Educational sessions to understand the new retail ecosystem are guided by experienced team members. Visitors are immersed in the retail experience, then shown the supporting infrastructure enabling the emerging Retail 3.0 ecosystem. For more information about CART initiatives, visit www.advancingretail.org.

CCIMS enables interaction between marketing faculty, students, and industry to enhance research opportunities, academic growth, real-world problem solving and student career opportunities. Its focus is on developing in-depth customer insight leading to customer-driven, cross-functional solutions for winning in the marketplace.

SCMC brings together financial resources, executives from corporations, and faculty and students from multiple disciplines in the McCombs School of Business to develop and communicate new knowledge about supply chain management, conduct and publish research findings, facilitate the development of academic programs in supply chain management, enable “real-world” problem solving for itus industry partners and encourage the development of future industry and academic leaders in this field.