Abstract
Building from a theoretical foundation of active learning, this article describes how using a retail laboratory in an educational curriculum can benefit both students and strategic partners. Students work alongside strategic partners, and the retail laboratory enables them to probe and design novel retailing strategies, such as launching new merchandise and designing store formats and layouts. This innovative approach to teaching marketing and retailing helps instructors focus the overall learning process, achieved through experiential learning. The empirical results affirm its effectiveness for maintaining student satisfaction and motivation, increasing student learning interest and learning value, and promoting skills required by recruiters. That is, engaging students in real-life projects helps them build business capabilities, including critical thinking and analytical and decision-making skills.
Keywords
When teachers plan their courses, they first must choose whether they want to encourage active or passive learning (Hamer, 2000). If they prioritize passive learning, educators take an active role, and students passively absorb information and lessons. With active learning, students engage during class time by participating in and leading discussions, conducting group work, and learning by doing. Such student-centered active learning requires spaces that support the cocreation of learning and flexible experiences (Neill & Etheridge, 2008), whether physical or virtual. Although instructors have adopted a wealth of teaching techniques—including lectures, case analyses, group projects, in-class exercises, student journals, instructor-led discussions, student-led discussions, computer simulations (Hamer, 2000), and live marketing projects—a literature review reveals few insights into the use of laboratory settings to promote active learning about marketing and retailing, through experiential learning. Yet this type of learning has grown increasingly popular in marketing education, especially as competition within higher education continues to increase (Brennan, 2014), prompting schools to adopt a strong focus on student satisfaction. The evidence regarding whether experiential learning actually increases student satisfaction and learning is mixed though: Brennan (2014) and Ackerman and Hu (2011) note some students do not like experiential learning, which may lower their satisfaction scores, and Hunter-Jones (2012) asserts that other students simply fail to learn from experiences.
As a potential resolution to this issue, this article describes a retail laboratory in a university setting, created to generate student engagement in the learning process and develop the skills they need for the job market. This physical space, of medium size, is about twice the size of an average convenience store. It opened in May 2010, in an urban, well-reputed university that attracts students seeking a high-quality education. Four of its shelves feature grocery and office supplies, and a department store section is filled with athletic clothing. A linked learning center is equipped with video cameras and a Gesell’s chamber or Gesell dome which takes its name of the author (Arnold Gesell) and it consists of two rooms separated by a one-sided glass, which have audio and video equipment for recording lab practices. In police investigations, for example, it is commonly used to observe the behavior of defendants in interviews. This tool allows to observe consumer flow and attempt to generate successful strategies for category management, merchandising, visual communication, and so on. The retail laboratory was designed explicitly to allow students to analyze consumer behavior in the three main areas that Paco Underhill (2009) described in his best-selling book Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping (Smith & Fisher, 2006): (a) consumers’ sensory reactions to the physical aspects of store layout and placement of merchandise; (b) psychological reactions to the features, placement, and packaging of merchandise; and (c) consumers’ distinctive behaviors according to gender and generation.
Furthermore, to ensure students are aware of and can predict trends in retailing and marketing, the learning center provides access to emergent retailing technology, such as electronic labels, QR (Quick Response) codes, radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, and smart-fitting rooms. Students thus can engage at the forefront of these technologies and measure how the systems might improve store productivity and profitability, as well as increase customer and employee satisfaction. In this sense, the lab benefits multiple stakeholders. Students develop observation, communication, and persuasion skills. Researchers can gain novel and unique data about both student learning and retailing approaches. Because the lab also includes strategic partners, they benefit as well, in that they can adopt the students’ recommendations to make retail strategy decisions. For example, one partner, a large regional retailer, worked with the students to design a new supermarket format by conducting three focus groups and using the retail lab to observe how participants interacted with new merchandise.
In turn, several strategic partners have donated further advanced equipment for the lab, noting that technological advances drive most of today’s retail purchasing strategies (Richey, Skinner, & Autry, 2007). For example, electronic labels enable automatic price changes, and by gaining access to this technology in the retail lab, students learn how it increases operational efficiency, optimizes the pricing strategy by eliminating discrepancies between the price at the point of sale and the price preferred by management, and generates a better shopping experience. Electronic labels also contain product information that supports “smart cart” implementations and can generate important consumer and product data, such as a record of consumer purchase patterns. Accordingly, in a partnership between some strategic partners and the university, students in the learning center created new software for a smart cart that uses RFID technology to record and store price and product data and thus offers substantial cost savings, through improved data automation, identification, integration, and authentication (Peltier, Milne, Phelps, & Barrett, 2010). In another example, advanced students enrolled in a research marketing course conducted a group experiment in the laboratory, seeking to apply the different multivariate techniques they had learned in class (e.g., factor analysis, cluster analysis) to learn how technology might enhance consumer attitudes toward the store. They developed a questionnaire to measure store image, purchase intentions, store value, and technology security, then distributed it to 105 student participants. Their results revealed that the group using the smart cart (RFID technology) expressed improved purchase intentions and better attitudes toward the store.
As these examples show, students conduct research in the retail lab to explore a variety of topics and gain practical knowledge. They also continue to express great interest in how RFID tags support the observation of consumer behavior and shopping habits, which can inform the development of customer relationship management strategies (Peltier et al., 2010). Therefore, the lab practices, by activating student learning, help contribute student success. We provide some further theoretical background in the next sections, before outlining empirical results that show student perceptions of how using the retail lab as a learning technique can promote experiential learning, enhance their job market skills and maintain student satisfaction, learning value, and student motivation. Then, our study spreads by also concentrating on graduate student perceptions to differentiate them to student perceptions and find areas of potential opportunity and to measure the long-term effects of retailing laboratory practices. Our discussion of the implications of these results, as well as some limitations of this study and directions for further research, reflect our underlying motivation, namely, to encourage the use of a retail lab as a learning center to promote active student learning and thus ensure that students have the knowledge and skills required to compete in the job market.
Theoretical Foundation
Active Learning
Active learning is a dynamic process that encourages students to apply theory to diverse real-life situations and varied contexts (Lewis & Williams, 1994). Active class formats encourage discussion, which helps students retain information and apply it to new situations (McKeachie, 1980). Although active-learning approaches tend to be more challenging for instructors, they are more effective than passive-learning techniques. For example, Freeman et al. (2014) uncover a 6% performance improvement and a lower failure probability rate (by 1.5 times) among students in active learning rather than lecture courses. Active-learning techniques further can be divided into two categories: nonexperiential, such that students actively process the course material, and experiential, in which students apply knowledge to real-world contexts (Shakarian, 1995).
Some of the most popular active-learning techniques include cases studies and experiential learning. According to Hopkins, Raymond, and Carlson (2011), live case analyses help students develop critical thinking, analytical, communication, and quantitative skills. However, Loewenstein, Thompson, and Gentner (2003) assert that a conventional, single-case format is not effective, because students remember the case only in context and cannot apply the knowledge they might have gained. Mesny (2013) also recommends caution before claiming that case study methods produce experiential learning. Undergraduate students who lack extensive work experience cannot use their own experiences to interact with the case but instead rely on a constructed scenario, which lacks real-world consequences (Christensen, Garvin, & Sweet, 1991). Furthermore, many cases have an inherent expiration, such that the real situations they present already have been resolved, and students might be aware of those outcomes.
Experiential learning instead is project based and offers students a learning experience and opportunities to reflect on that experience (Frontczak, 1998). Universities likely adopt this technique for three main reasons: (a) practical topics need practical learning techniques to be taught; (b) it is interesting for students, so they engage in the learning process; and (c) it is justified by learning theory (Brennan, 2014). Experiential learning techniques might require students to use data to derive recommendations for real problems (Diamond, Koernig, & Iqbal, 2008). Students can launch and manage new simulated businesses, either offline (Russell-Bennett, Rundle-Thiele, & Kuhn, 2010) or online (Daly, 2001). They also can engage in ambiguous, real-world field projects; for example, Seitz and Razzouk (2002) report on students who developed and implemented marketing strategies for an on-campus store. According to Van Doren and Corrigan (2008), business schools seeking to ensure clinical training or learning by doing should include site visits in their marketing curricula, which provide meaningful applications of course topics. Then these visits can be transformed into experiential learning, encouraging students to develop both knowledge and the skills required in the work force. Experimental learning also can be enhanced by diverse techniques, such as laboratories, though we found little relevant evidence about the uses of physical laboratories in social science in our literature review, as we discuss in the next section.
Experiential Learning in Laboratories
Learning requires a flexible space that is active, participatory, experiential, and cooperative (Neill & Etheridge, 2008). A flexible space can contribute to student engagement, collaboration, ability to adapt, and learning. An early, nineteenth experiential learning movement accordingly sought to move from static methods, such as lectures, to more dynamic learning processes to allow students to apply knowledge acquired in the classroom (Lewis & Williams, 1994), mostly in the medical, legal, and dental fields. At the same time, laboratory sciences, applied studies, and clinical experiences appeared on college campuses (Dyer & Schumann, 1993), supporting science learning by providing hands-on, complex, experiential learning (e.g., dissecting frogs). Beyond these hard science applications, Dyer and Schumann (1993) argue that business students can benefit from experiential learning in a classroom laboratory too, because the laboratory tradition consists of experiential approaches focused on integration, iteration, and interaction. Furthermore, experiential learning can increase instructor and student enthusiasm (Dabbour, 1997; Hamer, 2000), improve grades (Perry, Huss, McAuliff, & Galas, 1996), and enhance the perceived value of the learning experience (Graeff, 1997).
In real-life situations, students confront real retailing problems that provide them with important learning opportunities, but they also cannot control for variables like time or normal traffic patterns. Laboratory activities offer a controlled problem situation and solution context, as well as flexibility. For example, category management in real-life retail situations can be highly challenging, because students have to deal with normal consumer traffic that they cannot control. The laboratory setting permits them to empty and fill shelves freely, to test their category strategies.
But few studies describe physical labs in the social sciences. Seitz and Razzouk (2002) run a retailing project in on-campus store and they report that approximately 98% of their students using their retail lab described it as beneficial, primarily because it offered them the opportunity for practical training (81%). However, they find that students did not enjoy completing the store reports demanded in everyday operations and the amount of time required to make sure the lab ran smoothly. So, in a physical store running project, instructors should be careful to control such everyday activities that fail to generate value for students. This lab was not a physical space dedicated to retailing learning activities; it relied instead on an actual, on-campus store. That is, it represented an in-situ project instead of a physical lab project. Similarly, Burgess (2012) implemented a consigned pop-up store; evidence from 5 years of running the project suggested that it had been a powerful method to engage students in the learning process. In Daly’s (2001) study, students operated an online store for about 15 weeks.
A dedicated retail laboratory instead provides an excellent opportunity for students to practice active-learning, and it also engages the process of building, testing, and refining mental models, as suggested by Bloom’s taxonomy (Bloom, Hastings and Madaus, 1971). This pedagogical taxonomy recommends conceptual remembering and understanding, as well as applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating, so we can use it as a foundation to determine if lab practices help instructors enhance experiential learning. Furthermore, we seek to determine precisely which skills lab practices enhance and whether they are the skills that recruiters seek among potential job candidates.
Competitive Workplace Skills
Universities and colleges in turn are under pressure to prepare students better. In the Canadian study presented by Finch, Nadeau, and O’Reilly (2013), employers and practitioners note some dissatisfaction with the quality of transferable skills that university graduates bring to the workplace. In competitive job markets, they are responsible to help students develop stronger skills, enhance their employment value, and make them attractive to recruiters (Hopkins et al., 2011), mainly by closing the gap between the characteristics, skills, and activities that employers consider critical versus those that marketing faculty and students prioritize (Scott & Frontczak, 1996). In particular, marketing instruction (as in most other disciplines) traditionally has used passive learning, such that instructors deliver lectures to students, after having chosen the course topics and methods to be used for learning and exploring those topics (Hamer, 2000). Yet in such passive-learning contexts, students lose attention after the first 10 to 15 minutes of lectures and retain only a small proportion of the information (Shakarian, 1995), most of which is theoretical anyway, rather than practical or skill-focused. Noting three main causes of students’ forgetfulness (decay, interference, and the absence of appropriate retrieval cues), Bacon and Stewart (2006) suggest a pedagogy that requires deep learning early and often, then a continued sequence of active-learning exercises beyond any given course.
To address the needs of the changing marketplace better, by ensuring that students develop the skills expected by recruiters, we highlight lab practice techniques as a way to foster experiential (active) learning and encourage the development of students’ critical thinking, analytical, and communication skills (Hopkins et al., 2011). In their survey of students, faculty, and recruiters, Hopkins et al. (2011) find that even if the basic skills desired by employers have not changed much, recruiters regard critical thinking, objective assessment, individualized learning, and technical skill sets as more important than do faculty and students. The employers also specify the need for job candidates to be able to engage in problem-solving activities, group/individual projects, real-life case and financial analyses, role playing, presentations, and applications of computer-based tools to solve marketing problems. We posit that experiential approaches are more effective for developing such skills (Lewis & Williams, 1994); these active-learning techniques already have been recommended to reduce the gap between employer expectations and student skills (Laverie, Madhavaram, & McDonald, 2008), which is one of the most important goals of marketing education (Smith & Fisher, 2006). Following Hopkins et al. (2011), we thus focus on five key skill sets for students:
Basic skill set. Initiative, teamwork, interpersonal skills, oral communication, motivation and personal skills.
Experiential learning. Leadership, interview skills, retailing experience, other work experience, presentation skills, and internship experience.
Acquired skills. Problem-solving, written communication, quantitative, computer, and decision-making skills.
College accomplishment. High GPA and involvement.
Time organization. Time management and organization skills.
In addition, recruiters assign great importance to problem-solving activities related to critical thinking; educators can help students build this skill by focusing on analytical or communication skills, as well as the use of conventional tools (e.g., Excel, PowerPoint; Hopkins et al., 2011). Celuch and Slama (2000) define critical thinking “as an essential set of reasoning and communication skills required to operate effectively in society” (p. 57). It encompasses 15 elements: develop problem-solving skills, improve ability to pay attention, develop ability to concentrate, improve listening skills, improve speaking skills, improve writing skills, facilitate learning concepts/principles, facilitate learning methods/measures, develop an openness to new ideas, develop ability to work productively with others, cultivate responsibility for one’s own learning, improve self-confidence in ability to learn, develop respect for others, develop capacity to think for oneself, and develop capacity to make informed decisions. Additionally, to achieve these outcomes, students also must be motivated and satisfied by the material they study, such that they find the material engaging and valuable from a learning perspective.
Motivation and Satisfaction
Experiential learning enhances motivation (Fall, 1998). Learning a new set of skills can motivate students, as long as they recognize the potential utility or value of these skills as qualifications that enhance their job possibilities. Furthermore, when students take control over their learning process, it tends to increase their motivation and engagement: The more autonomous students are, the more motivated and satisfied with the class they are (Ackerman & Hu, 2011; Elliot & Shin, 2002), such that they perceive better learning outcomes in courses that feature projects (Ramsden, 1991; Richardson, 2005). Prior research uses various elements to measure motivation, such as items that indicate the course motivates learning, makes the student feel like learning, helps the student know more about the topic, have a better attitude toward the activity, arouses interest, arouses curiosity, or makes the student want to go deeper into the subject.
The concept of student satisfaction should be always seen as the creation of more knowledgeable and capable individuals (Gruber et al., 2012). The expectancy/disconfirmation paradigm (Oliver, 1980), is broadly used to measure disconfirmation and satisfaction. Disconfirmation is the gap between prior expectations and actual performance (perceived reality). Positive disconfirmation produces satisfaction and occurs when actual performance is superior to expectations. So, expectations are contrasted to actual performance to determine whether they were confirmed or not confirmed. This preapproach/postapproach to collection of data regarding expectations and satisfaction was used. Morgan and McCabe (2012) propose a measure of perceived learning interest and learning value, as we detail subsequently how it was be used to measure satisfaction.
On the basis of this theoretical foundation, we conducted empirical studies to (a) measure the effectiveness of our retail laboratory in achieving experiential learning, (b) discover the extent to which lab practices are motivating and satisfying to students, and (c) identify employable skills developed through the retail lab practices, in terms of students’ and graduates’ perceptions. We pursue the all three research objectives in Study 1, then confirm the last objective in Study 2.
Study 1
We worked with students to measure the effectiveness of the retail laboratory for achieving experiential learning and course objectives, as well as to discover the extent to which they found the lab practices interesting and valuable. We adopted Morgan and McCabe (2012) methodology, which includes questions about the apply, analyze, evaluate, and create pedagogical outcomes (i.e., define basic terms, understand decision-making process, apply knowledge of the class topic, analyze how the concepts relate to one another, make judgments about the science of shopping, and put the elements of the course together to form a coherent or functional whole), as well as items specific to the achievement of course objectives. Their study confirms a retail audit project as an effective mechanism for achieving the pedagogical and work/life objectives of a consumer behavior course. Instead of an audit project, we investigate the retail lab with a sample of 50 students taking a 64-hour course.
Project Description
In a category management project, teams of students observed, in the retail lab and through the Gesell Chamber, the shopping patterns of 50 consumers. They analyzed these qualitative data, including the key zones that the shoppers visited, to evaluate how shopping patterns might inform store layout and store format decisions, as well as to develop retailing strategies for a more effective category management processes, particularly in terms of the consumers’ shopping decision tree or shopping hierarchy decisions. This activity helped students gain a practical understanding of the importance of design for retailing, due to its great influence on consumer buying behavior and consumer flows. In particular, students observed the importance of the use of space, such as the placement of aisles, furniture, and nonsale areas (e.g., offices, backrooms).
In addition, the students conducted category management activities. Once they had identified the shopping decision tree, they extrapolated category management strategies. They decided category roles based on their observations, then chose the category location in the layout. Next, they developed and implemented strategies and tactics for each category. The consumer observations also allowed the students to determine the general flow through the store and develop store image strategies and a compelling store environment. Finally, the students analyzed financial strategies in an effort to maximize space productivity and profitability.
Thus, the project ensured that these students engaged with marketing metrics used in contemporary business and academe (Hopkins et al., 2011). For example, one of the category tactics students developed in the lab was merchandising assortment. Using financial and marketing metrics such as product share, sales growth, and product rotation, they also determined shelf arrangements and the share of the shelf to devote to each product.
Method
To measure how effective the experiential learning activity was, we employed a quantitative instrument, following revised Bloom’s taxonomy (Anderson and Krathwolhl, 2001), similar to the one used by Morgan and McCabe (2012). To measure student expectations and student satisfaction (beliefs), they indicated how they will be/was in the lab activities according to two main topics: learning about consumer observation techniques (science of shopping) and implementing a category management process, both measured on 7-point semantic differential scales (“not interesting/interesting”; “not valuable/valuable”). In addition, the students completed Likert-type scales to indicate their familiarity with the techniques (“I am familiar with the techniques marketers use to influence shopping behavior,” 1 = strongly disagree and 7 = strongly agree). Four questions pertained to the influences of the store environment on what, why, where, and how much people buy. Another 7-point scale (1 = not at all and 7 = a great deal) pertained to course objectives, asking students how effective the various teaching techniques related to consumer behavior and category management were for meeting each academic objective. A similar set of questions asked them to assess this effectiveness, had the course not included the laboratory activities.
In a pretest, we surveyed students who had taken 10 hours of lecture about category management and consumer behavior observation with the same items. The pretest sample thus is similar to a control group, enabling us to measure if the lab experience had a greater effect on perceptions than other teaching methods (i.e., lecture) might have.
Findings
We used paired sample t tests to compare student responses, before (i.e., pretest) and after they engaged with the lab. Moreover, students exercised their cognitive skills at all six levels of Bloom’s taxonomy (e.g., Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). We measured these levels among students who engaged in the lab practices and after asking them to imagine they had not been exposed to the lab practices and found significant differences. In particular, as detailed in Table 1, all Bloom’s levels increased with the lab practice. The biggest differences were in the highest and most complex learning levels: evaluating the objective (Mpre = 4.44, Mpost = 6.94; t[49] = 11.78, p < .01, Cohen’s d = 1.66), analyzing the objective (Mpre = 4.80, Mpost = 6.80; t[49] = 8.20, p < .01, Cohen’s d = 1.16), and applying the objective (Mpre = 4.78, Mpost = 6.80; t[49] = 9.67, p < .01, Cohen’s d = 1.37). Also, they recognized that after lab practices, the objective was better understood (Mpre = 4.96, Mpost = 6.88; t[49] = 9.82, p < .01, Cohen’s d = 1.39). One of the smallest difference was in the most basic level and it was remembering the objective (Mpre = 5.34, Mpost = 6.38; t[49] = 6.34, p < .01, Cohen’s d = 0.90) and it was the lowest score after using lab. Even though, it showed a significant difference, the smallest difference was in creating the objective (Mpre = 5.86, Mpost = 6.86; t[49] = 5.00, p < .01, Cohen’s d = 0.71) mainly because it has the biggest score before using de lab. However, after using lab, creating (highest level of Bloom’s taxonomy) had the third highest score (after evaluating and understanding).
Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy (1 = Strongly Disagree and 7 = Strongly Agree).
Significance level (p < .01).
Students significantly increased their familiarity with the techniques marketers use to influence shopping behavior too (Mpre = 3.54, Mpost = 6.42; t[49] = 14.03, p < .01, Cohen’s d = 1.98). Every item that influenced the store environment and consumers’ purchases increased significantly (what Mpre = 4.38, Mpost = 6.34; t[49] = 7.77, p < .01, Cohen’s d = 1.10; why Mpre = 3.90, Mpost = 6.08; t[49] = 7.42, p < .01, Cohen’s d = 1.05; where Mpre = 4.06, Mpost = 6.34; t[47] = 7.44, p < .01, Cohen’s d = 1.05; how much Mpre = 4.00, Mpost = 5.98; t[49] = 7.56, p < .01, Cohen’s d = 1.07). In sum, after using the lab, students not only remember and understand the objective but also they achieve higher levels of learning about the course subjects (science of shopping and category management). So students achieve experiential learning.
To measure the desired skills/characteristics, we used multi-item measures for basic skill sets, experiential learning, acquired skills, college accomplishments, and time/organization (Hopkins et al., 2011), using previously existing measures that had been developed and validated by Raymond, Carlson, and Hopkins (2006). Respondents indicated how the lab activities helped them achieve each of the listed skills/characteristics (1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree). As the results in Table 2 show, students evaluate highest skills developed through lab activities (α = .96, M = 6.88), like critical thinking, problem-solving activities, real situation, and live case analysis. Signaling that it was one of the strongest characteristics developed in the lab. This is very central result because among the main characteristics recruiters seek in job candidates is critical thinking. Developing it during their undergraduate studies will help students be more competitive in the labor market. Second, they rated basic skills (α = .91, M = 6.61). In this construct, the highest scores were teamwork, interpersonal skills, initiative, and oral communication skills. The third score was college accomplishment (α = .72, M = 6.48). Then, student perceptions indicated that lab practices enhance experimental learning (α = .86, M = 6.43) mainly observation skills, retailing experience and other work experiences and it is a competitive labor advantage because recruiters indicate that student job experience will be very beneficial to job candidates.
Competitive Advantage Skills: Students.
Although it was the last on, acquired skills reached a high score (M = 6.40) and across all dimensions (α = .88): decision-making skills (M = 6.72), quantitative skills (M = 6.56) and problem-solving skills (M = 6.42). We found an opportunity mainly on written communication (M = 5.94), which was the last score. So Table 1 and Table 2 show evidence of student’s perceptions of not only how retailing lab practices help them developing experiential learning but also how this experiential learning helps them develop skills considered by recruiters as critical to be a competitive candidate in the labor market.
Additionally, students perceived the learning as more interesting and valuable after they participated in the retail lab. Table 3 shows the results. Specifically, they indicated biggest differences in learning as interesting mainly in category management process (Mpre = 4.96, Mpost = 6.94; t[49] = 9.30, p < .01, Cohen’s d = 1.32) and the science of shopping (Mpre = 5.10, Mpost = 7.00; t[49] = 9.86, p < .01, Cohen’s d = 1.40). Learning about the techniques marketers use to influence shopping behavior also appeared more interesting after lab practices (Mpre = 5.18, Mpost = 6.92; t[49] = 9.20, p < .01, Cohen’s d = 1.30), but it was the smallest difference.
Student’s Satisfaction (1 = Strongly Disagree and 7 = Strongly Agree).
Significance level (p < .01).
The scores related to learning as valuable also increased substantially. As interesting learning, the biggest difference was in category management process (Mpre = 5.16, Mpost = 6.92; t[49] = 9.56, p < .01, Cohen’s d = 1.35) and the smallest difference was in science of shopping (Mpre = 5.22, Mpost = 6.84; t[49] = 8.97, p < .01, Cohen’s d = 1.27). Learning about the techniques marketers use to influence shopping behavior also appeared valuable (Mpre = 5.24, Mpost = 6.92; t[49] = 9.13, p < .01, Cohen’s d = 1.29). Moreover, we asked the respondents if the laboratory had exceeded their expectations; as detailed in Table 4, the mean response was 6.36 on a 7-point scale (1 = strongly disagree and 7 = strongly agree). The mean response to a question about whether they enjoyed it reached 6.86. The findings thus strongly support the retail lab as an effective project for increasing student satisfaction.
Lab Expectations and Lab Enjoyment (1 = Strongly Disagree and 7 = Strongly Agree).
In summary, by gathering the opinions and perceptions of students who participated in lab practices, this study shows that students find learning through lab practices interesting and valuable (satisfaction), in terms of both consumer observations and category management process implementation. At the end of the lab practices, the students also report knowing more about these two topics. According to Bloom’s taxonomy, the lab practices offer an effective tool for achieving the academic objectives associated with the science of shopping and category management processes, through lab practices. Experiential learning in retailing lab practices goes further and probes that it is a good academic technique to enhance not only knowledge but also satisfaction and competitive skills required in the labor market. Study 1 has focused on student perceptions prior to entering the work force. We run Study 2 to measure how student perceptions change when they graduate and acquire labor experience.
Study 2
With this study, we seek to analyze how the activities in the physical lab can help students reduce their learning gap and meet employer expectations. By including the perceptions of graduates, we hope to gain insights of actual needed skills and characteristics in the labor market which they developed through the retailing laboratory practices and to measure the long-term effects of them. We adopted Hopkins et al.’s (2011) approach, with an online survey distributed to students, employers, and educators to compare perceptions among the three groups, specifically focused on skills that enhance marketing students’ value in the job market. In line with Bacon (2016), we also distinguish student-perceived learning from actual student learning. Hopkins et al. (2011) use indirect measures, based on introspection and perceptions.
Method
With quantitative methods, we seek a holistic picture of how students perceive the use of the physical lab space (arranged as a convenience store). The sample for this survey consisted of 70 graduates (alumni), from among the total group of 145 graduates who had used the retail lab since 2010 when it opened. As Barker (2014) recommends, consulting with recent graduates can provide accurate assessments of employability skills and requirements. We created an Internet survey instrument, using Qualtrics, and sent e-mail solicitations to all 145 graduates, from whom we received 70 complete responses.
The survey included items to measure the respondents’ sex, major, and age, as well as their laboratory experiences, such as questions about the activities in which they participated and their teacher. We determined whether students earned a retailing degree or only took some retailing courses. Finally, we asked if they had completed retailing internships or worked in the retailing industry (and for how long), and if so, their position and the name of the company. We report analyses of variance pertaining to these graduates’ experiences with the retail laboratory activities and their views of this pedagogical tool.
Findings
The sample was highly representative of the population. The majors were distributed as follows: 18% international business, 17% marketing, 14% marketing and communication, 9% finance management, 1% business administration, 37% industrial engineer, and 2% technology information. In addition, 86% reported that they earned a retailing minor. Women represented 60% and men 40% of the sample. Furthermore, 39% were younger than 25 years, and 61% were between 25 and 30 years of age. Although 66% had retailing experience, 34% never worked in the retail industry. During their studies, 69% worked in a retailing internship.
To measure the desired skills/characteristics, we used multi-item measures for basic skill sets, experiential learning, acquired skills, college accomplishments, and time/organization developed by Hopkins et al. (2011). We followed the same procedure as in Study 1. Graduates believed that the lab helped them develop experiential learning with the highest score (α = .86, M = 6.54), signaling that it was one of the strongest characteristics developed in the lab. More than 67% of the respondents mentioned that they developed other working experiences too, such as sales and commercial experience, presentation skills, logistic and category management experiences, and retail situation experience. Graduated student perceptions indicated that lab practices help them acquire retailing experience and other work experience (highest scores) and it is a competitive labor advantage because recruiters indicate that student job experience will be very beneficial to job candidates.
The second score was laboratory activities in which they offered very positive responses (M = 6.28) and across all dimensions (α = .96): solving real situations (M = 6.31), problem-solving activities (M = 6.30), and critical thinking (M = 6.27). Another highly significant aspect was time organization; the laboratory activities helped the participants be more organized (α = .90, M = 6.27). They also evaluated the basic skills (α = .91, M = 6.06), especially teamwork, initiative, and motivation. Interpersonal skills, oral communications and personal skills was evaluated also high (M > 5.75). Participants recognized that the lab activities helped them with their college accomplishment (α = .72, M = 6.06). Involvement reached a mean value of 6.23.
Furthermore, the most acquired skills (α = .88, M = 5.72) developed in the lab were problem solving and decision making. This finding is significant; as Hopkins et al. (2011) emphasize, “The importance of critical thinking skills, applying concepts, and presenting information professionally may reflect the recruiters’ desire for new employees who are ready to ‘hit the ground running” (p. 343). Even though written communication and oral communications had high scores, they were two of the lowest.
As a further evaluation of analytical skills, we included questions about whether the lab activities helped them analyze qualitative information (M = 6.26) and quantitative information (M = 6.03). Both means were high. Similarly, we asked about decision making based in qualitative information (M = 6.09) and in quantitative information (M = 6.30). The laboratory activities also enhance summary and evaluation abilities, which scored higher than 6 on the mean.
In a comparison of the results from students in Study 1 with graduates in Study 2 (detailed in Table 5), we find that the students had better opinions of their learning through the lab practices than the graduates, in terms of developed basic skills, acquired skills, college accomplishment, time organization, lab activities, and analytical and decision-making skills. The biggest differences were about analytical and decision-making skills (Mstudents = 6.86, Mgraduate = 6.11; t[118] = 5.64, p < .01, d = 1.23) and acquired skills (Mstudents = 6.40, Mgraduate = 5.72; t[118] = 4.33, p < .01, d = 0.87). The smallest difference was about experimental skills (Mstudents = 6.43, Mgraduate = 6.54; t[118] = 0.72, p > .05, d = 0.06), this difference is not significant so graduate and student had the same and big feelings about how the lab help them develop workable skills. College accomplishment (Mstudents = 6.48, Mgraduate = 6.06; t[118] = 2.57, p = .02, d = 0.49) and time organization (Mstudents = 6.69, Mgraduate = 6.27; t[118] = 2.67, p = .02, d = 0.54) also had low differences. This finding offers a meaningful parameter; if graduates had better perceptions, it would mean that students were underestimating the benefits generated by the lab practices. This evidence seems to suggest that students agreed to what graduated view as important, at least in these areas important for recruiters. These results indicate that once the students enter the labor market, they give greater value to the experiential learning skills acquired in the laboratory practices, this means that as graduates acquire work experience, they perceive in a greater extent how lab practices have helped him in his working life. On the other hand, while students are in the school, they assign a better value to lab activities, time organization, and basic skills, we think because they are more required to perform adequately in the school. Additionally, the results of the graduates probed that the positive feeling of skill development lasts over time (long term).
Competitive Skills Comparison Students Versus Graduates.
Significance level (*p < .05 and **p < .01).
Because experiential learning has been shown to enhance motivation (Fall, 1998), we also included items to measure this motivation and thereby probe whether the retail lab practices enhance it. The 7-point scale agreement scale applied to each item, reflecting the motives for active learning, such that they relate to the lab practice’s ability to enhance motivation and improve attitudes, interest, and curiosity (α = .96, M = 6.42). We provide these results in Table 6.
Motivation Items (1 = Totally Disagree and 7 = Totally Agree, α = .96): Graduate.
With regard to students’ experiences in the retail laboratory, we asked respondents to report on which activities they participated in while in the lab. They were most familiar with customer observation, layout development, category management, merchandising, and pricing.
The analyses of variance showed no differences for motivation or critical-thinking items according to the number of activities or the skills and characteristics development. Motivation and involvement also indicate strong relationships with key constructs: basic skills development, acquired skills, college accomplishments, time organization, laboratory activities, critical thinking, and analytical and decision-making skills, as detailed in Table 7.
Pearson Correlations Motivation and Involvement Versus Competitive Advantage Skills (N = 70): Graduates.
Significance level (p < .01).
Next, we added 15 items, scaled from l (“the issue was promoted more in a lecture class: passive learning”) to 7 (“more in the lab setting: active learning”), adopted from Celuch and Slama (2000), that asked students to compare the critical thinking induced by the lab-linked course against that they achieved in other business classes. The results in Table 8 show that of the 15 items, 10 fell more on the laboratory end: problem-solving skills, speaking skills, facilitate learning methods/measures, openness to new ideas, ability to work productively with others, cultivates responsibility for one’s own learning, improved self-confidence in ability to learn, respect for others, capacity to think for oneself, and capacity to make informed decisions. At the midpoint, we find ability to pay attention, concentration, listening skills, and facilitate learning concepts and principles. At the lecture end, only writing skills appeared. Student’s perceptions of critical thinking was very high in the lab (all above 6). All except facilitate learning methods/measures are significant (p < .05). It means that student’s critical-thinking perception is higher than graduate perception.
Means for Rating the Retailing Lab Classes in Comparison With Other Lecture Classes on the Following Variables (1 = Lecture Helps More to . . . and 7 = Retail Lab Practice Helps More to . . . ).
Significance level (p < .05).
Still, the value of the retail laboratory is evident to graduates who are already in the employment marketplace. These quantitative results demonstrate the effectiveness of the lab practices for developing and strengthening students’ competitive advantages in long-term; they obtain strong critical thinking, analytical, and decision-making skills by engaging in experiential learning and addressing real business problems including category management, merchandising assortment, consumer observation, pricing strategies, store formats, and store layouts. Furthermore, laboratory activities are relevant for helping educators develop students’ basic skills, including marketing metric capabilities (quantitative skills), which are highly demanded among business professionals. Thus, we highly recommend the use of such techniques in retailing and marketing classes.
Discussion
The results of this investigation reflect actual students’ and graduates’ perceptions of a university course that features a retailing laboratory. The lab was created to move students forward, toward skill development in the context of an experiential learning process, thereby requiring them to act and make decisions in complex situations. The lab practices also encourage teamwork and collaboration with classmates of different backgrounds.
Implications for Students
In general, students believe that as a learning experience, the lab practices are valuable, interesting, and applicable. They learned higher forms of thinking, such as applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating information, rather than just remembering facts. The results further show that they are satisfied with the learning process, because they found it interesting and valuable and recognized that the lab practices would help them develop critical career skills and achieve retailing experience. They also regarded the lab activities as challenging.
An analysis of their responses further illustrates that the academic laboratory helped these students develop highly valuable skills, including critical thinking, analysis, decision making, problem solving, initiative, teamwork, interpersonal skills, leadership, retailing experience, other work experiences, presentation skills, internship experience, quantitative skills, and time management and organization skills, among others. Therefore, current and graduated students strongly agree that this teaching technique granted them an opportunity to develop advanced labor skills in a business setting.
Hopkins et al. (2011) have shown that recruiters value critical thinking, analytical, and communication skills. First, critical-thinking skills are deeply entrenched in the process of decomposition of information, such that the retailing lab enhances these skills by providing students with financial information (e.g., inventories, sales) and requiring them to define category tactics (e.g., merchandising assortment). The required collaborations also encourage critical-thinking skills, because student peers provide excellent sources of data and inquiries and offer opportunities for discussion and problem solving. Good thinkers explore, inquire about, and probe new ideas; asking students to work with available merchandise offers unlimited opportunities for them to think critically about ways to innovate.
Second, teaching people to think analytically is a challenge though. Lab activities such as promotion practices help students analyze qualitative and quantitative data, because they must evaluate the impact of the promotion using consumer observations and calculations of the financial cost to the retailer. Through observation, students also learn to quantify customer responses to novel designs and implement retailing strategies, which in turn should improve their analytical skills. Specifically, students define objectives and determine how to achieve them using data, break down the problems, and then seek relevant insights from patterns in the information. Therefore, they come to recognize the need to consider ideas and opinions that are new or different from their own, using analytical thinking.
Third, communication skills also are needed to succeed in any workplace. The results reveal room for improvement in the development of students’ communication skills. Educators therefore should generate more challenging activities, such as requiring students to make formal oral presentations, preparing comprehensive written reports of the results of each lab practice, and promoting discussions of different points of view to resolve retail problems.
As Study 1 indicates, students enjoy the practices associated with the retail lab, which exceed their expectations. Student satisfaction is linked to positive learning outcomes and student motivation. Noting that the students felt very satisfied, motivated, and involved in their learning process, the results indicate that they want to be challenged. They seek different learning techniques that involve them in an active and dynamic process, through which they can achieve the course objectives but also enjoy learning and develop skills that are in demand in the marketplace. Finally, the survey supported the notion that by participating in applied aspects of the course, students improved their ability to recognize how organizations function and develop retailing and other work skills.
Implications From the Graduated Student Results
Considering the insights from already graduated students is important, because they have had an opportunity to reflect on their learning experience and its input for their real-world work experiences. The comparative analysis of student perceptions and alumni perceptions reveals that, for both overall skill measures and the individual components, the means for both samples are greater than 5 (on a 7-point scale), in strong support for the use of the lab to enhance competitive labor skills. This study provides strong evidence that for both students and graduates, the lab experience was positive. Still, the students express slightly more positive responses than the graduates, signaling their better opinions of their skill development through the lab. This measure provides a good indicator, because it suggests that students pay attention to and engage in the retail lab practice, because of the importance they assign to it.
In surveys, both groups also connect the course content with its application; they can support their planned and implemented strategies with data and observations related to course topics. The graduates’ positive opinion further demonstrates that the retailing lab generates long-term learning outcomes and satisfaction. That is, even if their perceptions are slightly less positive than the students’, they remain high over time, especially in terms of whether the lab provided them with the skills that recruiters seek.
Implications for Educators
The results exceed our expectations. Prior to conducting this research, we anticipated that the lab practices would give students opportunities to apply what they learn in classrooms, but the student perceptions of this initiative go even further. Both graduates and current students identify benefits of participating in the lab practices and activities. Considering the competitive job market, such experiential learning, as broadly explained and implemented in this research, offers an excellent means to ensure practical learning, motivate students, engage their interest, and prompt their perceptions of valuable learning. When students are interested and motivated, it is easier for them to learn and implement those lessons. This study thereby offers support for experiential learning, as a means to enhance students’ employability.
Modern teaching strategies pursue deeper exploration and lifelong learning, and such outcomes are evident with the retailing lab, which also advances students’ critical thinking and analytical skills, along with their teamwork, leadership, initiative, retail experience, and other work experience. Unlike nonexperiential methods, the lab provides a unique, controlled environment in which students interact with products that they can touch and move, at any time of the day. However, such lab practices are not easy to develop; they demand excellent course planning to ensure experiential teaching and learning activities that adequately train students.
Effective planning can reduce the uncertainty and ambiguity that this type of learning evokes in some students (Brennan, 2014). In particular, a course plan should include detailed instructions, to maximize the effectiveness of the lab practices, along with flexible learning scenarios to ensure active learning.
The relevance of these findings also might generalize to other settings. For example, photography and digital design courses often rely on lab practices, which offer similarities to but more flexibility than real-world service settings. In the lab, students can design realistic scenarios. Industrial engineering students also might use the labs to study logistics, such as by designing warehouses to optimize a store layout or define categories.
Implications for Universities and Strategic Partners
Retailing lab practices are worth the effort and should be included in marketing and retailing classes to grant students practical experience. Because students do not normally have an opportunity to execute their plans and analyze the results, the benefits of working in a laboratory are substantial. Moreover, the evaluation that we use represents a form of customer satisfaction survey, and the positive responses suggest the potential for long-term sustainable growth, of both the lab and the university that hosts it.
Student satisfaction is part of the overall student experience. Universities that seek to increase satisfaction among their students and alumni need to be able to grow and shift in the rapidly changing, highly competitive education market. This study affirms that student experiences, such as are available in the retailing lab, help nurture student and alumni satisfaction and generate important financial and nonfinancial benefits, including recommendations, loyalty, professional networks, and behaviors that support the university.
However, the resources invested in this project also are considerable, suggesting a trade-off between allowing students to be creative and the need to expend substantial resources. A solution could be a partnership. The retail lab can encourage strong links between students and strategic partners, such that both parties benefit from conducting these active-learning projects. For our retail lab, the strategic partners were true partners, who contributed critically by equipping it with merchandise, as well as hardware and software to implement emergent technologies. By working together, the students and these strategic partners have implemented various retail strategies. The partners first observed consumers through the Gesell chamber and videography; once they established consumer approval, they developed and implemented novel strategies, such as a new store format, new merchandise assortment, and so on.
In summary, the retailing laboratory has exceptional potential to improve students’ preparedness for the labor marketplace. This educational space also can develop valuable bridges among universities, students, and strategic retailers, suggesting a win–win–win network.
Limitations and Further Research
Further research is needed to gain a full understanding of the impact of the lab simulation on student learning. In particular, a formal control group (students not conducting lab practices) should be compared against the experiential group (students engaged in lab practices). Additionally, this research was limited to one cohort of students in each of the studies, so in larger universities, future research could include larger student and alumni samples. As an effective measure of lab learning, it also would be helpful to correlate the results with the students’ grades. Another research line might study actual skill development, instead of perceptions of skill development; as Bacon (2016) notes, real learning entails a change in knowledge. Actual learning is a more rigorous construct than what we measure herein, and further studies should seek to apply this more scrupulous measurement of learning. Future studies could include empirical data that directly measure relationships between skills and course evaluations.
However, the benefits of a retail laboratory space are evident in our quantitative data collection. Students learn about marketing and retailing concepts, strategies, and techniques, as well as how to implement them. This experiential learning method enhances critical-thinking, analytical, and decision-making skills, as well as improving students’ attitudes, motivation, interest, and curiosity. By encouraging active learning and active student engagement, it also positively influences the development of job capabilities that recruiters demand. In particular, team-based retail projects involving consumer observation and category management are valuable experiential practices in the retail laboratory that engage students in deep learning processes, enabling them to better understand the complexities of marketing and management.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.