Research Assistant Intern: Size and Fit 2/3

 Second entry

Research project about color and consumer behavior 

Post 3/3

Hello everyone!

It's Monday again, the weeks are passing by so fast now and soon it's summer. The research project is proceeding and we have now coded all the transcripts we had. At first, I thought it was difficult to decide what themes to divide the interviews in when we were coding but now, we have found a few themes that suit well. It's really interesting to see how different participants have answered so similar to the questions we asked, and that color actually affects us more than we think. 

The last time I wrote here, I  had some trouble coming up with a good research question, but now I think I have one that will work for me and my report, which feels amazing. These coming weeks I will focus on writing as much as possible, but the most difficult part is to start and I feel that I need to find some motivation for that. I am happy that I have my daily meetings with Adina and that Anita is helping us when we are confused about something. 

This will be my last post, stay safe, and have a lovely week! 

Kind regards, 

Caroline

Deep Dive into the Game Design!

 I was thinking more like, making a game for student which will be as easy as a road through an empty field. Made that also. But after looking at that I found, a lot of areas student will be missing to learn by playing the game. Yes, it will be a bit extensive for them in the classroom, but most of them are going to know them anyway, either from theory or from industry work. From that point of thought, I decided to move forward to make it a bit extensive. 

Let me explain to you what I am onto even though at this stage, it is really a tough task to explain it in words (powerpoint might work better! :-D, Kidding)

A supply chain classroom game through which player will learn about order placement negotiation, how to keep an eye on the company profitability, working with production capacity, maintaining supply chain relationship while they have to be competitive within them as well and avail purchaser's satisfaction. There were 2 module (which I decided to move forward with 3 later on to give the game a complete view) "Purchase Module" & "Supply Module". Later added the "Retail Module". 

5 learners will be able to play simultaneously and communicating with the designated parties. 1 player will play as a Retailer, 1 will be playing the role of Purchaser and 3 person will be playing as Supplier/Manufacturer. Retailer and Purchaser can be under the same company or different as well. 

Purchaser will get the aggregated data of predicted demand and based on that the orders will be placed with the Suppliers/Manufactures. Prior to that, Suppliers will be able to select what product they will be producing and at what capacity based on their investment in hand $ 500,000 (a lot of money!). Once they will have their product categories and capacity ready, Purchaser will be able to place the order with them.

After the goods produced, the retailer will be selling those goods and then the predicted and actual demand will be dealt and based on that player will decide at what markdown price he/she wants to sell the goods and clear out the inventory before entering to the next season.

Oh! I forgot to mention, the game environment timeline will be for 3 season (1 year) and there will be 3 rounds. So, players will get an idea of working with/running a fashion brand for 3 years.

Sounds complicated, right? But trust me, once you will have the things in front of you visually, it would be as easy as Rudy's class...... Kidding again..  It will be very easy and clear. 

Till then, stay safe!

Internship update (post 2/3)

Hello again everyone!

In this post I will be sharing with you what happened during last weeks. I have good news and bad news. 

Good news is that we've successfully launched a campaign which was divided into two parts. First part of the campaign was about celebrating 1 year anniversary of the brand and we gave away a free bag as a gift to one of the campaign members / participants. In order to participate in the give away, candidates had to subscribe, like, comment and share the brand's Facebook post. This definitely contributed increased subscribers as well as customer engagement and new orders.

Another part of the campaign, which we've started right after the give away, involved incorporating 15% off on all handbags and wallets. We think that give away and sale combo was great, because first, we could attract more potential customers by offering a chance to win a free bag and after that (since we had more people) - offer current and newly joined customers to buy a bag/wallet using 15% off.  Therefore, we think that the first part was necessary to start with and not vice versa. 

The bad news is that I have limited bags to work with, since there is no possibility to produce more (yet). Interesting part is that all those subscribers that we've gained for give away, stayed and didn´t unsubscribed. Moreover, people continue to subscribe and order more bags. 

My next post will probably be about our showroom that we are about to open over the weekend. 

Trevlig helg! 

Natela 

Product Developement Internship

 (2/3)

I have now been at my internship for a month. It is crazy how time fly by! I hope you all are doing great and enjoy your field studies!

 

I have already learned so much about how the product development works by experiencing it in real life. It feels so good to be able to connect what we have learned in during the courses to my own experiences. The plan is that I should be at the office two days a week and work from home the rest, but as some prefer to work from home, I have been able to be at the office more than twice most of the weeks. After as much digital meetings and lectures we have had during the last year, it is really nice to meet people!

 

Regarding my report, I decided to change the theme from how the company work with vs. communicates sustainability to packaging in the fashion industry. This theme is closer connected to a project I am taking a closer look at during my internship, and I also believe that I can learn much by doing a deeper investigation. The packaging of the products is something I haven’t put much attention to earlier, but when I think about it, I realize how much waste it produces – especially since online orders and the number of parcels only gets higher. It is therefore important to find the best and most sustainable solutions in order to reduce waste or at least be able to handle it the best way possible, so it does not end up in nature.

 

Have a good weekend!

Kind Regards

Amanda R

Internship at the Retail Lab - 01

 

Hey everyone!

Finally, I am able to post my first blog post 😊 I am Fatima and I am doing my internship as a research assistant at the University of Boras, Retail Lab (Handelslabbet). It has been few weeks, since we started, but the idea was a bit foggy at the start and now it’s getting clearer. I think same would be the case with some others as well. The retail lab is being renovated and there will be a great reopening in September. I can imagine, it will be exciting...

As I have a background in designing, I got the task to create an interesting display on the artificial intelligence research in textile and fashion industry. First, I had a plan to create a video, which would show all the interesting projects that are being carried out and revolutionizing the textile and fashion industry. But later on, I have decided to go on with some posters that could fulfill the intended purpose. As, a poster with a lot of text could be boring, therefore, the plan is to create minimalistic, yet informative poster; that can be tricky as well.

We have weekly meetings, where we discuss ideas and progress and also get to know how renovation of the lab is going on. For the report, I will be exploring how Artificial Intelligence is influencing the textile and fashion industry. Artificial Intelligence is a vast field and it is transforming the world of textile and fashion in various ways. From robots in the manufacturing units to Smart mirrors and automated fashion stylists, artificial intelligence has great influence. I had meetings with some researchers at the University of Borås, to know more about ongoing research on artificial intelligence and its role on textile industry. There is a lot of literature to be read, so I am also trying to deal with that.

I hope everyone is enjoying their fieldwork. It is fun to hear how everyone is doing, on this platform.

Have a great weekend…

/ Fatima

Resarch project, post 3/3

 Hi everyone, 

Hope you all are good!

The research project is proceeding, we are now done with our focus group interviews and with the coding, it took time and effort but it's looking good now. We have found some interesting themes in the interviews and we are also noting the themes that we did not expect to receive from our questions, that could have a great impact on our findings, 

The process to actually start writing is hard, I need some inspiration and this sitting at home, meeting no people situation is making the inspiration harder to receive. I will just need to get in my writing mood.

Other than that I am really excited to start and see how the result will turn out, and to see how the research will use the material that we have gathered. We know that the information from the interviews are good and we have discussed some interesting themes that we found in the interviews with the researcher who were excited about the findings.

 

This will be my last post, so good luck everyone! Hope to see you soon!

Best,

Adina 

Circular textile for hotel - post 2/3

Hello,

It is Ly again. So this is my second blog of the internship and it has been 3 weeks full of new things for me to learn. As I mentioned in the first post, I'm doing a survey for the company to understand consumers' perspectives about sustainable textile in hotels. This is a very interesting topic to me. Since then, I have worked together with 2 colleagues to create and test the survey.

Finally I'm happy to share with you that the survey is up and running. And I'd be more than happy if you could spare 5 minuts of your time to answer the survey (sorry that it's in swedish). As a thank you, we will give out 5 climate-smart bathrobes & slippers, among those who respond.

https://www.survio.com/survey/d/E2J1V7C3E1W5T2V6U

Other things I have learnt during the internship is marketing tasks such as social media content creation, newsletter design and plan, as well as having many chances to talk with the founder of the brand to hear about their experience in starting up the company and working with different partners.

I have enjoyed the internship so far and very excited to getting to do things I never did before. 

See you in my next post!

Ly

Digital Marketing Intern . 2

(2/3) 

Another week has gone by since last time, but it feels like even more. Time flies! Just as a remember for you, I'm doing an internship at a swimwear brand as a Digital Marketing and Content Strategist. The focus this week has been on which kind of emails that we should focus on in the life cycle of a customer journey. It's a lot to think of, for example, the brand identity and brand image, but also when and what the customer want to have an email about, and how often we can send without it being perceived as spam. It has been fun, and I get to test my ideas a lot, which I'm so thankful for. Actually, I've made their new email template design, which they have used for a few emails now. Later we're going to analyze the content of the emails to see which gives the most loyal customers. This takes time as it's a small company and we want to have the clearest picture possible. 

The focus of my report will be on creating customer loyalty through emails, as this is what my internship is about. I've written a logbook, in which I write what I've done every week and what we are talking about. This will be my kind of result that I will connect to the literature. However, I'm still a bit confused over which type of paper I will write, which I have to talk with Jenny about on the tutoring. Well, this is probably a little bit late, but I've focused a lot on my internship as I think it's fun and I'm learning a lot - but now I'll take more time and focus on the paper! Hope the report is going well for you others as well, maybe it's not only me that is struggling. 

Take care!

S

Towards a New Supply Chain Classroom Game

Last time in my supply chain course when I played the supply chain beer game, I felt it quite interesting. There are lots of positive and negative sides of the game popped up in my mind and I was thinking why this kind of games couldn't be more related to the industrial reality?

I grabbed the opportunity of working in search of a new game which I couldn't find yet within the already existing games. From a lot of thoughts I decided to start working on the supply chain planning  and manufacturing field. Soon I started to explore new opportunities holding the hand of several researchers who already has done highly extensive research in this field.

Making a complete game within this short period of time is really really tough. Because while programming the game a lot of areas have to look in. And when it is a supply chain game within one of the most complex industries ie. Fashion retail industry, the number of areas to look in is literally a thousand. It is really a tough job, trust me! And to make it more challenging, I have added several more advanced theme into it so that, the players get a glimpse of the industrial reality through this game. 

I would say, pedagogically it has widespread ideas to convey to the students such as price negotiation, capacity maintaining,  competition within the supply chain, competition among different suppliers (market), keep an active eye on the profitability of the order and how to increase that with a view to give company a sustainable economic growth and so on. 

The game is based on a simple concept: a buyer has a certain amount of order which he/she has to place with suppliers. 4 persons can play the game simultaneously across 3 rounds. Several information is being shared across both buyer and supplier ends in order to have more precise decision. Still i am working on it and hopefully will be completed within end of week 18.

I would be really happy if someone would volunteer to play the game and get some insights of the supply chain practice within fashion retail industry.

Take care!
Saikot