By Zeebracross
Introduction:
This article reports on the key findings of our recent survey on management students to know their perceptions about career in retail sector. Large Indian players like Reliance, ITC and many others are making significant investments in the retail sector. The rapid growth of the retail sector has opened up new avenues, making Retail Management another talented stream for the fresh graduates.
In this report, we consider the extent to which the growth in retail sector has an impact on the students’ career choices, and what are the most appropriate ways to encourage interested management students allowing for more targeted recruitment efforts.
Specifically, we examine students’ perceptions of retail sector within the context of their self-reported level of interest in a retail career. To do so, we compare management students who indicated that they were potentially attracted to a career in retailing with students from the same cohort who identified themselves as uninterested in the field.
Need and Significance for the Study
There is a dearth of skilled professionals in the retail industry, especially at the middle-management. Retailing is yet to become a preferred career option for most of India’s educated class that usually opts for sectors like IT, BPO and financial services.
One prospective source of attracting talent is campus recruitment of college graduates. Therefore, there is a need for the retailers to understand the student’s perception and expectations about their career to attract the prospects.
ZeebraCross™ - An experience driven Marketing and Branding Solution provider based in Hyderabad, undertook this study on “Retail Sector – Management Students Perception” to understand student’s career choice and help retailers develop better recruitment practices for attracting the best talent pool in the industry.
There were three goals to this investigation:
Key Findings
As well-known that the Indian retail sector is a booming industry, the same is agreed by majority of the students. Whereas a few students said that it is the IT and Finance industries. The boom in the Retail Sectors was attributed to factors like increase in the purchasing power of individuals, changing lifestyle, use of credit cards and increase of awareness of various products and offerings through media.
Many of the students answered that they would like to be associated with the finance industry as they lack the knowledge of job opportunities available in the retail sector.
The available evidence suggests that management students hold mixed views of retail career. They expressed their views positive on retail sector saying that it is people oriented, and exciting with high growth in career. At the same time, approximately 45% of the students said that it is hectic with long working hours and poor salary with limited opportunities.
Perception about career in retail sector
Students perceived retail sector jobs to be store based jobs, and most of them were not aware of the various career opportunities available. If they are working as a customer service executive for a retail store, they said that they would try to hide themselves or would feel shy, if someone known visits them as theyperceived it to be a prestige lacking job.
Reasons for not choosing retail as a career
Most of the students are not aware of various career opportunities in retail sector as well as the retailing institutes and colleges providing retail management education or course. Clothing/fashions, food/supermarket, and automobile are the most preferred job segments in retail sector.
Addressing areas of influence that may be more in reach; our data suggests that the educators should attend to two additional factors that were shown to have a significant impact on student’s consideration of the field: i) perceived levels of satisfaction; and ii) job stress in retail sector. Indeed, it is interesting that while the students who seriously considered working in retail sector, reported being significantly more positively influenced by lifestyle and the satisfaction of working with the sector; they also reported equal levels of concern about the expected stress of working with retail sector as the students who never seriously considered a retail career. It implies that addressing students’ perceptions of stressful experiences should be a high priority.
These findings replicate previous reports that most of the management students are not interested to take up retail sector as their destination career as they are not aware of the various opportunities the retail sector offers. This signifies that the educational program does not successfully convey the excitement of the current intellectual environment in retailing.
All respondents, irrespective of their level of interest in retail career, generally rated the following factors as having had a negative impact on their interest in the field:
Students committed to careers in retailing described retail jobs to be challenging with excitement, whereas student’s not choosing retailing careers felt it to be monotonous.
To attract the students to the retail sector, they should be provided with the information about the sector. We believe efforts should be made for all students to experience feeling competent, effective, and not overly stressed in the retailing trainings.
Retailers should provide the students with summer internship projects. They should also tie up with colleges for the campus placements so that they can attract the best talent to its sector.
Retailers should create a positive image in the minds of the students. A career in retail sector should promise good wages and career growth potential for the ambitious youngsters.
Conclusion
Based on the survey results, it can be concluded that the students perceive a career in retail sector to be not so exciting and lacking prestige. Students are not very attracted to work for the retail sector.
To change the students’ perception into a positive one, the employers of the retail sector should meet up the expectations of good pay, and provide them with good learning and career development opportunities. Retailers should visit colleges on regular basis and should create a positive image about the sector. Personal, word of mouth and the work experience can help to persuade the perceptions about retail sector career.
This article reports on the key findings of our recent survey on management students to know their perceptions about career in retail sector. Large Indian players like Reliance, ITC and many others are making significant investments in the retail sector. The rapid growth of the retail sector has opened up new avenues, making Retail Management another talented stream for the fresh graduates.
In this report, we consider the extent to which the growth in retail sector has an impact on the students’ career choices, and what are the most appropriate ways to encourage interested management students allowing for more targeted recruitment efforts.
Specifically, we examine students’ perceptions of retail sector within the context of their self-reported level of interest in a retail career. To do so, we compare management students who indicated that they were potentially attracted to a career in retailing with students from the same cohort who identified themselves as uninterested in the field.
Need and Significance for the Study
There is a dearth of skilled professionals in the retail industry, especially at the middle-management. Retailing is yet to become a preferred career option for most of India’s educated class that usually opts for sectors like IT, BPO and financial services.
One prospective source of attracting talent is campus recruitment of college graduates. Therefore, there is a need for the retailers to understand the student’s perception and expectations about their career to attract the prospects.
ZeebraCross™ - An experience driven Marketing and Branding Solution provider based in Hyderabad, undertook this study on “Retail Sector – Management Students Perception” to understand student’s career choice and help retailers develop better recruitment practices for attracting the best talent pool in the industry.
There were three goals to this investigation:
- To offer an updated assessment of management students’ perceptions of retailing
- To evaluate the personal, educational, and social contributors that led to those perceptions
- To explore how those perceptions possibly influence the students’ career decisions
Key Findings
As well-known that the Indian retail sector is a booming industry, the same is agreed by majority of the students. Whereas a few students said that it is the IT and Finance industries. The boom in the Retail Sectors was attributed to factors like increase in the purchasing power of individuals, changing lifestyle, use of credit cards and increase of awareness of various products and offerings through media.
| Sector in boom | Percentage (%) |
| Finance | 11 |
| Retail | 33 |
| IT | 17 |
| Telecom | 13 |
| Infrastructure | 16 |
| Hospitality | 08 |
| Others | 02 |
| Booming sector in the Indian economy | |
Many of the students answered that they would like to be associated with the finance industry as they lack the knowledge of job opportunities available in the retail sector.
| Sector want to associate with | Percentage (%) |
| Finance | 26 |
| Retail | 25 |
| IT | 13 |
| Telecom | 09 |
| Infrastructure | 08 |
| Hospitality | 09 |
| Others | 10 |
| Sector management students want to be associated with | |
The available evidence suggests that management students hold mixed views of retail career. They expressed their views positive on retail sector saying that it is people oriented, and exciting with high growth in career. At the same time, approximately 45% of the students said that it is hectic with long working hours and poor salary with limited opportunities.
Perception about career in retail sector
Students perceived retail sector jobs to be store based jobs, and most of them were not aware of the various career opportunities available. If they are working as a customer service executive for a retail store, they said that they would try to hide themselves or would feel shy, if someone known visits them as theyperceived it to be a prestige lacking job.
Reasons for not choosing retail as a career
Most of the students are not aware of various career opportunities in retail sector as well as the retailing institutes and colleges providing retail management education or course. Clothing/fashions, food/supermarket, and automobile are the most preferred job segments in retail sector.
Addressing areas of influence that may be more in reach; our data suggests that the educators should attend to two additional factors that were shown to have a significant impact on student’s consideration of the field: i) perceived levels of satisfaction; and ii) job stress in retail sector. Indeed, it is interesting that while the students who seriously considered working in retail sector, reported being significantly more positively influenced by lifestyle and the satisfaction of working with the sector; they also reported equal levels of concern about the expected stress of working with retail sector as the students who never seriously considered a retail career. It implies that addressing students’ perceptions of stressful experiences should be a high priority.
These findings replicate previous reports that most of the management students are not interested to take up retail sector as their destination career as they are not aware of the various opportunities the retail sector offers. This signifies that the educational program does not successfully convey the excitement of the current intellectual environment in retailing.
All respondents, irrespective of their level of interest in retail career, generally rated the following factors as having had a negative impact on their interest in the field:
- Status of retailing in society at large
- Retailers’ earning potential
Students committed to careers in retailing described retail jobs to be challenging with excitement, whereas student’s not choosing retailing careers felt it to be monotonous.
To attract the students to the retail sector, they should be provided with the information about the sector. We believe efforts should be made for all students to experience feeling competent, effective, and not overly stressed in the retailing trainings.
Retailers should provide the students with summer internship projects. They should also tie up with colleges for the campus placements so that they can attract the best talent to its sector.
Retailers should create a positive image in the minds of the students. A career in retail sector should promise good wages and career growth potential for the ambitious youngsters.
Conclusion
Based on the survey results, it can be concluded that the students perceive a career in retail sector to be not so exciting and lacking prestige. Students are not very attracted to work for the retail sector.
To change the students’ perception into a positive one, the employers of the retail sector should meet up the expectations of good pay, and provide them with good learning and career development opportunities. Retailers should visit colleges on regular basis and should create a positive image about the sector. Personal, word of mouth and the work experience can help to persuade the perceptions about retail sector career.