Hospitality Retailing—Undergraduate Concentration
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About the Hospitality Retailing Concentration
The hospitality retailing concentration provides an interdisciplinary overview of the retailing industry while combining courses with the hospitality industry. Foreseeing and responding to consumer shopping behavior changes and technological innovation offers a breadth of exposure towards a firm foundation in many retailing aspects, including merchandising, pricing, sourcing, and logistics. Students may choose a cross-section related core and elective courses on consumer behavior management, including current issues faced by a dynamic and ever-changing industry.
Perfect if you like: Business, Logic, Numbers, Reading, Technology
Learning Outcomes
Upon the completion of the accounting and finance concentration, students will achieve competencies in:
- understanding the changes in consumer shopping behavior, competitive economics, and technological innovation.
- appreciating the complexities of operating a retail business.
- understanding the challenges retailers face in striking a balance between generating profits and pleasing customers.
- exploring current issues facing retailers, such as customer relationship management, industry consolidation, and supplier relations.
- developing knowledge of retailing, including merchandising, pricing, sourcing, logistics, and site selection.
Required Courses
QST MK470: Pricing Strategy and Tactics—(4 Credit Hours)
Offered: Spring
Prerequisites: SHA HF 100, SHA HF 220, SHA HF 260, and SHA HF 270
The purpose of this course is to introduce the students to the various aspects of a Hotel Real Estate Deal. The target audience is any student who aspires to have a career involving the ownership, development and/or financing of lodging assets.
HF361: Advanced Consumer Behavior in Hospitality—(4 Credit Hours)
Offered: Spring
Prerequisites: SHA HF 260
In order to create and deliver value for customers, marketers must develop a deep understanding of how their consumers make decisions when purchasing and using their services. In this course, those consumer behavior theories will be explored that are most applicable to different types of hospitality purchase experiences
Additional Required Courses
Pick any four credits of available concentration electives:
HF368: Digital Marketing Strategies for the Hospitality Industry—(4 Credit Hours)
Offered: Spring & Fall
Prerequisites: SHA HF 260
This is an advanced course in hospitality marketing focused on the variety of digital marketing tools currently available for hotels and restaurants. The course is designed to follow HSMAI’s CHDM (Certified Hospitality Digital Marketing) study guide to meet the industry standard for digital marketing professionals. There will be a review of the most revenue-generating internet marketing techniques and finally booking mechanisms and distribution channels. The course includes concentration on content marketing, social media and developing social campaigns; OTAs and understanding the distribution channels; as well as online reputation management and the technical tools used to monitor results. The class will be structured as a lecture; you must bring your laptops for all in class exercises.
HF360: Hospitality Sales Mangement—(2 Credit Hours)
Offered: Spring & Fall
Prerequisites: SHA HF 260
A dynamic, interactive and intensive hospitality sales management course which prepares you with fundamental skills on how to create, build and execute an effective sales strategy. This course combines theory with practical application and includes working with source markets and partners, identifying and qualifying prospects, building rapport, overcoming objections for creative proposals and successful closing techniques.
HF367: Hospitality Distribution Channel Managment—(2 Credit Hours)
Offered: Spring
Prerequisites: SHA HF 260
This course provides an overview for managing marketing distribution strategies. In the hotel business today there is a complex network of legacy, online and mobile channels. Distribution is the intersection of revenue management and marketing strategy. A focus is placed on presenting and analyzing the current distribution channels within the travel/hospitality industry. Various approaches to marketing distribution management are evaluated and tested. Topics include the scope of hospitality marketing distribution; economics of the major hospitality distribution segments/channels; managing hospitality distribution strategies; In the end, this course will provide the framework for how and where a hotel should be distributed to maximize revenue and profit.
QST MK442: Digital Marketing Analytics—(2 Credit Hours)
Offered: Spring & Fall
Prerequisites: QST MK323
This is an introductory course on Digital Marketing emphasizing analytics that seeks to familiarize students with digital marketing tactics. At the heart of marketing lies consumers and their marketing journey through the stages of awareness, intent, conversion and finally retention. In this course, we will learn how digital has revolutionized the interactions between firms and consumers along this journey. Digital offers powerful tactics to reach consumers along the funnel: online display ads raise awareness, search listings reach consumers with intent, on-site e-commerce marketing facilitate conversion, and social medial both energizes and retains customers. The course develops essential data analytics skills–critical thinking, data mining, experimental analysis and design–applied to ad campaign, ad attribution, and social media data.
