CONNECTING RETAIL EDUCATION TO RETAIL PRACTICE: HOW INNOVATIVE TEACHING FORMATS INFLUENCE STUDENTS’ AND EMPLOYEES’ TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING

The abundance of new touchpoints (e.g., mobile apps, price comparison portals), stakeholders (e.g., manufacturers, other customers), and technologies (e.g., artificial intelligence, virtual reality) that shape today’s customer journey have rendered retailing more complex, fast-moving, and competitive than ever before. In light of the high demands on retail managers of tomorrow to use innovative practices and service solutions for delivering customized and delightful customer experiences, educational institutions struggle to make their courses more relevant for the challenges that students are about to be confronted with in their professional life. With the help of two qualitative studies, this paper investigates the role of experiential learning in triggering transformative learning, i.e., the process of continuous critical reflection and perspective transformation, among students, retail managers, and frontline employees. Findings reveal that experiential learning formats may induce students’ transformative learning along five different categories centered on the students’ self and the interaction between the self and others. Our results extend research on retailing and experiential and transformative learning and derive valuable implications for retailers and educators alike.