Ohio Wesleyan University to Host Retail Marketing Expert
Mary Brett Whitfield
DELAWARE, Ohio – Mary Brett Whitfield, senior vice president for Kantar Retail, helps businesses use shopper insights to position for performance improvement and growth, and she will share insights on how shoppers’ rapid adoption of digital tools and technologies will require retailers to adapt to succeed in an increasingly multi-channel world when she speaks Nov. 1 at Ohio Wesleyan University.
Whitfield will present information and take questions from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Nov. 1 in the Bayley Room on the second floor of Ohio Wesleyan’s Beeghly Library, 43 Rowland Ave. The event is sponsored by the university’s Woltemade Center for Economics, Business and Entrepreneurship, founded in 1985 to help students integrate business theory and practice, and to provide resources to benefit the business community. For those unable to attend the daytime event, Whitfield’s presentation will be streamed live and archived online at https://www.owu.edu/about/follow-owu/stream-owu/.
At Kantar Retail, Whitfield leads shopper insights and apparel retailing research and content development. She has extensive experience helping retailers and suppliers leverage shopper insights and other primary research data to improve their market performance. She has worked at retail companies in market research, strategic planning, and sales development roles, and she has a strong background in industry and company analysis, competitive positioning work, and online retailing.
Kantar Retail works with more than 400 clients through 20 offices in 15 markets around the globe, including Columbus, Ohio. It is the world’s leading shopper and retail insights and consulting business and is part of the Kantar group of WPP. It works with manufacturers and retailers to help them transform the purchasing behavior of consumers, shoppers, and retailers through the use of retail insights, consulting, analytics, and organizational development services. Kantar Retail tracks and forecasts more than 1,000 retailers globally and has purchase data on more than 200 million shoppers. It produces the annual PoweRanking survey (USA and China) as well as the 2012 Trade Effectiveness Study. Learn more at www.kantarretail.com.
Founded in 1842, Ohio Wesleyan University is one of the nation’s premier small, private universities. Ohio Wesleyan offers more than 90 undergraduate majors, sequences, and courses of study, and 23 NCAA Division III varsity sports. OWU combines an internationally focused curriculum with off-campus learning and leadership opportunities that connect classroom theory with real-world practice. Located in Delaware, Ohio, OWU’s 1,850 students represent 41 states and 45 countries. The university is featured in the book “Colleges That Change Lives,” listed on the 2012 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll with distinction, and included on the “best colleges” lists of U.S. News & World Report and The Princeton Review. Learn more at www.owu.edu.