Recipient Organization
SAINT JOSEPH'S UNIVERSITY
(N/A)
PHILADELPHIA,PA 19131
Performing Department
Food Marketing
Non Technical Summary
More than twenty-three million Americans live in "food deserts," low-income communities with only limited access to healthy and nutritious foods. Socially responsible food company leaders have partnered with community leaders to begin locating supermarkets in the food deserts. Graduates of existing food and beverage marketing and management degree programs have little coursework or experience that prepares them with the socially responsible perspectives needed to manage supermarkets in underserved inner city locations. This lack of appropriate academic preparation is resulting in a growing shortage of qualified supermarket managers as the various state food financing initiatives succeed in increasing the number of supermarkets located in the food deserts. This project's intended beneficiaries are undergraduate food marketing students who represent tomorrow's food industry leaders. Positive impacts will be felt by both inner city residents and the food companies that serve the residents as future food store and industry leaders learn to focus on the social consequences of decisions and inner city community problems that they may impact. This project will transform food marketing education by creating a series of six research-based, upper-division undergraduate course modules designed to integrate social justice education and research training to identify and address the unmet food needs of urban residents living in food deserts. The intended result is a significant increase in undergraduate student knowledge and understanding of the need and delivery methods for socially responsible marketing of food products in inner city food deserts.
Animal Health Component
100%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
100%
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
This project strengthens the social justice dimensions of undergraduate education in the marketing of food, beverages and related products. Although graduates of existing food and beverage marketing and management degree programs pursue food, beverage and consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry careers in which marketing decisions are central to their work, they often have little coursework or experience that provides them with the socially responsible perspectives needed to manage supermarkets in underserved inner city locations. This lack of appropriate academic preparation is resulting in a growing shortage of qualified supermarket managers as the various state food financing initiatives succeed in increasing the number of supermarkets located in the food deserts. The goal of this project is to address this lack of academic preparation. To this end, Saint Joseph's University Department of Food Marketing faculty will partner to transform the Food Marketing undergraduate educational program by creating a series of research-based, upper-division undergraduate course modules that integrate social justice education and research training in identifying and addressing the unmet food needs of urban residents living in food deserts, communities that have limited access to affordable and nutritious food because the inner city has been largely ignored by the food industry. The curriculum modules will be developed and tested, then permanently incorporated into six Food Marketing undergraduate courses to foster a deep understanding among students who will become tomorrow's leaders of the unique food needs of the millions of Americans living in "food deserts." Five objectives guide the project: 1) build academic and industry partnerships that will inform and strengthen faculty efforts toward empowering students to engage in socially responsible food marketing; 2) develop educational materials, such as business case studies and videotaped interviews of food desert community leaders and exemplary Philadelphia area supermarket business leaders, such as Jeff Brown of Brown's Super Stores Inc. and Patrick Burns of Fresh Grocer; 3) develop a series of upper-division undergraduate course modules designed to advance student knowledge and understanding of the need and delivery methods for socially responsible decision-making in the marketing of food and consumer packaged goods; 4) deliver the set of integrated modules in six appropriate undergraduate courses and assess project outcomes; 5) disseminate the final, tested modules to the University Food Industry Coalition schools engaged in food marketing education as model course materials. This project's intended audience is undergraduate food marketing students who represent tomorrow's food industry leaders. The intended result is a significant increase in undergraduate student knowledge and understanding of the need and delivery methods for socially responsible marketing of food products in inner city food deserts.
Project Methods
The Project Directors will solicit module development proposals from the SJU Department of Food Marketing faculty, with the goal of providing six faculty mini-grants to develop, test and execute course modules. Curriculum modules will be evaluated and modified after initial execution. Each curriculum module will include, at a minimum- Pre- and post-execution assessments of subject matter knowledge and understanding A detailed instructional plan for module execution A complete set of instructional materials for both live and online delivery that incorporate a wide variety of active learning multimedia components - PowerPoint slides, video case studies and interviews, group discussion topics and activities, designed to encourage student critical thinking and improve student retention of subject content and decision-making skills. The final output of this research project, the series of course curriculum modules, will require considerable research to obtain the content materials for the modules. Data for the modules will be collected through a comprehensive qualitative and quantitative research approach blending in-depth interviews, focus groups and observational research, supported by secondary information available from academic research studies, government reports and media publications. The complementary nature of the methods often leads to more robust findings than are possible when each research method is employed independently. This integrated research process will consist of: 1. A comprehensive review of secondary data from academic journals, published research reports, government reports and other sources will focus on the relatively sparse amount of research currently done on the issues associated with developing supermarkets in food deserts. This data will be used as a basis for insuring that past information and learning is built into the study. The findings will be used to assist in the identification of salient variables and issues. Findings will also be used to help develop the qualitative research instruments. 2. A series of in-depth interviews with key stakeholders will utilize Grounded Theory Methodology to identify and explore the most important issues facing community leaders and supermarket management when opening and running supermarkets in food deserts, and the impacts of stores in the communities. In-depth interviews are the preferred methodology when the project demands intensive probing of participants. Grounded theory is theory which has been systematically obtained through `social' research and is grounded in data, most commonly interviews and/or observations. The qualitative nature of grounded theory focuses on the search for meaning and understanding to build innovative theory. Close inspection of the data extends theory through theoretical sampling. Rather than predetermining the characteristics and size of the sample, the developing theory directs the researcher to new informants and appropriate locations.