Covid 19

The COVID-19 pandemic brought the global air industry to virtual standstill in March 2020, delivering a $370-billion “staggering financial loss to the industry,” according to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). Seating capacity dropped – by half. The total of passengers taking flights fell even further, to 1.8 billion in 2020, from 4.5 billion in 2019.

Labor Day weekend shoppers might have a little extra money to spend, but they will have to work harder to find discounts this year. Supply chain disruptions caused by the continuing pandemic and a series of severe weather events have had retailers struggling to maintain inventories and subsequently less-incentivized to discount items in stock – even for the usual Labor Day sales bonanzas on appliances, mattresses and autos, said Maryland Smith marketing experts Amna Kirmani and Jie Zhang.

After most Terps spent more than a year in a largely virtual environment, UMD is prioritizing keeping them safe as they get reacquainted with campus, navigate a sea of syllabi and adjust to their new schedules.

Here’s what you need to know about the latest COVID-19 guidance to stay healthy as the Fall 2021 semester begins:

Masks

Everyone on campus, regardless of vaccination status, must wear a mask while:

Gird yourself—or, actually, don’t: The new office dress code is here, and it’s very stretchy.

After nearly 18 months of widespread telework, many office workers gearing up to head back in are first revisiting their dresser drawers, where they may have to dig past piles of the comfortable yoga pants, cozy hoodies and ratty cargo shorts they’ve become accustomed to. But once back at their desks, they may stick with some of the sartorial choices they’ve been making at home.

If there’s one thing that can be said about Scarlett Johansson’s decision to sue Disney for releasing her latest film, “Black Widow,” simultaneously on streaming and in movie theaters, perhaps it’s this: Watch for sequels.

And as the industry enters its new era, watch for spinoff effects, too, as movie marketing evolves, says P.K. Kannan, the Dean’s Chair in Marketing Science at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.

Income, educational attainment and political ideology all play into racial disparities in vaccination rates that have left African Americans more vulnerable to COVID-19, Maryland Smith researchers found.

In a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they write that “structural inequities pose a serious threat to progress” in the push for nationwide vaccination.  

Open discussion with participants about the challenges and issues they face in the retail industry.

Facilitated by: Jie Zhang

Utilizing Data Analytics to Build A Winning Retail Business

This session will cover retail performance metrics and how to utilize them to diagnose problems and improve retail decisions. It will focus on those performance metrics that can be implemented using a retailer's existing inventory management and bookkeeping infrastructure (so that they can be easily adopted by SMR's).  We will also discuss more advanced metrics and frameworks that have been utilized by sophisticated retail operations and the additional data/resources required.

Retail industry trends and implications for small and Mid-sized Retailers (SMR)

This session will focus on 1) the "big picture" and major trends of the industry, more or less organized by different retail sectors; 2) the implications for SMR's; 3) discuss strategies to address these challenges from the perspective of SMR's.

Facilitated by: Jie Zhang

Welcome to the age of the empty car lot. The auto industry is experiencing a huge disruption with computer chips in scarce supply.