Alan Collins

BA (Economics Sociology) 1986 National University of Ireland, Cork MA (Economics) 1988 National University of Ireland, Cork PhD (Marketing) 2001 University of Stirling

My main area of interest lies in the food retailing, its supply chain, consumer and shopper behaviour.

I consider myself an interdisciplinary researcher drawing on my background in sociology, economics and marketing with a passion for food retailing formed over many years working in Cork's English Market, Tesco UK, and with extensive collaboration with Musgrave and Supervalu retailers throughout the country both as an educator and store of the year adjudicator.

To date, much of my research interests and publications occupied the field of marketing channels and in particular how evolving retail strategies have impacted on the indigenous supplier base and channel relationships particularly in light of the emergence of the retailer as the brand. This work has been published in a variety of ABS 3 publications including Supply Chain Management: an International Journal, the Journal of Marketing Management and the European Journal of Marketing.

More recently, I have turned my research focus to consumer and shopper behaviour with a particular emphasis on search related activities. These have included price and promotional search, recently published in the Journal of Marketing Management and the emergence of a new consumer heuristic in the form of a Store Brandscape to be published shortly in the European Journal of Marketing. On-going projects in this space include a Teagasc funded doctoral researcher working on the use of mobile optical technologies (e.g. smartphones) in food related search.

While much of my published research adopts a positivist approach, more recent research with collaborators has extended to integrate a more nuanced and interpretivist perspective on the phenomena under investigation. The focus of this work has been on food consumption and health related behaviours and displays the influence of consumer culture theory. This work has been published in the Sociology of Health and Illness, and Consumption, Markets and Culture.