Attraktion kommer inifrån, en studie om detaljhandelsbranschens attraktivitet som arbetsgivare bland studenter i Sverige

Sammanfattning: Retail companies are outperforming banks regarding attractiveness as employers, among graduate students in Sweden within the category Economy. Despite positive sales growth, the retail industry struggles with profitability. Poor profitability decreases the demand of employments, which can affect the industry's attractiveness negatively as an employer. At the same time, the demand for skilled employees increases due to rough competition and digitalization. Employees are one of the most important assets for retail companies. However, attracting skilled employees with the right competence is a challenge for the whole industry. Previous studies have shown that peoples' attitudes are related to their behaviour. This study aims to investigate if graduate students' general attitude towards the retail industry affects how attractive they consider the industry to be. The attractiveness is measured in the behaviour of students, wanting to apply for a job within the industry. Our study also aims to examine and determine what kind of attitude students have towards the retail industry and what factors influence this attitude. Since attitude is correlated with how attractive the industry is, we aim to determine what the industry should do to improve the attitude towards it and thereby also its attractiveness. Our main conclusion is that the factors, which affect the attitude towards the retail industry, are nice colleagues, career opportunities, high salaries, career benefits and what level of influence you have as an employee. Other factors are characteristics of the industry such as being funny, exiting and nice. Nice colleagues, career opportunities and high salaries were shown to affect the attitude the most. Since it turns out that the industry already performs well regarding nice colleagues and that high salaries are difficult to offer due to the poor profitability, focus should be on communicating the career opportunities. Career opportunities are something that the retail industry offers, however many students do not seem to be aware of them.