U.N SECONDMENT FOR TOP STUDENT

The growing importance of the ECR Europe Student Awards has been underlined by the decision of Unilever to sponsor the gold award for the first time - and to offer the winner a three-month internship with the United Nations World Food Programme.

Kees van der Graaf, President Europe Unilever, made the award to this year's gold winner Aristeidis Theotokis from Athens University of Economics and business and told him:" I am delighted to offer you a unique experience in bringing together a business agenda with a social agenda".

He added:"The winning paper offers axtremely useful insights on how to promote and evaluate innovation in retailing. This fits perfectly with the ECR approach and the theme of the 2007 Milan Forum and marketplace."

The Silver award went to Dutch student Alex van den Heijkant of Eindhoven Technical University for a paper on selecting the logistic structure for superstores.

Bronze Award winner was  Ville Pätynen of Helsinki University of Technology for a paper on Applying automated store ordering to improve store replenishment in speciality retail. The paper was commended by the ECR Academic Advisory Panel for being"perfectly in line with what ECR has been doing in researching and promoting new and more efficient store ordering for many years".

Announcing the awards, Robert Wilkinson, (Coca-Cola), co-chairman of the International Commerce Institute, praised the growing partnership between ECR and tthe academic world - a development which has now moved to include the United States and Asia.

"Learning is everywhere in this conference, and we are proud to be part of it," he said. "We are particularly pleased that ECR practices which we developed are now part of the main stream of business thinking in the academic community."