31st Recent Advances in Retailing and Consumer Sciences (RARCS) Conference 

Professor Harry Timmermans was appointed Chair of Urban Planning at the Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands in 1985. In 1990 he also became Carthy Foundation Chair of Retailing at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada and Director of the Canadian institute of Retailing and Consumer services - CIRASS. He introduced the first master program in retail management in Canada. A year later he started EIRASS in Eindhoven. To draw attention to these events, he launched the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services (JRCS), first published by Butterworth-Heinemann, currently an Elsevier publication. Around this time, he also organised the first Recent Advances in Retailing and Consumer Service Science Conference (RARCS) in Banff/Lake Louise. Working in different disciplines, he was fascinated by the fact that some models were popular in urban planning, but not in marketing and vice versa. Even within the service industries very different theories and concepts were dominant. The aim of this conference which originally was meant to be a one-time event, was to bring together scholars from different disciplinary background to discuss their work. RARCS typically brings together scholars from around 30-35 countries, from Korea to Australia and New Zealand, from Scandinavia to South Africa and from Canada to Uruguay. Most European countries are usually represented. Recent years witness increasing attendance from China, India and the Middle East.

When in 1995 he full time returned to Eindhoven and started a new research program in transportation, he nevertheless continued organising the conference which received enthusiastic participants and feedback. The aim is to support the international, multidisciplinary network of scholars interested in retailing and consumer services and create an optimal, personalised, luxurious conference setting with nice food to discuss new ideas, try out presentations and be inspired by new methodologies, concepts and research ideas as opposed to an alternative quasi-official publication machine. RARCS works with an open, invitational structure in which individual researchers can propose special sessions, workshops and other academic events and discuss their ideas and concerns directly with the organisers.

Around 2015, Professor Soora Rasouli joined as co-editor of JRCS and co-chair of the RARCS Conference. She is chaired Professor of Urban Planning and Transportation at the Eindhoven University of Technology.

The organisers both have been involved in several national, European and international multi-million research projects that in part have been concerned with shopping behavior, leisure/tourism and emerging transport services. In addition to being the editors of JRCS, they serve on the editorial boards of about 20 journals in different disciplines. Their work and that of their PhD students have received many best paper/best PhD thesis awards and prestigious grants.