ESR5 – Gabriele Obermeier – Testimonial

Gabriele Obermeier

ESR 5

University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria

Testimonial

My name is Gabriele Obermeier. I am from Munich, Germany, now based at the University of Applied Sciences in Steyr, Austria, to conduct research on the topic “Analysing In-Store Retail Experience” within the PERFORM Project.

My academic background is a double degree as Bachelor of Arts in International Business at UAS Landshut (GER) and Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge (UK) focusing on Operations Management and Marketing. The internship in Lyon (FR) provided the associated training-on-the-job. I have reached the academic degree as Master of Science in Digital Business Management at UAS Upper Austria and Johannes Kepler University, Linz. To expand my experience in working with people in different cultures, I spent one semester in Hong Kong and joined the marketing and systems engineering department. 

While studying for the Master degree I have been working as a Senior Project Manager for a crowd testing company in Munich. In this position, I have been managing usability and quality assurance tests of websites, apps, and Internet-of-Things for various international brands. 

The Marie-Sklodowska-Curie network programs have been highly recommended by the University of my Master programme. The most attractive aspect for me is the international thrust of the program and the scientific exchange between the different institutions and industry partners. 

Moving to Austria has given me the possibility to explore the beauty of the country with its mountains and crystal clear lakes. Leisure time is full of sports and fun activities. Moreover, Linz (which is close to Steyr) provides a great tech industry and many cultural and innovative events. 

Now being a student in this program for half a year and having started my three months period at my secondment partner NTS Retail, I am more than happy to have joined PERFORM. Everyone in the program is supportive for every kind of questions. At the same time, I can work on the research topics that I want to focus on and set my own goals that I want to achieve. The unique part of the program is that the academic institution supports me in reaching the scientific goals and on top, I can conduct experiments at my secondment partner and combine both approaches – science and industry. 

In mid of 2019, my Austrian colleagues and I will organize the third training week, which will take place in Linz. We are already super excited to welcome our international colleagues and hopefully provide an exciting and interesting week as we have already experienced in Dublin (IE) and Växjö (SE). The training weeks are always full of scientific learnings, insights from industry partners and time to network within our research group. The programme provides many possibilities to get in touch with many people, being it other researchers or people from the retail industry. Moreover, each student will participate in conferences, present the work that one has put a lot of effort in, and learn from the experience of others. 

I have not yet decided which road I want to follow after the programme. Right at the moment, I am so much excited for the time coming up: making my way to an expert in the field of in-store experience, (never-ending) learning about scientific work, presenting conference papers at international conferences, publishing the first journal paper, and meeting more interesting people. I can only tell that joining PERFORM was the best decision I could have made at this stage of my life and I am really enjoying the road to Ph.D.

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