The CentroSarca Shopping Center, an asset owned by IGD – Immobiliare Grande Distribuzione SIIQ S.p.A. (“IGD” or the “Company”), has instituted a scholarship for students of the M3 – Master’s in Marketing Management in partnership with Università di Milano-Bicocca.
Students enrolled in the Master’s program for the academic year 2024/2025 will be able to participate in a contest during which they will develop an innovative marketing project, leveraging on what they have learned during their courses. The projects will be focused on Christmas 2025, a period during which marketing initiatives are a particularly important part of shopping center activities. The ideas presented by the students will be assessed by a jury of experts from the academic and retail sectors, who will award the prize to the most deserving project.
The winner of the contest will receive a scholarship covering the full cost of the master’s program, financed entirely by CentroSarca.
This is not CentroSarca’s and Università di Milano Bicocca’s first collaboration in 2024. In addition to the special discounts and promotions offered in the center’s shops to university students, professors and staff, in May 2024 CentroSarca sponsored the Bicocca Music Festival. With this initiative, the center wants to involve the students of the Master’s in Marketing Management, giving them the chance to have a concrete experience of the working world.
“We are really pleased to have strengthened our partnership with Università di Milano Bicocca which has already given us opportunities to collaborate on interesting initiatives. Christmas stands for sharing and being together and we can’t wait to see the projects in which we are certain to find valuable content”, Luca Li Ranzi, CentroSarca’s Shopping Center Manager commented. “Consistent with the guidelines that shaped our Christmas initiatives in 2023 and 2024, we asked the students to take into account two factors: sustainability and ties with the community. For us at IGD, supporting local businesses and institutions is the basis for virtuous management of our shopping centres. Furthermore, in this instance, we are particularly proud to involve young students in a key activity like marketing, which is increasingly essential to identifying the best strategies and reaching the largest catchment area possible, particularly during the holiday season”.
Synergies with the area in which it operates and sustainability are of primary importance to CentroSarca, which at Christmas 2023 adopted 32 trees, including Hornbeams and Chestnuts, in Milan’s Parco Nord, to replace those felled following the storm the previous July. Initiatives supporting the environment and community have also been planned for Christmas 2024.
