The openingceremony of Consumer Decision-making Comprehensive Research Lab between School of Business, CUFE and GfK Foundation of Germany was held on the morning of April12. RaimundWildner, the vice-president of GfKFoundation, Zhao Xinyu, the general manager of East Asia Area, GfK Foundation, Li Junsheng, the vice-chancellor of CUFE as well as Wang Ruihua, the dean of the School of Business and the director of MBA Education Center attended the ceremony.

Since the School of Business,CUFE signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the GfK Foundation in 2014, cooperation has been carried outeffectivelyby both sides,including teaching, research, Summer School, lectures and internship recruitment, etc. Every year, the GfK Foundation would invite outstanding professionalsfrom business and academic communitiesto teach CUFEstudents the qualitative and quantitative research methods, market research design, data collection and analysis tools and other relevant knowledge, all free ofcharge. School of Business of CUFE and GfK Foundation also collaborate in research and cooperation with enterprises. Together they initiated the research project “Consumers’ Behaviorsof Smartphone” and the first phase has so far been fulfilled. Mutual academic exchange has been conducted between faculty from Department of Marketing, School of Business and the top managers in GfK. As avigorous enterprise,GfKwould support the School of Business of CUFE to offeran undergraduate program with a concentration on the big data marketing and a MBA program with a concentration on finance andbig data marketing, first such programs national wide in Chinese universities. GfK would also offer excellent students internship opportunities atGfK headquartersand hold special graduate job fairs for GfK China.The official openingof the Consumer Decision-making Comprehensive Research Lab marks that the cooperation between the School of Business of CUFE and GfK foundation has stepped to a deeper level and opened a new chapter for mutual innovation and development.

Translated by Wang Sue