Master Meetings

16.05.2023

Market System Dynamics

How do markets emerge and change? The standard economics answer points to the emergence and change of demand and supply. This generic answer is not essentially wrong. Its only problem is that it does not address the questions that really matter: of where the ‘preferences’ driving demand and supply come from and why they change. These questions, in turn, have long been the focus of economic sociology, organizational theory, sociology of consumption and more recently, marketing scholarship on market dynamics. These approaches analyse market actors as social agents, whose ‘preferences’ and motivations are shaped by cultural and social structures – organizations, institutions, groups and society. They explain market emergence and change as socio-cultural processes, unfolding through struggles and negotiations across different social groups, ideas and practices.

This course introduces students, first, to key theoretical approaches in the field, covering theories that address the organizational side (e.g. institutionalism, field theory) and the consumer side (e.g. practice theory, theories of taste) of market dynamics, as well as recent developments that bring these two sides of the market together (e.g. performativity, inter-disciplinary market studies and the market system dynamics approach). Second, through its practical elements of case discussions and a group project, the course equips students with the skills to carry out socio-cultural analysis of market dynamics.

Digital Fashion Communication: Conversations with Industry Experts

This course aims to bridge theoretical concepts presented during other courses of this Master to the industry reality and the everyday life issues of industry experts working in the digital fashion domain. Guest speakers working both in the fashion domain and digital agencies, coming from international corporations and start-ups, will be invited to share their challenges and solutions. This course will also bring the experiences of USI alumnae/i working in the digital fashion domain, who will share with the students their career paths, everyday working life, and future professional scenarios.

Statistical Data Analysis

Statistical data analysis is a pervasive issue especially nowadays when we are experiencing the Big Data revolution. “The evidence is clear: Data-driven decisions tend to be better decisions. Leaders will either embrace this fact or be replaced by others who do” says Andrew McAfee the co-director of the Initiative on the Digital Economy in the MIT Sloan School of Management. Knowledge on how to treat data is thus an essential requirement in many master courses and Digital Fashion Communication is not an exception to this rule. In this course, I will provide the students with an introduction to statistical thinking, to the principles of inductive reasoning and to a data driven approach to decision making. This will require understanding the logic behind statistical methods and techniques, acquiring skills on how to reproduce them in a friendly software environment and interpreting the results of the analysis

Fashion is undergoing a major digital transformation, which is touching all its facets, layers, and processes. The fashion industry has not been exempted from the impact of digitalization, which has transformed the field through the use of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) – which can be referred to, in short, as “digital fashion”.

This is an event open to the general public.