Fondazione Conad Ets awards university students for the "Retail 4 Impact" competition

Fondazione Conad Ets held the national final of the "Retail 4 Impact" at the Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, in the Santa Cristina Complex. The competition challenged university students to develop a marketing plan for the Piacersi brand, highlighting the sustainability of its products and turning it into a factor influencing consumer choice.

Competing at the final event were 10 finalist teams, selected at the end of a programme involving a network of Italian universities and students on undergraduate and postgraduate degree courses. Following the presentation of the projects before the National Jury, the three winners were announced.

The winners

First prize was awarded to the team from Università Iulm di Milano for the project "Conad Piacersi: Make it Healthy, Make It Cool", which stood out for the originality, coherence and feasibility of its proposal. Università di Perugia took second place with "Oltre il Petalo: Innovazione e Benessere Esperienziale", while third place went to Università di Napoli "Federico II" for the project "Piacersi Ritmo".

The final marks the culmination of a project created to bring universities and businesses together, involving students in designing innovative and sustainable solutions applicable to modern retail while also bringing young talent closer to a sector undergoing profound change. Retail 4 Impact thus connects some of Italy’s leading universities through a programme that combines training, innovation and sustainability.

Make it healthy, make it cool

At the heart of the 2025/26 edition was the “Make it healthy, make it cool” case, built around one of the strategic issues for the retail sector: the role that retail can play, through its own-brand products, in encouraging more informed food choices focused on wellbeing.

Students were asked to work on a real Conad case, developing a three-year marketing plan for the development of Piacersi Mdd: the aim was to highlight the products’ sustainability characteristics, turning them into a reason to buy alongside price and quality, increasing turnover and imagining new products in product categories not yet covered. This challenge enabled participants to engage with data, targets, consumer dynamics and strategic decisions typical of a real business context.

The comments

"With Retail 4 Impact, we wanted to create an opportunity in which young people were not simply the recipients of a project, but protagonists and interlocutors of the business," said Luca Signorini, president of Fondazione Conad Ets. "Bringing university expertise and real-world challenges together means valuing their ideas while also opening the business up to new perspectives. It is from this encounter that innovative solutions can emerge, capable of contributing to an increasingly sustainable development model."

"We did not ask students to complete a simple academic exercise, but to take on a challenge that genuinely belongs to our market," emphasised Francesco Avanzini, general manager of Conad. "This is one of the most interesting aspects of the project: listening to the viewpoint of a generation that will be at the forefront of tomorrow’s consumption and work, and relating it to the experience of those who work in retail every day. The proposals presented give us ideas, perspectives and new ways of interpreting changing needs: a valuable stimulus for us too."

"Retail 4 Impact is part of a much broader commitment that Fondazione Conad Ets is pursuing towards younger generations, to whom we are dedicating an important part of our projects," explained Maria Cristina Alfieri, secretary general and director of Fondazione Conad Ets. "We believe that supporting young people first and foremost means placing trust in them, listening to them and creating concrete opportunities for them to express their abilities, ideas and visions. We do this by accompanying them along different paths, from school to university, from culture to citizenship and participation, offering them the tools and opportunities to grow, engage with others and become protagonists of their own future. It is a commitment that we want to continue strengthening, because investing in young people means investing in our communities’ ability to look to the future."

The programme does not end with the awards ceremony: the projects that reached the podium may be assessed for possible adoption within the Conad System, giving the students’ ideas a concrete prospect for application.

The awards ceremony also provided an opportunity to launch the new edition of the prize for 2026/27, entitled "Less waste, more value", which will ask participants to propose marketing plans and ideas for turning World Food Waste Day into anti-waste initiatives that engage customers throughout the year.

This article was translated from the original Italian version with the assistance of artificial intelligence. In case of discrepancies, please refer to the original Italian version.