Dr. Ken Jones

Overview

Dr. Jones holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from York University. He has published three books – Specialty Retailing in the Inner City (1984);  Location, Location, Location (1987, 1992); and The Retail Environment (1990). Jones also has contributed chapters for a variety of university texts and has been published in many professional journals.  These works have discussed issues associated with retail site selection methodologies, market area analyses, retail corporate concentration, e-commerce, and future trends associated with Canadian retailing.

Jones was the founder and first Director of The Centre for the Study of Commercial Activity (CSCA), an internationally known, non-profit research centre based at Toronto Metropolitan University in Toronto, Canada. The Centre continues to focus on information and analysis that enables Canada's commercial and retail industries to become more innovative and globally competitive.  Under his guidance, the CSCA developed into a leading centre for business geomatics research with support of government and corporate members in the retail, financial, business development, real estate, hospitality and healthcare sectors.

In his role as a principal investigator at CSCA, Dr. Jones attracted and managed more than $6.3 million in research grants and contracts.  He held the Eaton Chair in Retailing and the prestigious NSERC/SSHRC Chair in the Management of Technological Change in Retailing from 1996-2006.  In addition to his activities as a researcher, Jones has acted as a consultant to numerous retail chains, financial institutions, and shopping centre developers on aspects of store location analysis, sales forecasting, market area evaluation, and strategic planning. He shares his expertise in his role as a guest lecturer and presenter to professional and academic audiences on leading edge topics that relate to the emerging retail economy.

He currently serves as a director of the Canada-US Law Institute at Case Western Reserve University, is a member of the Justice of the Peace Appointments Advisory Committee for Ontario, sits on the advisory Committee of the Canada-China Business Development Institute and is the director of the Provost’s Academic Leadership Program at Toronto Metropolitan University.