Cátedra Fundación Ramón Areces de Distribución Comercial was born by the agreement between Universidad de Oviedo (Spain) and Fundación Ramón Areces signed in 2008. This collaboration agreement´s main purpose is the "analysis, research, teaching and education of young professionals dealing with the situation, particularities and perspectives of Commercial Distribution from all points of view deemed relevant".
Cátedra Fundación Ramón Areces de Distribución Comercial sits within Universidad de Oviedo and is coordinated by professors of Marketing and Civil Law from it.
Universidad de Oviedo is a public university providing both undergraduate and graduate education as well as research. With four centuries of history, it has national and international projection. Its principal objectives include fostering research programs, education and knowledge diffusion as scientific and technical support to the cultural and social development. Those objectives are pursued through its research, educational, scientific, technical and public service activities.
Fundación Ramón Areces is a non for profit private institution born in 1976 with the objective of fostering technical and scientific research in Spain, as well as education and culture in general. Those values are considered the basic drives of progress and modernity for society. Its activity is developed throughout Spain on fields like Life and Earth Sciences, Social Sciences as well as Humanities. In all of these fields, Fundación Ramón Areces fosters scientific research, contributes to formation of human capital and spreads knowledge. For all of the fields, Fundación Ramón Areces has its own programs: Research Project Competitive Grants, Personal Grants for further international education as well as Programs of Scientific, Socio-economic and Cultural knowledge dissemination.
Both organisations coincide in recognising the special importance and strategic relevance of Commercial Distribution, a field commonly found in education and research at universitary level globally. From this analysis, the collaboration agreement tries to guarantee the bidirectional and fluent communication between Academia, industry and society.