Higher Education Level Means Better Financial Benefits for Retail Professionals, Survey Shows

Over the last couple of months, we’ve been reporting on insights gleaned from our first ever Salary Benchmark Report. The report features salary data from Total Retail’s audience of retail executives representing organizations of all sizes and product verticals.

This week, we feature a chart that shows how education levels impact financial benefits retail professionals receive. (Click on the chart for an expanded view.)

There aren't too many surprises here. In short, professionals with graduate and bachelor degrees get better financial benefits. A key takeaway, however, is that while a graduate degree does help retail professionals get better financial benefits, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they will get better benefits than those with a bachelor degree. In fact, more respondents with bachelor degrees get perks such as stock options and profit sharing than those who have graduate degrees (54 percent vs. 31 percent, 47 percent vs. 33 percent, respectively).

Furthermore, those respondents who started college but didn’t finish received better financial benefits than those respondents who had earned an associate degree. The glaring differences between these two segments came with the receipt of commissions and profit sharing. Seventeen percent of respondents who started college but didn’t finish receive commission payments, compared to just 6 percent for those with associate degrees. In addition, there’s a 10 percent difference between the two demographic segments when it comes to profit sharing.

The data featured in the report was analyzed based upon a number of variables, including gender, age, experience, title, education level, company size (measured by annual revenue), retail vertical and geographic region. In addition to salaries, the study reveals the benefits retail executives are receiving (financial and non-financial), as well as their thoughts on career growth opportunities and how fairly they’re being compensated.

Total Retail’s Salary Benchmark Report was produced under the direction of Nathan Safran, director of research at NAPCO Media, parent company of Total Retail.