side internship opportunity - freshman

Don't look at this as a chance to do something that you can spin into something more glamorous than it really is. Look at this for what it actually is: a chance to get paid a little money to go observe, evaluate, and compare stores. You should be less relieved by the brevity of the reporting template you're being asked to fill out, and more curious about what all the information means to an investor and how to best gather more helpful, relevant information. This is what should be on your mind if you are looking to be successful in one of the fields you mentioned. The opportunity cost is a few hours of your summer weekends.

I would be really impressed interviewing a candidate who told me about what they learned in their "mall rat" research job, rolling up their sleeves and working hard on the weekend to gather seemingly meaningless pieces of local retail data, but who grasped the larger picture and took something from it. Candidates spend too much time dressing up their experience to sound important and too little time reflecting on the key-takeaways from otherwise trivial experiences.

Channels are the avenues by which a company distributes its products (like retailers, for instance). Research analysts will call on these channels to see how well a company's products are selling to get a sense for whether or not the company will hit its sales guidance. Those are channel checks.