Macro-level change and micro level effects: A twenty-year perspective on changing grocery shopping behaviour in Britain

In this paper we summarise key elements of retail change in Britain over a twenty-year period. The time period is that covered by a funded study into long-term change in grocery shopping habits in Portsmouth, England. The major empirical findings—to which we briefly allude—are reported elsewhere: the present task is to assess the wider context underlying that change. For example, it has frequently been stated that retailing in the UK is not as competitive as in other leading economies. As a result, the issue of consumer choice has become increasingly important politically. Concerns over concentration in the industry, new format development and market definition have been expressed by local planners, competition regulators and consumer groups. Macro level changes over time have also created market inequality in consumer opportunities at a local level—hence our decision to attempt a local-level study. Situational factors affecting consumer experiences over time at the local level involve the changing store choice sets available to particular consumers. Using actual consumer experiences thus becomes a yardstick for assessing the practical effectiveness of policy making. The paper demonstrates that choice at local level is driven by store use and that different levels of provision reflect real choice at the local level. Macro-level policy and ‘one size fits all’ approaches to regulation, it is argued, do not reflect the changing reality of grocery shopping. Accordingly, arguments for a more local and regional approach to regulation are made.     

Barriers to the advancement of modern food retail formats: theory and measurement

The recent expansion of global food retailers into emerging economies has made the study of food retail modernization especially relevant at this time. We present a framework to analyze limitations to market share growth of retail formats based on diffusion across consumer segments and by product category. We then propose a measurement approach, based on consumer surveys, that quantifies the impact of these processes on supermarket market share. Food retail modernization is then examined in Hong Kong by this approach for two points in time. In a 1995 diagnostic study, we find that geographic and economic segment diffusion of supermarkets is complete, but that product category-dependent diffusion (specifically perishables) is not. The latter, thereby, becomes the major restriction on supermarket share gain. In 1999, a second study measures the impact of the introduction of superstores, a large modern format, on the perishable restriction to modern format share growth. Consumers perceived superstore perishables to be superior to supermarkets’, but these views had little impact on the ability of modern format to wrest additional share from traditional markets. We discuss diagnostic and monitoring applications, and extensions of the approach to other retail contexts.     

Segmenting the growing UK convenience store market for retail location planning

Branded convenience grocery stores have become commonplace in UK retailing, increasingly adopted by retailers traditionally associated with superstore retailing. This paper initially explores the conditions in which this shift has occurred, looking at supply-side changes, planning policy, and changing demographics and consumer behaviour. Subsequently, this paper quantifies the geographical market share of a number of prominent convenience grocery retailers at the postal area level across the UK in 2012. Finally, the paper offers a segmentation of the convenience market into a series of clusters by location type. By understanding the drivers of trade in different locations, through the cluster analysis outlined in this paper, a more powerful set of location strategies can be adopted by companies expanding in this market.     

业态变迁学说及其促进我国流通创新的政策建议

本文认为零售业态的变迁是一个国家和地区社会发展、经济增长和技术变革的必然产物,探讨了零售业态的各种学说,分析了我国零售业态的发展现状,提出促进我国零售业态发展和流通创新的政策建议.     

Shifting economic regimes for retail in the Philippines: external impetus amidst the workings of domestic politics

In the prevailing globalized world order, economic regime shift is principally understood via the overriding-external-impetus lens where international demand holds sway over domestic policymaking. Considering the complexity of the process and the possibility of varying outcomes, the perspective evidently limits the function of domestic politics in changing regimes. In elucidating how the dynamics of domestic politics respond to external impetuses and play out in relation to regime shifts, this paper looks into the two cases of regime shifts in retail in the Philippines: Republic Act (RA) 1180, a protectionist regime enacted in 1954 and RA 8762, a liberalized regime legislated in 2000. The study examines the interface and convergence of three salient factors – external–internal impetus, presidential intervention, and the changing dynamics in the retail sector – that were pivotal in both regime shifts. Specifically, the external–internal impetus helped set off the move for regime shift; the sitting President played a crucial role in the success of the legislation in Congress, and the retail sector exemplified varying dynamics (e.g., consolidation in RA 1180 and fragmentation in RA 8762) which facilitated the enactment of the laws. The study also underscores two key points: (1) while the initiative to adopt or change economic regimes for a government will continue to have external impetus, the success of regime shift as well as the substance of its specific policy will be essentially determined by the workings of domestic politics and (2) the legislative experience characterizes the contemporary link between global influence and domestic dynamics in policy making. The paper closes with a note on the case study's implications for retail globalization in Southeast Asia.     

Flexibility,labour segmentation and retail superstore managers: the effects of Sunday trading

Research into retail employment relations has focused largely upon the shop floor worker. Relatively little has been written on the role of store management. This paper focuses upon managerial attitudes to one of the major contemporary retail issues- Sunday trading. It examines the composition of the managerial workforce within the DIY and grocery superstore sectors and analyses their attitudes towards Sunday opening. It concludes that, compared to other job categories, these superstore managers perceive there to be greater disadvantages with Sunday working. The implications of this are assessed both in retail management terms and also in the context of debates about restructuring retail employment, labour market segmentation and flexible workforces     

Conceptualising innovative customer-facing responses to planning regulation: the UK food retailers

While receiving extensive coverage across a wide range of industries, brand adaptation in the face of regulatory change has been largely under-researched in the field of retail marketing management. This paper seeks to fill this void by reviewing the strategic customer-facing responses of the leading UK food retailers to the tightening of retail land-use planning regulations; in doing so, this paper exposes a highly variable range of strategies that include store format adaptation, new format development, entry into new markets and more controversially the outright challenging of government regulation. The findings underline that although regulatory intervention can serve to restrict continued expansion, it can also encourage customer-focused innovation where well-established retail brands retain market focus but modify the shape of their ongoing growth.     

An examination of reference prices at factory outlet stores

The purposes of this research study were to (1) examine the use of reference prices by one segment of retailing – factory outlet stores and (2) explore related public policy considerations. The researchers found that there was a significant difference between advertised reference prices at factory outlet stores and the regular retail price found in department or specialty stores in the same market. Advertised reference prices in outlets were significantly higher – a 6.2 percent difference. For only two of the product categories studied were differences not significant – housewares and children's apparel. Since these comparative reference prices are not in line with the regular prices at traditional stores, there is a potential for deceptive price claims.     

Barriers and stimuli to the use of information technology in retailing

The retail marketing environment is continuously changing. Changes in retail format, retailing processes and the competitive environment continue to create problems for retail management. This article examines the barriers and stimuli to the adoption of innovation in infonnation technology. Our objective is to demonstrate how managers might anticipate the problems associated with managing significant change and develop appropriate strategies to deal with such problems. Previous research has indicated that it is important to explore the views of a range of managers in the organization. Much of the previous research has relied on a single respondent from many organizations to provide an accurate picture. This research does not follow that tradition. It uses the views of more than one hundred managers within one organization. The research explores the relative attractiveness of the innovation to individual managers, the organization's receptivity to change and the presence or absence of a 'product' champion. It ends with recommendations on ways of improving the rate of acceptance of such technologies.     

Inadequate Life?Evidence of Consumer Attitudes to Product Obsolescence

Public interest in the durability of household appliances may be traced back 40 years to criticism of planned obsolescence raised by an emerging consumer movement. A recent revival of interest in product life spans has taken place in the context of increasing waste generation and debate prompted by proposed producer responsibility legislation, but data on the age of discarded products and consumer attitudes to product life spans have been lacking. This paper draws upon recent data from research into discarded household appliances in the UK to enhance a theoretical model of product obsolescence and explore some implications for marketing and public policy. A survey of over 800 households provided quantitative data on consumer attitudes and behaviour relating to appliance life spans and a subsequent series of focus groups enriched this data with personal narratives. Respondents were evenly divided on whether or not appliance life spans are adequate. Variations in behaviour demonstrated how users may influence appliance life spans. Overall, the results suggest that consumers have an important role in reversing the trend toward increased appliance waste but currently face economic disincentives and lack adequate product information.     

An unplanned commercial district in a fast-growing city: a case study of Shenzhen, China

From a planning perspective, this paper addresses a new format of retail found in China through a case study of Shenzhen City. The city has grown very fast in the last two decades from a small township of 60,000 people to a city of over 6 million. Dramatic economic growth and urbanization left planners behind, and a former industrial district turned into a commercial district within a few years of time in the late 1990s. This unplanned development pushed by market forces has shown some features commonly found in the evolution of ‘high-street’ in the West, while there are some unique features that are typically represented by a group of theme shopping complexes (TSC) in the district of Hua Qiang Bei (HQB).We argue that TSC as a special format of retail appeared in the world fastest growing city has its own reasons. They include (1) the lack of matured shopping center developers, (2) the lack of matured retail chains, (3) the uncertainty of government policy and regulations that resulted in short-term and fragmented leasing of space to small retail tenants, and (4) large and continuing demands from newly immigrated low-to-middle income working class. It is yet to be seen that this TSC format would continue and diffuse to other fast growing but less developed cities in China, or would be replaced by shopping malls soon when retain chains dominate.     

The spatial knowledge of retail decision makers: capturing and interpreting group insight using a composite cognitive map

The paper argues that existing techniques for retail site evaluation ignore the useful "soft" insights of retail executives. It outlines a technique for constructing a composite map of retail decision makers' insights into the location influences affecting store performance. It has two objectives: to show how the method can be used to construct a basic knowledge base by helping to elicit decision makers' spatial knowledge; and to clarify the status of the maps in terms of the process of group decision making. Illustrations are given from current work drawn from interviews with executives of a major multiple superstore retailer in the UK. The paper shows how composite mapping provides a means to reduce the ideas of a group without any loss of detail, using key cognitive constructs as a "glue" to provide a template against which individual maps can be compared and better understood. The interpretative method provides a flexible and expedient means for constructing an organizational knowledge base for site location - the value of which can then be tested for modelling purposes - and as an effective counterweight to normative procedures.     

The implicit influence of bimodal brand placement on children

This research compares two competing views – the integration view and the interference view – to see whether presenting a brand placement in multiple modalities can enhance its effectiveness. Our results first show that majority of the children can not recall a brand placement embedded in a video game. Our results further demonstrate that presenting a brand placement in a single modality makes children more likely to choose the target brand at test than presenting it in multiple modalities. These results have important implications for both public policy makers and marketing managers.     

Employment Characteristics of Superstore Retailing

Retail superstores in Great Britain have been the subject of much research and discussion. This article examines a neglected facet of superstores, namely employment, and considers some characteristics of superstore employment and their relationship to the size of superstore development. On the basis of the regression analyses undertaken, a predictive model of superstore employment and the scale of store is presented.     

The social media response to the rollout of legalized cannabis retail in Ontario,Canada

With Canada becoming the first G20 country to legalize the recreational use of cannabis, there has been increasing interest in the emergence of this new retail market. The research utilizes social media analytics to analyze the public's response to the rollout of the government-controlled cannabis retail stores: Ontario Cannabis Store (OCS). The research analyzes 17,162 tweets mentioning the OCS (@ONCannabisStore) on Twitter in the one-year period following the legalization of recreational cannabis. Using thematic analysis, 19 codes are identified and further categorized under six themes—i.e., consignment, product, retail model, policy, producers, and consumers. The research provides valuable insight into the public's perceptions of the newly legalized cannabis retail market on social media. As a practical implication of the research, key concerns and issues with the initial retail rollout are identified, which provides insight into the evolution of an illegal to legal retail market. The methods can be used by future researchers, policy makers, and emerging cannabis retailers to gather and understand cannabis consumers' opinions on social media. Furthermore, the findings can be leveraged to inform future government policies and decisions around the emergence of this new retail sector.     

Open all hours: spatiotemporal fluctuations in U.K. grocery store sales and catchment area demand

Conventional population estimates do not account for spatiotemporal fluctuations in populations over a diurnal timescale at the level of retail store catchments. This presents challenges for the retail location-based decision making process which seeks to predict sales volumes and their temporal characteristics prior to new store construction. We present a novel analysis of the temporal fluctuations of store sales, evidencing links between the spatiotemporal distribution of specific population subgroups and temporal store sales. Previous research linking spatiotemporal populations and store sales is limited owing to the fact that commercial data are not openly available to academic research. However, this research has unprecedented access to store level temporal sales data and an established loyalty card scheme from a major UK grocery retailer making these analyses possible for the first time. Additionally, we demonstrate that current store classifications were inadequate for grouping stores with similar sales profiles and propose four new clusters of stores based on the times of the day that they generate revenues. This development has clear academic and commercial benefits, aiding our understanding of consumer behaviours and a novel solution for improved location modelling. We lay the foundations for further research building spatiotemporal demand fluctuations into retail location models.     

Development pressure and retail planning: a study of 20-year change in Cardiff,UK

This article describes and explains changes in the retail landscape of a major British city over the last 20 years. It thus serves to continue the survey of change initiated in 1989 with a comparative analysis of the retail structures of Cardiff (UK) and Charlotte (USA). The changes reviewed in the present study are shown to exemplify broad trends in UK retailing, as well as the growing influences of town planning and urban regeneration policies.     

Retailing in Europe: 20 years on

This article reviews retail change in Europe over the past 20 years. The sociocultural context of retailing in Europe is briefly discussed before macro level changes in the relative scale of Europe's largest retail organizations over this period are explored. Three underlying themes to retail change are then discussed – the emergence of new markets, in relation to geographical, product, service and channel diversity; the evolution of the retailer as a brand, encompassing an holistic multifaceted conceptualization involving product, store and organizational dimensions; and the role of time as a competitive element through consumer and business behaviours, and in terms of the pace of strategy implementation. Finally, looking forward the study concludes with a number of underlying themes in the approaches taken by European retail organizations     

Friends in high places: Government-industry relations in public sector house-building during Britain’s tower block era

Abstract

Britain’s high-rise public housing era is widely seen as a serious social policy mistake. We show that the problems associated with this housing format were known to policy makers at an early stage, while tower blocks were also substantially more expensive, both from the perspective of central, and local, government. Conservatives governments championed high-rise mainly owing to the political advantages of urban containment. Major building contractors then used their close links with (central and local) policy-makers to aggressively lobby for high-rise ?system building,’ as their expertise in this field enabled them to dominate the sector and exclude local competitors.