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     

Access to the luxury brand myth in pop-up stores: A netnographic and semiotic analysis

Using semiotic analysis and a netnographic approach, this study examines the motivations of luxury buyers toward pop-up stores in France. It reveals their motivations in relation to this new kind of retailing in the luxury sector, and the advantages of new technologies for meeting the growing demands of a clientele eager for new purchase experiences. We show that pop-up luxury stores add new features to the traditional luxury sector: informality, friendliness, ludicity and accessibility in the context of shared emotions. The key results from this study reveal that the commercial activities of pop-up stores complement those of their luxury parent Houses, in that they contribute emotionality and playfulness, while at the same nourishing the brand's mythical aspect.     

Organizational climate for innovation and creativity – a study in Swedish retail organizations

ABSTRACT

Innovation in retailing is under-investigated in academia and yet a highly relevant concern given the current changes in the retail landscape. Although retailing is often characterized by a dynamic and highly competitive environment, retail organizations are not often considered as ‘innovative,’ at least when compared with manufacturing industries, or when using existing innovation frameworks in academic literature. There are many aspects of innovation discussed in literature and a need to consider different ways of looking into retail’s innovativeness. Among them, the importance of organizational climate on influencing creativity and innovation may help explain how to enable innovation in service organizations, such as retailers. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the climate for innovation and creativity and examine how retail organizations perceive it. We applied a mixed-methods approach using an established organizational climate survey and semi-structured, one-on-one interviews regarding the innovation climate and other aspects of innovation management in the companies. The study shows that despite retail organizations still struggling to incorporate innovation on a strategic level and move beyond incremental developments in their operations, retailers score positively on being innovative regarding certain dimensions of the organizational climate survey. This indicates that retailers (especially conventional ones) could benefit from challenging current practices and moving towards becoming more active and strategic innovators since their organizational climate to a certain extent allows for it. Respondents within the organizations also express a need for better innovation support, whether it is through established structures and processes or an improvement in the current conditions of the organizational climate. How retailers could enable themselves to become more active innovators – based on what we know that retailers look more towards entrepreneurship and continuous development as a driving force rather than formalized innovation practices per se – is a potential avenue for further research.     

Collaboration on technological innovation in Danish fashion chains: A network perspective

With brand owners struggling to compete with new products, physical production processes and sourcing logistics, innovation taking place in retail networks is often overlooked. Networks in retailing are comprised by the brand owner, the varieties of single- and multi-brand stores, chains and departments stores, technology and service providers, ownership structures and local level supply chain facilities. This paper analyses theoretical and empirical views of innovation in international retail networks using lead actors in the (Danish) fashion industry as a case to highlight how this industry maintains branded stores as primary retail channels better than other industries. In order to approach the retail network as an important organisational innovation system in relation to brand owners, the aim of this paper is to characterise key elements of innovation in retail networks. The approach of this work is based on four qualitative studies of medium/larger fashion brand owners and their respective retail and service provider networks. The study shows that innovation in retailing has a continuously emergent character with open-ended strategic design requirements and strong utilisation of relations in business networks. The network comprises an innovation system that focuses on organisational learning and iterative development of the intended technologies. Implications of the current study are suggestions to brand owners, network partners and retailers on how to identify, understand, support and promote innovation via this network through systematic management of the network rather than the innovation itself.     

Strategizing Retailing in the New Technology Era

The world of retailing is being reimagined and transformed at breakneck speeds due to new technologies, as well as due to changes in consumer purchasing behavior resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. This dynamic retail marketplace is forcing retailers to strategize how to best position themselves to survive and flourish in this environment. Recognizing that we are at a critical inflection point in the world of retailing, we conceptualize a Strategic Wheel of Retailing in the new technology era that emphasizes technology as the core enabler of the strategies related to the 6Ps of retailing (retail place and supply chain management, product, pricing, promotion, personnel, and presentation). In particular, the articles calls for retailers to carefully their review their competitive ecosystem as they adapt to the new technologies, raises some issues, and offers new directions for further research on how technology can be leveraged to design profitable retail strategies.     

Private label brands: major perspective of two customer-based brand equity models

In recent years the retail industry has been characterized by the fast growth of private labels, with an increase of the offer of private labels and the enhancement of their value in the marketplace. This research focuses in private label brand equity to deepen the understanding of its origins, by analyzing two alternative customer-based conceptual models. The present study was developed in the large retailing industry, comprising different retailing formats that offer private labels to consumers. Our findings suggest a conceptual private label brand equity model, which is slightly different from the Aaker's brand equity model, considering store image as an antecedent and stressing its importance in building and enhancing private labels' brand equity. Additionally, retailers searching for successful ways to compete in the retail market need to examine in more detail the customer-based brand equity related to their private labels.     

‘Touch it,swipe it,shake it’: Does the emergence of haptic touch in mobile retailing advertising improve its effectiveness?

This article illustrates that haptic touch, the sensation of gaining and sending information through the hand, can improve mobile retailing advertisements’ effectiveness. To date, (haptic) touch has been predominantly thought of as a sensation only possible for physical retail settings, with limited theoretical or empirical evidence of its existence in mobile retailing advertising in the current literature. This study presents a model which includes interactivity, value, involvement, brand attitude and purchase intentions in a singular model for the first time. The model is comparatively examined across haptic touch (n = 303) versus non-haptic touch (n = 359) conditions using structural equation modelling (SEM) multi-group test of invariance. The findings demonstrate haptic touch improves the experience of advertisements and this strengthens purchase intentions, whereas for the non-haptic touch condition, results demonstrate the actual brand being advertised should be leveraged to increase purchase intentions. These findings present a new theoretical perspective that haptic touch is now a sensation which can be engaged in mobile and digital retail settings and provides an important foundation for future research.     

Brand experience anatomy in retailing: An interpretive structural modeling approach

In today's highly competitive retail environment, retailers have recognized and embraced the concept of offering experiences with the retail brand across various channels beyond new launches and lower prices. To manage the experiences associated with a retail brand, retailers need to understand the concept of brand experience in retailing and the factors that actually comprise it. Interestingly, very few studies have imparted an understanding of brand experience in retailing. This study seeks to understand the retail brand experience and model the interrelationships among retail brand experience variables using interpretive structural modeling (ISM). Retail brand experience variables used in this study have been identified from existing literature on ‘brand experience’ and from brainstorming sessions with academicians and retail industry experts. Our findings show that the variables, namely, packaging of own label brands, customer billings, order and application forms, point-of-sales (i.e., shelf talkers) and recommendation by a salesperson have a high degree of influence and exhibit low dependence. These variables require a great deal of consideration due to their strategic significance to retailers. The approach applied in this study will enhance the understanding of retailers for improving the performance through managed retail brand experience initiatives.     

Identifying and examining the role of pop-up store design: A mixed-methods study

Pop-up store design has become critical in achieving marketing-motivated and sales-motivated goals. Nevertheless, a lack of holistic and systematic research on pop-up store design prevents retailers from evaluating and leveraging the value of design. This paper uses a mixed-methods investigation combining qualitative and quantitative approaches to classify the pop-up store design factors and examine their effects on consumer behavior. The results suggest that three dimensions of pop-up store design, namely sign, style, and layout elements, positively affect brand attitude and purchase intention through the mediating effect of store image. This research offers theoretical and managerial implications for pop-up retailing.     

Beyond adoption: sustaining online shopping

Online retailing has the potential to offer remote areas a wider marketplace for their retail products and also a concomitant increase in income. Drawing on secondary Internet-based research, this paper considers the fortunes and future of online retailing in a number of the remote British Overseas Territories. It will become apparent that Internet retailing is an important strategic option for retailers in such isolated locations, but greater attention needs to be paid to issues surrounding operations and logistics, payment systems and merchandising. It is also seen how, despite its apparent ‘placelessness’, the Internet and associated online selling cannot escape the realities of space and distance.     

我国便利店的发展趋势分析

加入WTO后,为提高零售业的竞争力,我国连锁商业在业态选择上把便利店当作重点来发展,这样便利店必将成为我国零售业态中最具竞争力的业态之一。在我国便利店发展现状的基础上,分析了我国便利店的发展趋势。     

Enhancing Environmentally Conscious Consumption through Standardized Sustainability Information

In today's retail marketplace, consumers receive little or no consistent brand‐level sustainability information, but this may change in the near future. Developing hypotheses based on the comparative brand processing and information disclosure literatures, we conduct a retail laboratory choice‐based experiment to test predictions related to the effects of brand‐level sustainability information on choices, product evaluations, and retailer perceptions. Compared to the status quo condition in which no sustainability information is provided for the product category at the retail point of purchase, the addition of positive (negative) sustainability information for the brand yields higher (lower) product evaluations and increased (decreased) brand choice. In addition, due to greenwashing concerns, many consumers may be skeptical of product‐level sustainability information, and we address the moderating role of this skepticism on retailer‐related perceptions.     

Brand personality appeal in retailing: Comparing fashion- and grocery retailing

In a mature retail market, branding can offer retailers opportunities for setting themselves apart. This study examines the construct ‘brand personality appeal’ (BPA; Freling et al., 2011) in retailing. Two consumer surveys are administered, on fashion retailing (n = 104) and grocery retailing (n = 101), focusing on (1) store personality, (2) BPA, and (3) retailer brand equity. A SmartPLS estimation shows that ‘enthusiasm’ is a personality trait that appeals to consumers regardless of the retail context, whereas ‘sophistication’ matters more in fashion retailing and ‘unpleasantness’ in grocery retailing. BPA is a significant driver of retail brand equity, regardless of the retail context.     

Understanding retail branding: conceptual insights and research priorities

With the growing realization that brands are one of a firm's most valuable intangible assets, branding has emerged as a top management priority in the last decade. Given its highly competitive nature, branding can be especially important in the retailing industry to influence customer perceptions and drive store choice and loyalty. We integrate lessons from branding and retail image research to provide a better understanding of how retailers create their brand images, paying special attention to the role of the manufacturer and private label brand assortment. We also highlight some important areas that deserve further research in the form of three sets of research priorities.     

零售企业的店铺设计

店铺设计属于零售企业的环境管理,是服务质量管理的组成部分,也是零售企业重要的营销策略和竞争手段。从零售企业商品经营的客观规律出发,比较全面系统地阐明零售企业店铺设计的地位作用、具体内容和要求。对于塑造零售企业良好的视觉形象和鲜明的经营风格,提高企业竞争力和社会效益及经济效益具有重要意义。     

Epic Aspects of Retail Encounters: The Iliad of Hollister

Much has been written about myth and the marketplace. Consumer research has added immeasurably to academics’ appreciation of the myths that inhere in fabulous flagship stores and experiential retailing more generally. Studies of consumer mythopoeia, however, have tended to muffle the martial side of retailing, the heroic struggles that some customers undergo in-store. This article argues that the epic offers valuable insights into martial matters, and more. Although epic and myth overlap, they are far from identical. The former is characterized by conventions that can help illuminate consumers’ quests, not least their disturbing journeys through the underworld. These are considered in relation to Hollister (HCo), a phenomenally successful retail chain that’s renowned for its antithetical atmospherics and inky interior design. A qualitative study of Hollister lovers and haters casts light on the epic in action and adds to scholars’ understanding of immersive retailing experiences.     

E-commerce and the retail process: a review

Views abound on the impact of the Internet and e-commerce on traditional forms of retailing. Scenarios range from on the one hand, the almost total devastation of existing physical retailing to, on the other, limited if any impact upon “real” retailing.Despite excessive hype, spectacular failures and the myriad of conflicting views and crystal-ball gazing, e-commerce processes and procedures provide the potential for a fundamental reassessment of how retailing operates and how retailers behave. Without doubt, the existing ways of operating and the associated cost structures within retailing will be reassessed under the onslaught of new technology and new retail structures.This paper reviews the published evidence on the impact of e-commerce on the retail process. It reviews the situation rather than introducing new evidence. The focus is on the process as it supports B2C activity and how retail processes and procedures could be affected by e-commerce, rather than a pre-occupation with sales impact through traditional merchandise and product sector typologies.Three conclusions are drawn. First, the largest retailers are now pursuing Internet-enabled advantages and cost reductions in operations, which could translate to an enhanced competitive position in process, structure and relationship terms. Secondly, consumer reactions to the new real and virtual offers will be fundamental to their success and failure, but as yet consumer reactions are not fully understood. Thirdly, existing retail floorspace will need enhancement in quality and presentation if it is to continue to provide retail functions.     

Crosswise and reciprocal interdependencies within retailers’ multichannel structures

Understanding consumer behavior across channels is the fundamental basis for implementing successful multichannel retailing strategies. This study analyzes the crosswise and reciprocal relationships between offline and online brand beliefs, offline and online retail brand equity and consumers’ conative loyalty to a retailer in multichannel structures. The relationships are contextualized by investigating fashion and grocery retail sectors and different prior channel performances that are likely to affect the paths to loyalty across channels. To provide insight into these issues, two cross-sectional and two longitudinal models are employed. The results show that former brick-and-mortar retailers are able to significantly increase consumers’ loyalty to the firm by primarily designing offline (secondary online) attributes and beliefs. The results hold for retailers in both fashion and grocery retailing, however, with stronger effects in fashion, as well as for retailers with strong vs. weak prior channel performance. However, indirect effects indicate that online brand beliefs and offline retail brand equity are the central strategic levers for prior strong (vs. weak) retailers. Reciprocal relationships between online and offline retail brands underline important channel interdependencies. Managers thus need to take these crosswise and reciprocal interdependencies between channels into account when designing successful multichannel retailing systems. This study introduces the novel idea of simultaneous crosswise and reciprocal relationships within multichannel retail structures and shows that paths to loyalty vary for retailers in different retail sectors and retailers with strong vs. weak offline and online channel performances.     

Creating Brand Names With Meaning: The Use of Sound Symbolism

The staggering level and rate of growth of brands being introduced to the marketplace suggests a heightened need to understand how to create effective new brand names. Limited academic research, however, has been conducted in this area. This paper investigates the use of linguistics, specifically sound symbolism, in order to create brand names with inherent meaning. Results of two studies indicate that the sound of a brand name can communicate information about the product, e.g. its size, speed, strength, weight, etc. Brand name sounds can convey product-related information either in the presence or absence of supporting marketing communications.     

From Multi-Channel Retailing to Omni-Channel Retailing: Introduction to the Special Issue on Multi-Channel Retailing

The world of retailing has changed dramatically in the past decade. The advent of the online channel and new additional digital channels such as mobile channels and social media have changed retail business models, the execution of the retail mix, and shopper behavior. Whereas multi-channel was in vogue in the last decade in retailing, we now observe a move to so-called omni-channel retailing. Omni-channel retailing is taking a broader perspective on channels and how shoppers are influenced and move through channels in their search and buying process. We discuss this development conceptually and subsequently discuss existing research in this multi-channel retailing. We also introduce the articles in this special issue on multi-channel retailing and position these articles in the new omni-channel movement. We end with putting forward a research agenda to further guide future research in this area.