Journal of Retailing最新文献

Introversion is commonly assumed to be disadvantageous for salespeople. This research challenges that assumption, identifying when introversion may be advantageous. We propose that when salespeople have closer relationships with other sales team members, the association between introversion and salesperson performance becomes more positive. We argue that this is because introverts in strategic network positions receive higher-quality advice and are better at listening. We further suggest that this interaction effect is strengthened when information quantity is higher, which is the case in larger teams. Network analyses of more than 260 salespeople in a direct selling context and a brick-and-mortar store context support our central assertion that introversion can be advantageous, given certain conditions. Altogether, our work extends the literature by underscoring the importance of the interplay between introversion, social networks, and network characteristics to job-related outcomes. For sales and retailing practice, our study highlights unique advantages introverted salespeople have, which have meaningful implications for firms’ hiring and personnel development practices.

Retailers’ communication support for their price promotions is shifting from traditional flyers and circulars (so-called feature ads) to conventional media channels, especially digital ads. It is not clear, if and how supporting price promotion with advertising in digital media benefits sales of the promoted product above and beyond the price promotion itself. Further, retail managers require guidance on whether only the promoted product or also their overall business gains from ad support (e.g., from category or cross-period expansions) to negotiate trade promotion support with manufacturers of the promoted products. Using a field experiment with a grocery retailer, we decompose the effects of the advertising support of price discount promotions across digital and print marketing channels. We find that the effectiveness assessment of the advertising channels depends on the beneficiary: while digital channels most effectively support sales of the promoted product (35 % uplift vs. non-promotion period) – especially for popular consumer-pull products (+85 %), traditional print channels improve the performance for the retailer as a whole (+3 % uplift of the total category sales), with a combination of ads having the largest effect (+5 % uplift of the total category sales). This research offers guidance for retail and manufacturer managers tasked with designing price promotions and configuring the ad support across channels, and negotiating trade promotion budgets or manufacturer support for the advertisements.

Food delivery apps (FDAs) are popular sales platforms, and many restaurants rely on multiple FDAs. Adding more FDAs represents a novel type of channel expansion (i.e., platform-to-platform), though no prior studies have examined its performance implications to determine if introducing a new, competing FDA might cannibalize or enhance a restaurant's customer acquisition and sales through the incumbent FDA. Furthermore, introduction timing, local competition, and store characteristics might moderate these effects, with implications for the restaurant's total sales over time. Using associative network theory, together with 557,127 purchase records gathered from 173,537 customers, we apply a panel regression model across 18 store locations of a restaurant chain. The results show that adding a competing FDA has positive synergistic effects on the restaurant's customer acquisition and sales (including sales revenues and order volumes) through the incumbent FDA, especially if it adds the competing FDA long (vs. soon) after the prior FDA and the store is younger (vs. older). Larger stores and those located in competitive areas benefit more from mobile platform expansion. The positive effects of introducing a competing FDA on total sales diminish over time though. These findings can inform both research into and the practice of mobile platform expansions.

The rapid integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into negotiations has catalyzed a transformative change in the retail industry. This study analyzes consumer responses to AI negotiators—a scenario becoming more common as retailers employ sophisticated algorithms in negotiation practices. Through five studies spanning B2C, B2B, and C2C negotiations, the findings reveal that consumers tend to make fewer adjustments to their counteroffers when bargaining with algorithms, persuaded of algorithms’ decision-making precision and comprehensive market intelligence. Notably, this confidence in algorithmic accuracy has a disproportionate effect on individuals from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, which can be mitigated by casting doubt on AI's infallibility. These insights do not merely provide retailers with a tactical advantage in utilizing AI for negotiations but also highlight the necessity for a more profound and ethical interaction with technology. Understanding the dynamics of human‒algorithm interaction in negotiation contexts allows retailers and brands to navigate this new terrain with greater efficacy and mindfulness.

Fashion retailers’ buyers must decide how much to buy of merchandise well before a selling season. This order quantity decision is always challenging due to limited historical data and high demand unpredictability arising from the novelty of fashion merchandise. Despite many attempts to solve this longstanding problem, industry reports consistently show that fashion buyers’ predictions of product salability and future sales are frequently inaccurate, leading to loss of profits for retailers. In this research, the authors take an “Empirics-First” approach to explore an alternative solution, crowdsourced forecasts from ordinary customers, and investigate whether crowdsourced forecasts would be more accurate than those of expert fashion buyers and if so, how should a crowd be formed in terms of size and composition? After conducting an online experiment, finding that forecasts by a “crowd” of ordinary customers are significantly more accurate than those of expert fashion buyers, the authors test a contingency framework in a second empirical study examining how crowd size and composition impact forecasting accuracy for products of varying fashionability. The results revealed that heterogeneity in a crowd is a key factor in prediction accuracy. Specifically, crowds with more variation in income and shopping frequency made notably accurate predictions. Another key finding of the study pertains to the required crowd size; increasing the size of a crowd at first sharply decreased the crowd's prediction error. However, after a certain point, there were diminishing returns in prediction accuracy. Given the interesting results, the paper concludes with guidelines for implementing crowdsourced forecasting by fashion retailers and directions for future research.

This study explores the impact of short delivery times on product returns in the context of online retailing. Using a large dataset from a global fashion retailer's U.S. e-commerce platform, we investigate whether fast deliveries characterized by below-average delivery times influence the likelihood of product returns. The analysis employs logistic regression to examine the relationship between delivery times and return rates, and additionally considers product characteristics and customer attributes. Our findings indicate that fast deliveries lead to a significant increase in the likelihood of returns, particularly among new customers. Insufficient post-purchase cognitive dissonance reduction may theoretically motivate this counterintuitive result as also indicated by a preliminary follow-up study reported in the online appendix. These insights challenge the prevalent assumption that the shortening of delivery times unequivocally benefits online retailers and customers, highlighting the need for a balanced management approach to order fulfillment that considers both benefits in terms of customer acquisition and downsides in terms of return costs.

Retailers are interested in understanding the amount of attention grocery shoppers pay to price information at the point of purchase, as price attention is an important determinant of price perception and purchase behavior. We utilize in-store ambulatory eye-tracking devices to directly measure the extent to which shoppers pay attention to price information as they shop for and consider grocery items for purchase. We find that shoppers visually fixate on price information in roughly 62 % of their considerations. Interestingly, the propensity of price attention changes dynamically during the course of a shopping trip, following an “inverted-U” pattern which peaks about two-thirds of the way through the trip. In addition, while the presence of a price promotion and a larger number of price tags encourage higher levels of price attention, higher purchase frequency is associated with lower levels of price attention. Our findings have important implications for retailers’ pricing strategies.

Over 40 years of research links cashless payment methods to increased consumer spending. Referred to as the “cashless effect,” this phenomenon has recently come under scrutiny as consumers are increasingly familiar with non-cash methods which could weaken the cashless effect, while other research challenges the robustness of the effect and questions which conditions could strengthen or weaken it. The current study contributes to reaching a consensus in this ongoing debate through a large-scale meta-analysis leveraging a meta-analytical framework that synthesizes the insights from the extant literature. Across 392 effect sizes from 71 papers, we reveal a small, but significant, cashless effect. Further, we show no evidence that cashless payment method features influence the cashless effect, while various consumption situations and contextual factors do. Specifically, the cashless effect is stronger in conspicuous consumption situations, while it is weaker in pro-social consumption situations. The results also reveal that the business cycle impacts the cashless effect, with it being stronger in periods of economic growth. Finally, the cashless effect has generally weakened over time. Our findings offer novel and actionable insights for academics, consumers, and practitioners such as retailers, charities, and policymakers interested in the effects of payment methods on consumer spending behavior.