Journal of Retailing最新文献

Globally, consumption of Fruit and Vegetables (F&V) remains below nutritional guidelines. With retailers accounting for a large portion of F&V sales, marketing can be key to increase F&V consumption at household level. However, a key challenge is the design of strategies that benefit retailers, e.g., improving loyalty, whilst promoting societal goals. This study evaluates a points-plus-cash loyalty program where participants received points by purchasing selected F&V, redeemable against a reward (plush toys in the shape of F&V). We estimate the impact of the program by comparing expenditures in several categories before, during, and after the promotional period, across two different years, and comparing consumers who redeemed a reward and those who did not. We use loyalty card data from a Croatian retailer, containing food expenditure in five categories for 268,359 consumers, over 27 weeks for 2 years. We find that the loyalty program increased F&V expenditures at the focal retailer during the promotional period. However, the increase was only for reward-redeemers, for whom the program increased expenditures in F&V as well as in other food categories. This effect persisted – at a declining rate – after the program stopped. Exposure only had a limited effect during the campaign, leading to a reduction in expenditure after the promotional period. Results indicate that a loyalty program promoting sales of F&V can create win-win benefits to both society and the retailer: it increases expenditures on healthy foods (F&V), while improving overall loyalty (i.e., expenditures) to the retailer amongst motivated consumers.

Private labels (PL), also known as store brands or private brands, account for hundreds of billions of dollars in consumer packaged goods sales every year. PLs build store loyalty, improve margins and have been a key factor in changing the balance of power between retailers and national brand (NB) manufacturers. Thus, retailers around the world have a stake in pushing their own store brands. Yet, while PLs enjoy great success in Western, and increasingly Central, Europe, their performance is much more muted in the world's largest market, the United States, and in emerging markets. Why is that the case? This thought piece provides a number of ideas, summarized in propositions that can be tested in future research.

Consumers residing in different areas have varying levels of access to local retail stores. In contrast, with the prevalence of mobile internet, consumers have gained widespread access to mobile shopping. This research examines the impact of local offline retail density on consumers’ mobile shopping app usage and heterogeneity across consumer segments and different types of shopping apps. We use a unique dataset of individual-level mobile app usage with real-time location information across 1622 counties in China and employ the control function approach to address the endogenous retail density. Overall, the findings show that local offline retail density has a negative effect on mobile shopping app usage frequency and duration, indicating that consumers in areas with lower offline retail density engage more in mobile shopping app usage. This negative effect is weaker for consumers with higher mobility. Also, we find that this negative effect is weaker for shopping apps selling more technically complex products such as electronics than for those selling less technically complex products such as clothing and cosmetics. These results offer managerial implications for online retailers to launch targeting strategies to enhance consumer engagement with their shopping apps.

Dynamic pricing has evolved with technology from earlier price negotiations. To maximize revenue and provide specialized shopping experiences, businesses today use algorithms and data analysis to adapt prices. We define dynamic pricing as price changes that are prompted by changes or differences in four key underlying market demand drivers: (1) People (i.e., individual consumers or consumer segments), (2) Product configurations, (3) Periods (i.e., time), and (4) Places (i.e., locations). The transition from static pricing (uniform prices) to dynamic pricing (changing prices) is evident from different examples, such as online retailers personalizing offers based on customer behavior, and algorithms using facial recognition for personalized pricing in physical stores.

Fueled by AI and machine learning algorithms, dynamic pricing is transforming industries from transportation to e-commerce, optimizing revenue and enhancing customer experiences. While it offers benefits like personalization, challenges include ethical concerns, cost of implementation, and customer dissatisfaction. Effective data organization and AI expertise are crucial, but potential pitfalls and regulatory oversight must also be considered. This paper examines the multidimensional application of dynamic pricing, highlights the adaptability and efficiency of dynamic pricing in forming profitable pricing strategies and maximizing revenue, and calls for continued research on the topic to balance revenue, customer satisfaction, and ethics.

The evolving landscape of physical retailing necessitates a reevaluation of personalization approaches to meet existing market conditions and the demands of modern customers. In this context, the authors explore the interplay between human-enabled and technology-enabled personalization, offering an examination of their characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses. The authors deconstruct the personalization process into three distinct stages, namely identification, implementation, and interaction, and discuss potential contingency factors of personalization in the physical retailing context. More so, the authors discuss the future of personalization in physical retailing along the three steps of the defined personalization process. In doing so, the authors lay out a research agenda that can serve as a valuable guide for future studies in this field.

This research presents a novel, conceptual perspective on distinctive opportunities available to retailers with a physical location to create reasons for customers to visit the physical store. A multi-method approach is used, where we combine the study of more than 25,000 online announcements of new approaches implemented in physical stores with 12 interviews with retail experts from around the globe. The result is an integrative framework with five key benefits and 14 subdimensions which retailers can use to create reasons for customers to visit their physical store. The five benefits are discovery, convenience, customization, community, and shoppertainment. In discussing the framework, the authors provide rich examples which illustrate different ways retailers can establish these benefits. This research also details the value and challenges of collaborating with partners when implementing new approaches to leverage such benefits. The paper concludes with a discussion of external and internal contingency factors that can impact the decision (of when) to implement (which) new approaches and offers a list of questions for further research.

To accommodate consumers’ increasing demand for access convenience and immediacy, big-box grocery retailers have started to rethink their store formats – adding small-box proximity stores to complement their traditional large-size super- and hypermarkets. Building on a unique data set covering all proximity-store openings in 60+ geographic markets in France by Carrefour, one of the world's largest big-box grocery retailers, the authors adopt an Empirics-First approach to investigate whether, and in what settings, opening proximity stores cannibalizes, or rather acts synergistically with, the retail chain's existing on- and off-line operations. In most markets, small box stores affect the parent store's market position. However, there is considerable heterogeneity in terms of both the channel that is affected (off- or online) and the direction of that impact (positive or negative). The authors identify several contingency factors that help explain this heterogeneity. Interestingly, some location factors that are commonly believed to nurture proximity store appeal turn out to be detrimental to the chain's overall on- and/or offline performance. Even though the authors reveal several novel insights and identify various contingency factors, numerous questions remain unanswered. To that extent, the authors conclude with a research agenda that may help shed insight in how to maintain and strengthen brick-and-mortar store relevance to convenience-seeking customers.

In global markets, branded material and symbolic artifacts are curated in patterned ways to replicate and scale retail experience. We apply a structures of common difference framework to show how global brands can be strategically localized through in-store curations within specific physical locations. This localized globalization deploys familiar global brands in ways that feel authentically local and idiosyncratically intimately connected with many and varied retail instantiations (glocal). We underscore that global-local reciprocity is critical and the SCD work for global and local brands. We affirm that global brands give local retailers a steady stream of compelling merchandise connecting the local to global markets, and conversely, local content stabilizes global brands’ connections to communities and physical stores. This recursive relationship feeds into an overarching global common form that celebrates local diversity and supports the interlocking identities of brands and customers.

An increasingly competitive retail landscape, new technological innovations, and evolving consumer needs present challenges and opportunities for physical stores. To maintain a competitive advantage, brick-and-mortar retailers must leverage the store environment to curate a captivating experience that cannot be emulated online. Drawing on the competencies that differentiate physical stores from their digital counterparts, as well as evolving consumer expectations, the current research identifies three levers that managers should use to design pleasurable shopping experiences in stores of the future. First, managers can increase their focus on sensory elements (e.g., visuals, scents, sounds, haptics, taste) and use these elements to curate pleasurable, multisensory in-store experiences. Second, managers should consider gravitating from the current one-size-fits-all approach to atmospherics in favor of environments that are personalized and customizable to suit individual consumer tastes. Finally, managers can re-evaluate employee responsibilities, make space for customer-to-customer interactions, and host in-store events to offer optimal levels of interpersonal interaction. After highlighting marketplace examples that provide initial evidence of each lever, individual level factors that likely moderate the effects of each lever on the in-store experience are discussed. Finally, future research opportunities are identified.