Beyond food swamps and food deserts: Exploring urban Australian food retail environment typologies

Objective: ‘Food deserts’ and ‘food swamps’ are food retail environment typologies associated with unhealthy diet and obesity. This study aimed to identify more complex food retail environment typologies and examine temporal trends. Design: Measures of food retail environment accessibility and relative healthy food availability were defined for small areas (SA2s) of Melbourne, Australia from a census of food outlets operating in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2016. SA2s were classified into typologies using a two-stage approach: 1) SA2s were sorted into 20 clusters according to accessibility and availability; 2) clusters were grouped using evidence-based thresholds. Setting: This study was set in Melbourne, the capital city of the state of Victoria, Australia. Subjects: Food retail environments in 301 small areas (Statistical Area 2) located in Melbourne in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2016. Results: Six typologies were identified based on access (low, moderate and high) and healthy food availability including one where zero food outlets were present. Over the study period SA2s experienced an overall increase in accessibility and healthiness. Distribution of typologies varied by geographic location and area-level socioeconomic position. Conclusion: Multiple typologies with contrasting access and healthiness measures exist within Melbourne and these continue to change over time, the majority of SA2s were dominated by the presence of unhealthy relative to healthy outlets; with SA2s experiencing growth and disadvantage having the lowest access and to a greater proportion of unhealthy outlets.

Determinants of Consumers’ Willingness to Participate in Fast Fashion Brands’ Used Clothes Recycling Plans in an Omnichannel Retail Environment

Omnichannel retailing and sustainability are two important challenges for the fast fashion industry. However, the sustainable behavior of fast fashion consumers in an omnichannel environment has not received much attention from researchers. This paper aims to examine the factors that determine consumers’ willingness to participate in fast fashion brands’ used clothes recycling plans in an omnichannel retail environment. In particular, we examine the impact of individual consumer characteristics (environmental attitudes, consumer satisfaction), organizational arrangements constitutive for omnichannel retailing (channel integration), and their interplay (brand identification, impulsive consumption). A conceptual model was developed based on findings from previous research and tested on data that were collected online from Chinese fast fashion consumers. Findings suggest that consumers’ intentions for clothes recycling are mainly determined by individual factors, such as environmental attitudes and consumer satisfaction. Organizational arrangements (perceived channel integration) showed smaller effects. This study contributes to the literature on omnichannel (clothing) retail, as well as on sustainability in the clothing industry, by elucidating individual and organizational determinants of consumers’ recycling intentions for used clothes in an omnichannel environment. It helps retailers to organize used clothes recycling plans in an omnichannel environment and to motivate consumers to participate in them.

Thinking inside the box: new ways of considering energy consumption in a multi-user agency-constrained environment

Reductions in end-use energy imply some level of technological and behavioural change — yet there are marked differences in the balance between them. Moreover, the ways in which these influences can combine and mutually shape each other are complex, especially where multiple users interact within the same environment. A socio-technical perspective has gradually become more popular in building energy research in recent years, as it widens the focus beyond technology to include practices, infrastructure, markets, policies, social norms, and cultural meanings; however, there is very little knowledge on how this interplay works — particularly in a non-domestic environment. In this paper, we attempt to enhance the understanding of ‘social ordering of choices, problems and practice’ (Guy & Shove, 2000, p. 139) within a retail environment — and how these are competing when it comes to decisions about energy consumption. Using a longitudinal multi-methodological case study approach, this paper aims to explicate the socio-technical context within which energy consumption is considered by various actors in a large supermarket given that these actors have other behaviours (e.g. convenience, profit) as a priority and that the retail environment is agency constrained (i.e. shoppers, employees can hardly do anything individually to affect energy consumption). Using mixed-reality platform, we visualised socio-technical interactions, thus also visualising the decisions on where energy efficiency interventions could be made, what needs to be considered, and how this differs from different perspectives. Priorities that often remain ‘unspoken’ become visible — and thus provide a powerful foundation for the discussion about the consequences of an intervention there and then thus reduce the complexity of discussions and keeping crucial information available during the entire discussion process.

P(a)lace of Consumption: Architecture, the Revitalisation of Space through Shopping Mall Design Principles

<p>Architecture can be regarded as both a product for the retail environment and as a medium which can influence change in contemporary society. Within the context of the retail environment, architecture becomes intrinsically associated with the concepts of business sustainability because of the needs from investors challenging the needs of the public. Business sustainability within the retail environment is concerned with the success of the tenants occupying the investors' assets whilst the architectural sustainability focuses upon the public acceptance of the space that is transformed once being constructed and in the future. Furthermore, the architecture within the retail environment encapsulates the utilisation of space, crime and neglect prevention, retail attractiveness and targeting users through urban design principles. The research identifies the gap between the urban design principles and the individual business success within the inner-city. This thesis explores the coordination of the urban design principles and shopping mall design principles upon the existing urban fabric which is set to revitalise and improve dilapidated areas within the Wellington inner-city. This is to not only improve the retail location, but also the residential environment which is ever increasing. The shopping mall design principles have been integrated into the retail urban fabric and as the research states, shopping mall design is more successful than the individual street retail by improving the productivity of the businesses as well as allowing a higher grade of space to be created with the additional income and mutual design motivation. Although the shopping mall design principles are traditionally implemented upon a single ownership environment and as such allows a decision to be made through a single official, the inner-city is filled with multiple owners upon the one site which adds limitations to the design that can be manipulated. As such, this thesis designs as though the site is organised under a collective, allowing a common goal to be achieved. The important successful shopping mall design principles have been segregated into four clusters; anchors, configuration, interior aesthetic and control. These clusters combined with the common urban design principles allow the individual small business owners to challenge the large-scale retail businesses putting them out of business. Also, national and international urban and shopping mall precedents have been analysed as showing physical representations of the research studied in the literature review. The design being placed upon a dilapidated area within the Wellington inner-city the success of the design case study will determine the future success of the idea migrating into other areas of Wellington's inner-city. The idea that beginning the concept in the worst case scenario would allow the design to act as a catalyst for growth into already established market areas such as Cuba Street and Courtenay Place.</p>

P(a)lace of Consumption: Architecture, the Revitalisation of Space through Shopping Mall Design Principles

<p>Architecture can be regarded as both a product for the retail environment and as a medium which can influence change in contemporary society. Within the context of the retail environment, architecture becomes intrinsically associated with the concepts of business sustainability because of the needs from investors challenging the needs of the public. Business sustainability within the retail environment is concerned with the success of the tenants occupying the investors' assets whilst the architectural sustainability focuses upon the public acceptance of the space that is transformed once being constructed and in the future. Furthermore, the architecture within the retail environment encapsulates the utilisation of space, crime and neglect prevention, retail attractiveness and targeting users through urban design principles. The research identifies the gap between the urban design principles and the individual business success within the inner-city. This thesis explores the coordination of the urban design principles and shopping mall design principles upon the existing urban fabric which is set to revitalise and improve dilapidated areas within the Wellington inner-city. This is to not only improve the retail location, but also the residential environment which is ever increasing. The shopping mall design principles have been integrated into the retail urban fabric and as the research states, shopping mall design is more successful than the individual street retail by improving the productivity of the businesses as well as allowing a higher grade of space to be created with the additional income and mutual design motivation. Although the shopping mall design principles are traditionally implemented upon a single ownership environment and as such allows a decision to be made through a single official, the inner-city is filled with multiple owners upon the one site which adds limitations to the design that can be manipulated. As such, this thesis designs as though the site is organised under a collective, allowing a common goal to be achieved. The important successful shopping mall design principles have been segregated into four clusters; anchors, configuration, interior aesthetic and control. These clusters combined with the common urban design principles allow the individual small business owners to challenge the large-scale retail businesses putting them out of business. Also, national and international urban and shopping mall precedents have been analysed as showing physical representations of the research studied in the literature review. The design being placed upon a dilapidated area within the Wellington inner-city the success of the design case study will determine the future success of the idea migrating into other areas of Wellington's inner-city. The idea that beginning the concept in the worst case scenario would allow the design to act as a catalyst for growth into already established market areas such as Cuba Street and Courtenay Place.</p>

Profiling Hungarian hypermarket shoppers

PurposeHungarian economy went through substantial changes in the past few decades and hypermarkets gained high popularity among customers, therefore profiling Hungarian hypermarket shoppers is essential to understand their behavior.Design/methodology/approachThe paper investigates the profile of Hungarian hypermarket shoppers based on a wide questionnaire survey. In the presented research, Computer-Aided Personal Interviewing questionnaires were analyzed using multidimensional scaling and k-means clustering.FindingsResults showed that Hungarian hypermarket shoppers regularly plan their shopping but they buy 8–9 items instead of the planned 4–5 items. However, only 25% of respondents reported the use of shopping list and in spite of the wide digital possibilities, they do not use their mobile devices neither for creating shopping list nor for checking coupons online.Originality/valueThis study explores the profile of Hungarian hypermarket shoppers, which may give additional information for the players of the retail environment about the customers' behavior and preferences.

A Deep Learning Approach for Product Detection in Intelligent Retail Environment

A planogram is the graphical representation of the way a given number of products are positioned within the shelves in a store. The creation of a correct planogram is a fundamental tool for a store’s performance: it helps to increase sales and achieve maximum customer satisfaction by reducing out-of-stocks. To this end, this work aims to provide an automatic object recognition based system that allows the operator to verify the correctness of a planogram. For image acquisition, either low-cost battery-powered cameras positioned on the opposite side of the shelf or simply a tablet with a dedicated app can be used. These tools are connected to the cloud where the detection and matching phases are performed. The experimental results come from a real environment.