Identifying the effect of retail brands on private residential rental prices in Great Britain

This study extends our understanding of the influence of proximity to retail grocery provision on housing rental prices. To achieve this, extensive data on the size and location of retail outlets are combined with neighbourhood rental values for small areas across a two year period, together with varied contextual data for each area. In order to control the influence of many confounding variables in the determination of housing rentals, the technique of propensity score matching is applied. This provides a sophisticated means for the comparison between areas where there is substantial natural variation, rather than manageable controls. For a variety of types of retail brands, only a significant relationship is found between the proximity of a Premium retail outlet and the housing rental value. The findings of this research allow local planning officers to further understand the impact of planning applications on the potential for gentrification and the affordability of neighbouring housing.

Intensive Environmental Surveillance Plan for Listeria monocytogenes in Food Producing Plants and Retail Stores of Central Italy: Prevalence and Genetic Diversity

Listeria monocytogenes (Lm) can persist in food processing environments (FPEs), surviving environmental stresses and disinfectants. We described an intensive environmental monitoring plan performed in Central Italy and involving food producing plants (FPPs) and retail grocery stores (RSs). The aim of the study was to provide a snapshot of the Lm circulation in different FPEs during a severe listeriosis outbreak, using whole genome sequencing (WGS) to investigate the genetic diversity of the Lm isolated, evaluating their virulence and stress resistance profiles. A total of 1217 samples were collected in 86 FPEs with 12.0% of positive surfaces at FPPs level and 7.5% at RSs level; 133 Lm isolates were typed by multilocus sequencing typing (MLST) and core genome MLST (cgMLST). Clonal complex (CC) 121 (25.6%), CC9 (22.6%), CC1 (11.3%), CC3 (10.5%), CC191 (4.5%), CC7 (4.5%) and CC31 (3.8%) were the most frequent MLST clones. Among the 26 cgMLST clusters obtained, 5 of them persisted after sanitization and were re-isolated during the follow-up sampling. All the CC121 harboured the Tn6188_qac gene for tolerance to benzalkonium chloride and the stress survival islet SSI-2. The CC3, CC7, CC9, CC31 and CC191 carried the SSI-1. All the CC9 and CC121 strains presented a premature stop codon in the inlA gene. In addition to the Lm Pathogenicity Island 1 (LIPI-1), CC1, CC3 and CC191 harboured the LIPI-3. The application of intensive environmental sampling plans for the detection and WGS analysis of Lm isolates could improve surveillance and early detection of outbreaks.

115 The Beef Industry in a Post-Pandemic World

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 caused unprecedented shocks and disruptions in the cattle and beef industry. The shutdown of food service in March 2020 caused an unparalleled stacking of food demand on the retail grocery sector. The rigidity and specialized nature of food service and retail grocery supply chains, compounded by a surge in consumer demand at retail grocery, resulted in temporary shortages of meat in other consumer products in supermarkets. The food service sector recovered somewhat over many weeks but remained diminished through the balance of 2020 and beyond. In April 2020, COVID-19 infections affected the labor forces of many meat packing and processing facilities and resulted in significant reductions in beef packing and further processing for eight to twelve weeks. This caused additional product shortages in retail grocery and food service sectors. These impacts have raised many questions about how the beef industry might adapt to be more resilient in the face of such profound disruptions. Possible changes include more use of multi-purpose facilities (less specialized for food service or retail grocery supply chains); design changes in new plants and retrofitting existing facilities to reduce human health impacts; changes in labor management; changes in inventory management; and changes in business supply chain management and risk assessment practices.

Hygiene measures in supermarkets, retail food stores, and grocery shops during the COVID-19 pandemic in Slovakia

The article presents the hygiene measures that are applied in the Slovak Republic in supermarkets, food stores, grocery stores as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic situation in Slovakia. These measures have been published by the Public Health Authority of the Slovak Republic in the relevant legal regulations and are based on the decisions of the Government of the Slovak Republic, which took into account the opinions of the experts of the Pandemic Commission of the Government of the Slovak Republic. In general, these measures are based on the mask-distance-hand principle. In public areas outside and inside, it was ordered to wear masks and later wear a respirator of FFP2 class in exterior and interior, gloves on hands or disinfection of customers' hands before entering the store, observance of 2 m distance of people standing in a row at the cash registers, maximum capacity of persons in stores was determined one person per 25 m2 of sales area and later, this measure was tightened to 15 m2 of sales area. Also, to perform regular ventilation of the premises and to have as many cash registers as possible so as not to create long lines of customers. All shops were closed at 8:00 PM. In the case of shopping centers, entry is prohibited for people with a body temperature higher than 37 °C, and disinfection of hands is mandatory, wearing a mask and later wear respirators of FFP2 class is necessary. In a stricter regime, during the peak of the pandemic, there was a restriction for persons to shop food only in the nearest retail/grocery or similar place from the place of residence to the extent necessary to procure the essential needs of life.

A hedonic model of the association between grocery brand provision and residential rental prices in England

Purpose This study aims to measure the association between local retail grocery provision and private residential rental prices in England. Renting is an important sector of the housing market in England and local grocery provision is an important aspect of service provision and consumers are known to be highly sensitive to the branding of this type of retailing. Design/methodology/approach This research uses a novel data source from a property rental Web platform to estimate a hedonic model for the rental market. These models incorporate information on the nature of the properties and their neighbourhoods, with an emphasis on how different retail brands are associated with rental prices. This retail brand is captured on two scales: the provision of local branded convenience stores and the provision of larger stores. Findings The study finds clear differentials in how the local grocery brand is associated with rental prices. When controlling for commonly explored confounding factors, “Luxury” retailers such as Waitrose and Marks and Spencer are associated with higher rental prices, while “Discounter” retailers are associated with lower rental prices. This finding has many implications, particularly in relation to potential price changes in an already challenging housing market for many people. Research limitations/implications This is an observational study and as such only associations (not causation) can be implied by these findings. Originality/value The focus of this research is on the private residential property market, an important market in England but one that has enjoyed less scrutiny than the sales or socially rented markets. Rather than using general accessibility to retail, this research has differentiated the association by the retail brand and store size, two very important aspects of consumer choice.

Scared into Action: How Partisanship and Fear are Associated with Reactions to Public Health Directives

Differences in political ideology are increasingly appearing as an impediment to successful bipartisan communication from local leadership. For example, recent empirical findings have shown that conservatives are less likely to adhere to COVID-19 health directives. This behavior is in direct contradiction to past research which indicates that conservatives are more rule abiding, prefer to avoid loss, and are more prevention-motivated than liberals. We reconcile this disconnect between recent empirical findings and past research by using insights gathered from press releases, millions of tweets, and mobility data capturing local movement in retail, grocery, workplace, parks, and transit domains during COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders. We find that conservatives adhere to health directives when they express more fear of the virus. In order to better understand this phenomenon, we analyze both official and citizen communications and find that press releases from local and federal government, along with the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, lead to an increase in expressions of fear on Twitter.

Effects of Contemporary Leadership Styles and Employee Engagement on Customer Satisfaction in the Retail Grocery Industry in the US

Competition within the retail grocery industry has reached an all-time high. Organizations looking to differentiate themselves from rivals are focusing on improved customer satisfaction. This quantitative research study investigated how customer satisfaction was related to contemporary leadership styles and employee engagement. Transactional leadership theory, transformational leadership theory, and charismatic leadership theory were used as the theoretical framework of the study. Regression analyses were conducted to determine the effect of contemporary leadership styles on employee engagement in addition to determining the extent of the relationship existing with customer satisfaction. The results of the study indicated both transactional leadership and transformational leadership positively impacted or increased employee engagement; however, transformational leadership proved to be a significantly higher predictor of employee engagement.

Bigger than the Sound

This essay examines the political economy of Caribbean cultural capital and the formation of reggae in Jamaica in the 1950s. Through study of the Afro-Asian intimacies and tensions embedded in the sound of preindependence Jamaica, the essay traces the birth of the “sound-system” to the networks of local small-retail grocery shops, ubiquitous across Jamaica, that were owned and operated by Jamaican Chinese shopkeepers and examines how they formed material infrastructures. In charting the hardwiring of speakers and how the sociality of the shop housed the production of a new sound, the essay argues that sonic innovation was derived from Afro-Jamaican servicepeople who returned from World War II with military technological expertise, which they applied to sound engineering, and from entrepreneurial guilds of Jamaican merchants and shopkeepers of Chinese, Afro-Chinese, and Indo-Chinese descent, who helped form the conditions of possibility for the production and global distribution of reggae. Thus the networks of Jamaican Chinese diasporic capital and talent, producing and performing, helped to engineer the electrical flows of reggae to rural areas and urban dancehall parties.