Covid-19 Impact on Retailing

In early 2019, retailers had reason to be optimistic. Unemployment was low and while many retailers closed branches, overall, retailing rose. The hospitality and travel industries were at their highest revenue levels in more than 16 years and consumer spending was at a high. Traditional retail formats were no longer working as Omni channel retailing took hold. Very few could have predicted that retail employees would become essential workers as a pandemic hit the world. The retailing industry took a major hit and experts are unsure about a total recovery. In this paper we examine the impact of COVID-19 on retail environments and what the future of retailing may hold

Defining Pop-up Stores

Purpose of the research: The purpose of this paper is to define pop-up stores. Design/Methodology: Adopting an exploratory research design, semi-structured interviews and field observations were undertaken with brand managers of different types of pop-up stores and at different industry levels in Lebanon. Results/findings: A pop-up store is guided by a clear strategy to meet specific objectives using available resources. Research findings highlight a clear distinction between pop-up stores developed by newly established brands and mature brands in terms of purpose and function. The two brand classes can each manifest in four types of pop-up stores: pop-up as a distribution channel, pop-up as a communications channel, pop-up as a distribution and communications channel and pop-up complementing a distribution channel. Practical implications and conclusions: This study qualitatively explores brand managers’ understanding of pop-up stores, their perceptions and their uses in the Middle Eastern market; a market that hasn’t yet been explored in academic research related to these types of stores. It presents, defines and contextualizes a pop-up store and anchors it among new types of retail formats.

Retail Format Usage: Pre-COVID-19 Benchmark Data, Pandemic Practice, and Emergent Influence

Background: COVID-19 brought revolutionary change in consumer retail format behavior. Pre-pandemic, multiple retail formats were available, and consumers showed evidence of preference for particular formats. Then, the disruptions caused by store closures and stay-at-home mandates altered consumer behavior substantially. Aims of the Study: The purpose of this work is to report the results of research on consumer preferences for retail formats as a benchmark for examination of changes in consumer usage of retail formats wrought by COVID-19 and projection of emergent post-pandemic behaviors. Pre-COVID-19, variety in retail formats proliferated. Methodology Employed: Survey methodology captured preferences, practices, and recommendations related to use of retail formats. Research questions included: a) Which retail formats do consumers prefer? b) Which digital tools do consumers use to make purchases? c) Does delivery mode and/or product type influence retail format preference? d) Does retail format influence impulse purchasing behavior? e) Do consumers mix retail formats when making product purchases? and f) What will be the implications of COVID-19 for retail format preference? Results: Consumers reported differences in preferences for online, in-store, catalogue, and phone retail formats. Product type influenced consumer retail format preferences. Retail format influenced impulse purchase behaviors. Consumers used smart phones, laptops, desktops, tablets, email, discussion boards, social media, and social networks as purchasing tools. Conclusions: This study investigated pre-pandemic consumer preferences and usage variables related to retail format. It provides benchmarks for examination of changes resultant from the massive retail disruptions of mandatory store closures and stay-at-home mandates. It further provides a framework for projections of emergent, post-pandemic behaviors. Recommendations: The authors recommend further investigation of consumer retail format use during and subsequent to the height of the pandemic. Comparison of consumer usage pre- and post-pandemic can provide valuable input to retail planning.

Sustainable consumption

The aim of the chapter is to present the essence of sustainable consumption and its basic rules: Reduce-Reuse-Recycle. Minimalism and sharing economy were presented as the manifestation of the Reduce rule. Reuse requires distribution systems which will give access to preowned products (in a broader scope), thus, they will provide products with a second life. This may be provided by alternative retail formats which are oriented towards the sale of second-hand products. Some of these formats, especially online applications, are becoming quite popular—their number, as well as the amount of their customers is rapidly growing. Also, traditional mainstream retailers have become involved in second-hand product sales.

The Attitude of Consumers towards Organised Food Retailing: An Application of Attitude-towards-Object Model

Organised retail sector is booming in metros, cities and now even in small towns; and organised food retailing is one of the fastest growing sector among them. The different types of food retail formats have its own characteristics, focus and target market. The customer or consumer has their own criteria to select a particular food retail format. The selection is based on the attitude of the customer or consumer towards the attribute of the retail format. There are many model to find the attitude of customer or consumer towards any product, service and brands. This study is an attempt to find out the customer's or consumer's attitude towards three major food retailing formats i.e Big Bazaar, a hypermarket; Reliance Fresh, a convenience store and Suvidha, a supermarket.

The Effect of Online Channel Addition on Store Performance: Empirical Evidence from Chinese Chain Retailers

With the rapid development of e-Commerce and takeaway platforms, retailers have gradually developed multi-channel operations. However, limited empirical studies explored the effects of an online channel offered by takeaway platforms on the store performance. Does an online channel addition have a synergy effect or a cannibalization effect on store performance? We empirically investigate these effects by analyzing a large dataset including diverse samples collected from multiple retailers across various regions. The dataset includes 2115 stores across 25 retailers for 10 months that includes two types of retail formats and covers 16 provinces and 21 cities of China. We study the impacts of the newly introduced online channel on the incumbent offline channel and the overall store performance. The empirical results reveal that the online channel addition mainly has a synergy effect. Specifically, for the overall store, it has a positive effect on the sales and product variety, whereas it has a negative effect on the basket size. Surprisingly, an online channel addition also has a positive effect on the offline sales. Our study adds novel values to multi-channel retailing literature by empirically researching the cannibalization and synergy effect of a new type of online channel, offered by takeaway platforms. It can provide insights for retail enterprises who are interested in introducing O2O model.

The Booster, the Snitch, and the Bogus False Arrest Victim: Retailers and Shoplifters in Interwar America and Britain

This article examines shoplifting from department stores and variety chain stores in interwar America and Britain. Patterns of shoplifting show strong similarities—with stores facing a predominantly female, and disproportionately affluent, army of amateur shoplifters, together with a much smaller corps of professional thieves. The incidence and characteristics of shoplifting are explored, together with the stores’ legal and other strategies to deter shoplifters. The article also examines why apparently prosperous women had the highest propensity to shoplift. Britain and the United States had strong commonalities in terms of open display retail formats, the methods used to deter shoplifters, and typical legal penalties. However, America had one critical difference—the much higher incidence of a type of store criminal who specialized in deliberately getting apprehended in order to sue the store for false arrest and, often, false imprisonment, slander, and a range of related charges. This reflected the higher damages typically awarded by U.S. courts compared with their British counterparts, inflated by local antagonism to retail corporations, together with a system—at least in some U.S. cities—whereby corrupt lawyers and judges connived in shoplifting acquittals that paved the way for lawsuits.

Consumer Shopping Behaviour among Modern Retail Formats

The objective of this study is to analyze consumer shopping behaviour in different retail formats. Consumer shopping behaviour presents using shopping intention, attitude towards modern retail outlet and shopping habit. Self administered questionnaire was used to collect data. Data was collected from five different retail formats, i.e. hypermarket, supermarket, departmental store, mini market and convenience store. Consumer shopping behaviour is modeled using Structural Equation modeling (SEM), and the difference of behaviour among retail format was tested using multi level Lisrel software. It's found, as can be seen on consumer shopping model, the effect of attitude towards modern retail outlet and shopping habit on shopping intention. However, it's found that there is no difference in this behaviour among hypermarket, supermarket, and mini market.

The Centre-Periphery Dialectics in Eastern Sicily Retail System. An Exploratory Research

This paper aims at scrutinizing from an historical perspective the deep transformations shaped by retail spaces and new consumption patterns challenging long-entrenched dichotomies, such as the centre-periphery one. In particular, the exploratory research explores the territorial reconfiguration of the main Eastern Sicily metropolitan areas, Catania and Messina, from the lens of the retail geography, namely after the diffusion of new suburban retail formats which have completely upset deeply-rooted relations between urban core and suburban rings.

Retail Suburbanization, Modernization, and Growth in Sydney during Australia’s Postwar Boom

This article uses Sydney as a case study to examine the process of retail decentralization during Australia’s postwar boom, showing how the form and function of capital city retailing changed completely in just a couple of decades. Suburban migration, the emergence of mobile car-driving consumers, socially constructed gender roles, the ongoing importance of public transport networks, planning regimes that sought to concentrate development in designated zones, and business growth strategies that deployed retail formats developed in America all played a role in shaping the form and function of Australian retailing during the postwar boom. In the process, the retail geographies of Australia’s capital cities were transformed from highly centralized distribution structures dominated by the urban core, to decentralized landscapes of retail clusters featuring modern retail forms like the supermarket and shopping center that would come to define Australian retailing for the remainder of the century.