Sustainable Initiatives and Organizational Reshaping in Food Retailers

This chapter analyses the adoption by large food retailers of corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs targeted at employees and their families. The authors propose an exploratory research. A qualitative approach has been used to examine the emerging redefinition of the organizational approach to improve effectiveness of retail CSR initiatives. The multiple case study analysis is a useful research tool that investigates a contemporary phenomenon in its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident. This methodology highlights nine different cases which explain some organizational tools to implement CSR in retail companies that operate in EU. Findings reveal the need for a redefinition of organizational structures and processes for implementing a successful CSR strategy in the retail sector. The selected cases show the importance of closer coordination among the organizational dimensions to implement CSR in retail sector. Some cases show a delay in the implementation of organizational tools and employee engagement.

Actor Engagement in Service Ecosystems

The actor engagement concept highlights the reciprocal, social, and collective nature of engagement, aimed at enhancing value co-creation processes in service ecosystems. This chapter explores the evolution of the service ecosystem in retailing contexts, with the development of new retail formulas derived from the effective interaction between corporate stances and engaged actors, in particular customers, social movements, and suppliers. In the analysis, the authors focus on two interlinked cases: Eataly, a new venture that emerged from a mutual organizational commitment between corporate power and the Slow Food social movement; FICO-Eataly World, the subsequent evolution of Eataly, which derived from the reshaping of the service ecosystem due to increasing supplier engagement in the retail format. Eataly and FICO represent interesting settings to better understand how forms of resource integration can occur, how and to what extent the community and corporate stances mutually adjust during the value co-creation process, and how a service ecosystem can evolve as a result of actor engagement.

Retail Formats and Alternative Retail Formats

This chapter explains the mechanisms for the emergence of selected innovative formats based on existing format change theories. The nature of a retail format is explored and the classification both of retail formats and alternative retail formats are presented. Four groups of theories (cyclical, conflict, environmental, and integrated) explaining the emergence and evolution of retail formats are analysed. Retail formats theories are applied in explaining the emergence of two formats: pop-up store and m-commerce. The approach involved a review of literature and analysis of empirical data concerning the structure of the retail trade turnover in the chosen countries.

The In-Store Shopping Experience

This chapter provides a systematic literature review on the in-store shopping experience, as presented in retail management studies, to reveal potential gaps in the existing literature and suggest directions for future research. This is a conceptual paper with an analytical approach that draws heavily on theoretical evidence published in the retail management literature. A total of 90 journal articles published between 1992 and 2019 were analysed in a five-step process: obtaining a basic understanding, coding, categorisation, comparison, and further analysis. More precisely, the chapter depicts the period of publication of the articles, the journals in which they were published, the origin of the authors, the research methods, definitions, and the measurement of the in-store shopping experience. Finally, main research gaps and directions for future research are proposed. Scholars can use this paper as a reference point to identify specific research areas that can be theoretically and empirically investigated to further advance knowledge on this topic.

Explaining Customer Loyalty to Retail Stores

This chapter reassesses the process of how store customers become loyal to their stores; what are the core subprocesses generating customer store loyalty, and what contributing moderators enrich the final outcome. A new empirical research is designed to identify and test a parsimonious model of core relationships and moderators. The result is an explanation chain that incorporates relational variables, trust, and commitment to the traditional transactional one, customer satisfaction, and the moderating factors of the relational variables. The findings reveal that 1) customer commitment is the major contributor of explanation to true customer loyalty, significantly more than the contributed explanation of customer satisfaction, and 2) four cognitive attitudes and four affective attitudes significantly moderate the relational effects of trust and commitment on customer store loyalty and, thus, contribute, though in small amounts, to a stronger explanation.

Using Integrated Corporate Responsibility to Enhance Consumers' Perceptions

The chapter aims at synthetizing past research on CSR into the new meaning of CR by investigating if CR is being pursued through an integrated approach with branding by the six major banking corporates in Italy and the UK. In particular, differences and similarities in the extent of implementation are addressed. The research adopts a qualitative approach based on case study development and data analysis according to a CR framework that allowed data extrapolation and systematization, which the authors have designed in accordance with theories of integrated CR. The findings reveal that the extent of integration between CR and branding varies depending on cultural contexts and consumers' perceptions. Most of the sample is undertaking CR policies and programmes with the intent of driving the whole company towards the execution of an integrated strategy, but the UK sample shows the higher extent of integration. The study favours the emerging of best practices for CR integration among banking players and can be adapted to further geographical areas.

Are Retailers' Perceptions of Their Innovativeness and Technology Similar to Those of Consumers?

This chapter explores the relationship between retail innovativeness and the level of technological advancement as well as the ICT solutions implemented by store chains of four retail activities – e.g. grocery, textile, electronics, and furniture and decoration. Innovation may become a source of sustainable competitive advantage in the highly competitive environments where retailers have to operate. In this chapter, retailers and consumers' perceptions are compared in order to assess if retailers' expectations of their efforts in innovation and ICT investment match with consumer perceptions about these decisions. Evidence exists of significant differences in consumer perceptions and behavioral intentions. As a result, differences in consumer behaviour are found between high and low innovators that may be explained by the strong relationship between retail innovativeness and the technology implemented by the store. Notwithstanding, these findings are sensitive to the type of product sold by the store.

The Role of the Service Encounter as a Means of Reversing Further High Street Retail Decline

This chapter examines customer and retailer perceptions of the decline of the UK High Street and investigates the potential of the service encounter to reverse this decline. UK High Street is in perpetual decline as a result of 3 inter-related factors: the rise in competitor offers from out-of-town retailing and online shopping; rather high business rates; economic uncertainty perpetuated by Brexit. Revisiting interviews conducted in 2013 across 4 Scottish cities with 40 retailers (national chains and independents) and 40 customers ages 18-60 reveals a difference of opinion between retailers and customers. Unlike retailers, the majority of customers thought potential solutions to the decline in the UK High Street lay in combining the appeal of online convenience and choice with the tangibility of the physical store experience.

Sensorial and Experiential Marketing in Shopping Centers

This chapter states the importance of sensory and experiential strategies for the retail companies, their degree of implementation, and their effect on retail companies' performance. An interdisciplinary review of related studies links sensorial or experiential stimuli with consumer behavior. An empirical analysis answers the following: What degree of knowledge do retail managers have about experiential marketing? What actions and tools are used more frequently? Are their effects measured? What impact do they have on business performance? Survey data collected from 171 managers of Spanish shopping centers show the degree of knowledge of the concepts of sensory and experiential marketing is high, but there are differences in the actions implemented by type of company. Decision makers greatly consider investment in experiential marketing is profitable and effective.

Technical and Hedonistic Variables of Online Visual Merchandising

This study looks for a correlation between visual hedonistic and technical variables and site success, simultaneously establishing whether there are any recorded evolutionary aspects of technical variables. A mixed method approach was adopted and the analysis was divided into the following phases: content analysis on technical and hedonistic characteristics; traffic analysis, analysis of the position of websites in relation to data traffic using a size reduction technique; cross-analysis of results obtained in the two previous phases to observe the cluster structure from a point of view of data traffic. The results state that there is no clear correlation between technical and hedonistic qualities of an e-commerce site in the apparel industry and the popularity and attractiveness of their site, and therefore, the authors cannot confirm the four proposed hypotheses.