Editorial
Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Volume 39, Issue 2
For this, edition there is a retail theme but with four quite different papers that address different activities of cultural influences on young consumers’ loyalty tendency; the comparative progress of Asda in the UK since 1999; the affect of multiple kiosks in shopping mall walkways on shoppers’shopping outcomes; and a retail shelf space allocation problem with a linear profit function.
The first contribution by Yoo-Kyoung Seock and Chen Lin examines the cultural influences on young consumers’ loyalty tendency and evaluations of the relative importance of apparel retail store attributes in Taiwan and the USA. The results of the study showed that American consumers have significantly greater collectivistic characteristics than Taiwanese. The study also found that country of residence is a significant and stronger indicator in predicting loyalty tendency than individualism and collectivism dimensions. The results of the study showed that evaluation of the relative importance of retail store attributes were influenced by culture. Among the five apparel retail store attribute dimensions identified in the study, Taiwanese and US respondents’evaluation of the importance of convenience, product, and information communication factors of retail store image attributes differed significantly. The findings from the study could serve as an important benchmark for retailing strategy, helping retailers to effectively redesign their apparel stores to attract consumers in different markets and foster consumers’ loyal to the company.
The next paper by Leigh Sparks evaluates the comparative progress of Asda in the UK since its surprise takeover by Wal-Mart in 1999. The analysis is at a macro corporate and national-level drawing mainly on published data. Research implications include the rebalancing of considerations of organisational competence and market environment factors on international success. A focus on political and non-market activities is suggested, though an unwillingness of companies to reconsider strategic directions is also indicted as a key factor. Wal-Mart expected to become the number 1 retailer in the UK and many commentators saw massive problems ahead for local retailers. Despite the strong rhetoric on entry, the commercial reality has seen only moderate success for Asda and a widening gap to the market leader, Tesco. Explanation for this includes competitive strategy and reactions, market restrictions particularly in land-use planning, and an unwillingness by Asda (Wal-Mart) to alter their focused store format strategy in line with competitor actions and market directions.
The purpose of the third paper by Jung-Hwan Kim and Rodney Runyan was to investigate how density conditions caused by multiple kiosks in shopping mall walkways affect shoppers’ shopping outcomes based on psychological reactance theory and behavioural constraint theory. The findings of this study indicate that respondents perceive the environment with kiosks as crowded, and this perception of crowdedness negatively affects their approach behaviour,leading to lower intentions to patronise. This provides practical information to mall managers by indicating that kiosks within a shopping mall negatively affect shopper patronage and approach intentions. Thus, shoppers who are likely to purchase from kiosk retailers would likely shop at several of those in succession, if given a chance. Mall managers can take advantage of this phenomenon and reduce the perceived crowding within the mall by locating kiosks in one area of the mall. Thus, Mall Managers need to pay more attention to the environmental atmospherics of the mall itself.
The final paper by Hasmukh K. Gajjar and Gajendra K. Adil considers a retail shelf space allocation problem with linear profit function and aims to develop efficient heuristics to solve this problem. In this paper, three heuristics were developed to solve a shelf space allocation problem and compared with existing heuristics using an empirical study. In the empirical study, it was found that all three new heuristics are competitive with existing heuristics. The best amongst the three heuristics found a solution with an average objective value of 99.59 percent of upper bound in a reasonable CPU time. Linearity assumption for the profit function was justified by the fact that retails would want to operate on linear (or approximately linear) and more strongly increasing part of the curve.
Professor Neil Towers
