Editorial

Citation

Fernie, J. (2002), "Editorial", International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Vol. 30 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijrdm.2002.08930daa.001

Editorial

This issue contains papers from two Finnish authors, two from researchers in the USA and a solitary paper from UK-based academics. The issue is "top and tailed", with papers on online grocery shopping. We begin with a response to Ring and Tigert's viewpoint article in Vol. 29 No. 6. The Helsinki researchers, who are recipients of a major ECOMLOG award to study the "last mile" problem of e-grocery, draw upon their experience to highlight six lessons to be learnt from the dot.com failures in recent years. Tanskanen, Yrjölä and Holmström argue that the problem to date is that the self-service model, which works well in a traditional supermarket, cannot be directly applied to the Internet. They suggest a series of solutions which can be applied to the needs of Internet shoppers. The final paper is also from Finland. Anckar, Walden and Jelassi also show how customer value can be created in e-grocery, by using the case of Nettimarket.com a small company founded by an entrepreneur with no previous experience of the industry.

The second paper, by Jim Reardon and Denny McCorkle, is relevant to the discussion on Internet retailing, in that the paper develops a formal consumer model to explain channel-switching behaviour. Deriving their model from Becker's theory of time allocation, they show that choice of alternative channels is based upon the opportunity costs of time, costs of goods, the shopping "experience", value of the goods and risks of each channel.

The next paper, by Shim, Lusch and Goldsberry, focuses upon leadership styles of retail managers. Based on survey data from national chain stores, they identify three types of leadership styles, building upon Quinn's earlier theoretical model. Their research shows that leadership styles are influenced by factors such as personal values, job satisfaction and career progression.

We move to a different subject, design management, and research, carried out by Vazquez and Bruce, from UMIST, as part of a Design Council award in the late 1990s. The authors correctly point out that in the voluminous literature on food retailing in the UK, design management has been ignored. This paper redresses the situation by using four case studies to develop a model of retail design management which represents best practice principle in the UK.

John FernieHeriot-Watt University