Editorial

Citation

Towers, N. (2010), "Editorial", International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Vol. 38 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijrdm.2010.08938baa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Volume 38, Issue 2

This edition contains four papers with a retail and internet theme. Consumers’ attitudes, patterns of purchasing experience, interrelationships among grocery store image, travel distance, customer satisfaction and behavioural intentions retailing and finally pop-up retail are all covered by this issue.

The first paper from Wei-yu Kevin Chiang and Zhen Li investigate consumers’ attitudes towards different shopping channels using the concept of the multi-attribute attitude model and the analytical hierarchy process approach. They view consumers’ business-to-consumer (B2C) channel preference as an additive function of their perceptions about the predictors possessed by each channel alternative, weighted by the relative importance of each predictor. Based on a theoretical framework of consumers’ purchase behaviour, that includes convenience, product variety, accessibility, quality, service provided and price they attempt to explain consumers’ attitudes toward online and traditional channels for three different product types including books/CDs, electronics, and fashion products. For practitioners, the results from our analysis offer several managerial implications. It reveals that price, product variety and accessibility, respectively, are the dominant predictors of B2C channel preference for books/CDs, electronics and fashion products. This finding helps to explain, for example, why the competitive strategy on service responsiveness, such as increasing product variety, enables Dell.com to sell several million dollars of computer equipment per day, and why the strategic focus on logistic cost efficiency leads Amazon.com to one of the largest bookseller in the USA through cutthroat price competitions. This finding also implies that for those companies which sell fashion products online and would like to increase their profits, more advanced internet-enabled technologies and mechanisms, such as product virtual tour, should be developed and adopted to facilitate product evaluations and examinations online.

The second paper from Chuanlan Liu and Sandra Forsythe examines post-adoption usage of the internet as a shopping channel. The links between two online usage patterns of purchasing experience product versus search product and online shopping continuance are also examined. Comparison is made of strength of identified links among innovation attributes, online purchase behaviours and online shopping continuance. An online survey of a national sample of online shoppers identifies online purchase behaviours for search and purchase goods where data were analysed using structural equation modelling. The analysis finds support for the proposed research model and indicates that experience product purchasing has the most salient effect on online shopping continuance. Innovation attributes predicting initial adoption do not play the same roles in post-adoption usage. This study has significant implications for e-tailing managers. First, post-adoption behaviour should be considered a robust predictor of channel-loyal customers. Focusing solely on improving online shoppers’ favourable perceptions and attitudes toward shopping online might not be effective in terms of promoting more sales since actual usage behaviours are the most salient factors on predicting continued online purchases. Second, consumers’ perceptions regarding the internet as a shopping channel impact their usage differently depending on their usage needs and patterns.

Maxwell K. Hsu, Yinghua Huang and Scott Swanson study the interrelationships among grocery store image, travel distance, customer satisfaction, and behavioural intentions in a college town setting. Grocery store image was identified as a second-order construct reflected by the three key components of merchandise attributes, store ambience and service and marketing attractiveness. Increased competitive forces within the US retail grocery industry are challenging grocers to evaluate their store image, make necessary changes and alter marketing strategies to retain current customers and attract new ones. Although store image was an important driver of behavioural intentions, its indirect effect through customer satisfaction was found to be substantially greater than its direct effect on behavioural intentions. Interestingly, travel distance was positively related to satisfaction, which highlights the possibility for retailers to overcome the distance disadvantage.

The final paper by Hyejeong Kim, Ann Marie Fiore, Linda S. Niehm and Miyoung Jeong explores relationships between consumer innovativeness, market mavenism, shopping enjoyment, and beliefs, attitude, and patronage intentions toward pop-up retail. Again a structural equation modelling methodology was used and showed that consumer innovativeness and shopping enjoyment influence beliefs about the importance of hedonic elements of pop-up retail (novelty/uniqueness factor). Therefore, pop-up retail may be an important strategy for marketers and retailers given the growing number of consumers looking for innovative and interactive experiences.

Neil Towers