Editorial

Citation

Towers, N. (2012), "Editorial", International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Vol. 40 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijrdm.2012.08940aaa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Volume 40, Issue 1

This edition has an interesting retailing theme with submissions investigating the Taiwan, Italy, and USA including optimum stimulation level (OSL) and consumer perceptions and behaviours, Temporary Shops, the young female consumers’ purchase behaviours related to non-food fair trade products, and retailers’ assortment configuration and pricing process.

The first contribution by Wang, Chang and Wysong examines the relationship between optimum stimulation level (OSL) and consumer perceptions and behaviours, with retail shoppers in Taiwan. The study proposes a comprehensive model, which illustrates that consumers with different levels of OSL have differing evaluations of retail store elements, shopping value and subsequent shopping behaviours. The findings suggest that Taiwanese shoppers with a high OSL had more favourable evaluations of a store’s ambient, design, layout and density elements than did consumers with a low OSL. Additionally, the high OSL shoppers reported higher hedonic and utilitarian values from their shopping. Most importantly, the shoppers with a high OSL spent more time and money in stores. It is thought that retailers should pay even more attention to the ambient, design and layout elements of their stores. In doing so, they might be able to attract more consumers with a high OSL and entice them to spend more money.

The second paper by Spena, Caridà, Colurcio and Melia proposes focuses on temporary shops, a recent communication and distribution innovation used by firms in order to improve interaction with customers and to reinforce brand loyalty and equity. The main aim of the study is to frame the temporary shops phenomenon in Italy and to analyze its value co-creation potential. The DART model proposed by Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004) was chosen as the theoretical framework to investigate the process of value co-creation inside the temporary shops through its four key building blocks of dialogue, access, risk/benefits and transparency. Through a multiple-case study that represents the main temporary shops in Italy over the last two years the findings provide a locus of value co-creation in which the interactive and experiential relationship between the firm and the customer is engaged and value co-creation emerges. The work contributes a new distribution phenomenon with respect to co-creation through the application of the DART model.

The third paper by Ma, Littrell and Niehm examines young female consumers’ purchase behaviours related to non-food fair trade products. Interrelationships among beliefs, attitudes, perceived behavioural control, and purchase intentions in regard to fair trade products were examined within a framework of the theory of planned behaviour to arrive at an in-depth understanding of young female consumers’ fair trade consumption. The results revealed that young female consumers’ beliefs about the fair trade concept and product attributes, attitudes toward fair trade purchases, and perceived behavioural control in regard to fair trade purchases were all important factors in determining consumers’ intentions to purchase a fair trade product. Several important strategic implications emerged in this study for fair trade retailers targeting young female consumers. The study focused on providing insights for a previously unaddressed fair trade consumer segment – a younger female consumer group between ages 18 and 28. The results of this study may provide artisan producers and retailers with expanded opportunities to distribute, market, and promote fair trade products to this consumer segment.

The final contribution by Dass and Kumar propose a novel, model-based clustering approach to bring parsimony to retailers’ assortment configuration and pricing process. The objective of our model is to group alternative assortment configurations into sets to which the category exhibits equivalent vulnerability. We illustrate the benefits of this new method for category planning using two sets of data for brands of soft drinks and enhanced water collected from a panel of adult customers. The results from both data sets show that several assortment configurations, varying significantly in terms of numbers of products and prices, result in similar levels of category vulnerability. Several widely-different product-pricing combinations result in similar levels of category demand. These findings imply that retailers can bring parsimony to their category management process by shifting their strategic focus from individual brands to assortment clusters. Overall, this approach can help simplify the complex decision-making process related to product selection and price setting, and help retailers achieve the dual objective of operational efficiency and high category demand.

Neil Towers