Editorial

Citation

Towers, N. (2012), "Editorial", International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Vol. 40 No. 8. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijrdm.2012.08940haa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Volume 40, Issue 8

This issue includes contributions investigating retail positioning research using the Swedish building material distribution industry, the features of the community retail enterprises sector in the UK, the role of contract design in overcoming critical demand management issues in the luxury jewellery industry and studies whether consumers are able to make an ethical shopping basket.

The first submission by Guan, Rehme and Nord aims to contribute to retail positioning research, using the Swedish building material distribution industry as a study setting. It has two key goals, which are to develop a classification framework focusing on the Swedish building material distribution market and to analyse those distributors by strategic groups and identify their common business priorities. The research looked at a majority of building material distributors in the Swedish market. The study develops a classification framework of building material distributors and draws on theory from retail positioning and classification. The result suggests that the studied distributors can be classified into three strategic groups:

1. 1.

   DIY-service focused;

2. 2.

   DIY-cost focused; and

3. 3.

   builders’ merchant (BM)-service focused.

Research also showed that distinguishing building material distributor by customer type is not as effective as it once was; there is a trend of internationalisation in the Swedish building material distribution industry and distributors exert growing central control over certain areas, such as purchasing and marketing.

The second paper, by Calderwood and Davies, investigates the key features of the community retail enterprises sector in the UK. The paper reports on the results of a postal questionnaire survey of 197 community retail enterprises supplemented by visits to 21 of the shops run by these enterprises and short interviews with some of the shop staff. The community retail enterprise sector is growing very quickly, with a significant number of new shops opening every year in the UK. It is a very diverse sector that provides a wide range of goods and services, reflecting the desire to meet the needs of members and local residents. It is heavily dependent on the involvement of the local community, particularly as volunteers, but this can lead to other tensions around the role of the shop and the enterprise in general.

The purpose of third paper, by Brun and Moretto, is to identify the role of contract design in overcoming critical demand management (DM) issues in the luxury jewellery industry. The goals are the identification of the main critical issues of the DM process and the analysis of the contribution of contract redesign to solve them. The paper follows an exploratory approach using a case-based methodology. Data are collected through four case studies with brand owning companies and 37 case studies with multi-brand retailers in the luxury jewellery industry. The paper offers insights into contract design in the luxury jewellery industry. In particular, the critical issues of the DM process determined by inadequate contract design have been identified, thus highlighting their influence on the critical success factors of luxury companies. In addition to the characteristics the contract should have to overcome the critical issues have been proposed. The paper raises a number of important issues for jewellery brand owners who are reluctant to consider the retailer’s perspective in a collaborative way during the demand management process.

The final paper, by Carrero and Valor, aims to analyse the responsible offer of mainstream retailers. By focusing on CSR-labelled grocery goods, it aims to study whether consumers are able to make an ethical shopping basket, to create an inventory of CSR labels, and to evaluate the quality of the information conveyed through CSR labels. Using structured observations and a template to homogenise data collection, information was recorded for 15 products in eight mainstream retailers in two countries (the UK and Spain). Differences are found across product categories, retailers, type of brands and countries. Private brands are taking the lead in the creation of responsible assortments as well as in the quality of the information provided to consumers. Given the exploratory nature of this paper, a research agenda is built suggesting future avenues of work to further understand the configuration and outcomes of the responsible range.

Neil Towers