With the development of internet and communication technologies, diversification of consumer needs, and intensifying competition, omnichannel is spotlighted among retailers as one of the breakthroughs to survive. Particularly, among scholars and practitioners, cross channel integration (CCI) has been pointed out as a key concept to achieve success in omnichannel, and several successful cases of retailers and strategies implemented under CCI are reported. Nevertheless, due to the wide scope and complexity of CCI, as well as the substantial cost and long-term perspective required for its investment, CCI involves a high level of uncertainty and complicated decision-making. Thus, most retailers are still struggling in achieving the level of CCI that their consumers desire.

Many retailers and food service providers offer programs as part of their loyalty programs in which customers are given stamps for each purchase of a qualifying product or service and redeemed for a reward once a certain number of stamps have been accumulated. We identify which stimuli in such goal-directed motivational promotions induce customers to participate in the program.

Driving to the store, finding parking, defective carts, difficulties in finding items, poor product info, long lines for checkout, unclear receipts, carrying heavy shopping bags home, and forgotten items are some of the most common barriers experienced by grocery shoppers. These are also the most common reasons why shoppers decide to switch to alternative retailers or to online grocery channels. COVID-19 accelerated this trend with online grocery shopping and home delivery services became prevalent and grew significantly during the pandemic (Gupta & Mukhejee, 2022). Today, e-grocery has reached 11% of the total grocery sales and being expected to reach 19% by 2025 in US (source: Statista, 2022). Brick and mortar grocery retailers declare to suffer from low loyalty of their customer and margin pressure. On the other side, the recent investments of online pure players such as Amazon and Alibaba in physical retail, including grocery, show that the physical shopping has still potential to lead retailers’ growth, also within grocery. Grocery retailers should therefore find new ways to attract and retain customers to their stores. Offering a better customer experience (CE) may be a valuable strategy to this end. A great CE has emerged at the base of a sustainable competitive advantage for companies, and it is at the heart of customer loyalty (Grewal et al., 2017) in several sectors but has often been neglected within grocery selling.

Technology, for example, Personalized Technology Services (PTS), has groomed consumers to expect an integrated and personalized shopping experience regardless of the channels, such as websites, mobile apps, physical stores, etc. PTS refers to technologies that offer personalization functions to meet customer needs at the time of their shopping for a seamless experience. The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of retailer mobile apps’ PTS in consumers’ omnichannel shopping experiences by: (1) identifying PTS values specific to retail mobile apps for in-store shopping and (2) testing the PTS values – channel integration – consumer responses links based on Information Integration Theory (IIT). We first proposed that PTS via mobile apps holds various positive values. Second, we postulated four hypotheses: H1. PTS values enhance the integration of PTS values, H2. Integration of PTS values positively affects customer engagement, H3. Customer engagement positively affects customer satisfaction and H4. Customer engagement mediates the relationship between integration and customer satisfaction. Two web-based survey studies were employed with US consumers who had an experience with mobile app-mediated PTS offered by retailers. For study 1, a total of 239 US consumers participated in the survey. Study 1 identified five value dimensions of the app-mediated PTS: hedonic value, utilitarian value, self-efficacy, co-creation, and synchronicity. For study 2, a total of 373 US participants completed the survey. Study 2 confirmed the proposed structural model that PTS values positively affected channel integration which, in turn, positively influenced customer engagement and shopping satisfaction. Additionally, customer engagement partially mediated the effect of integration on shopping satisfaction. This study expanded the literature on omnichannel retailing by exploring consumer in-store shopping experience using retail mobile apps from PTS and channel integration perspectives. Practically, the study findings provided insights for marketers into how to design the retailers’ mobile apps to enhance the integrated shopping experience of consumers.

This study aimed to identify the key factors influencing the U.S. millennial consumers’ willingness to recycle their denim apparel to brands or retailers. Consumer perceived value model provides the theoretical framework and guides data analysis. Five main values identified are the perceived social, financial, emotional, convenience and ecological values.

In pursuing carbon emission reduction efforts, companies have focused for the most part on reducing emissions due to the more efficient equipment and facilities. However they overlook a significant source of carbon emissions, one that is driven by operational policies. Currently companies are looking for solutions to reduce carbon emissions associated with their operations. Operational adjustments, such as modifications in order quantities could an effective way in reducing carbon emissions in the supply chain. Also, Cap-and-Trade mechanism is generally accepted as on of the most effective market-based mechanism to reduce carbon emissions. In this paper, we investigate a supply chain with single manufacturer and multiple retailers multi-product inventory model under the cap-and-trade system incorporating the carbon emissions caused by transportation and warehousing activities. Also, we provide an iterative solution algorithm and derive the common order interval and the number of intervals for each product. We show by numerical example that the inventory model incorporating cap & trade mechanism can reduce total cost and carbon emissions compared to the classical inventory model. Using the numerical examples, we also investigates different carbon price on the performance of the inventory model.

This study identified types of online retail internationalization in the fast-fashion context and proposed driving factors of retailers’ choices in online-based market entry following the logic of the Uppsala model and the eclectic theory. In particular, this study proposes three types of online-based internationalization: 1) entering a host market with a physical store first, and then expanding with an online store, 2) entering a foreign market with an online store, then expanding to physical stores, and 3) entering only with an online business. In addition, this study investigated the causal factors, ownership-specific and location advantages, that influence the choice of the type of developmental process of online-based internationalization. To develop theoretical and managerial insights into the issue researched, this study employed a qualitative research design involving case studies of three European fast-fashion retailers, H&M, TOPSHOP, and ASOS. This study suggested that fast-fashion retailers that enter a host market with high ownership-specific advantages are likely to choose to enter the market with physical stores and then expand with online stores. On the other hand, when faced with uncertainties attributable to low ownershipspecific or location advantages, fast-fashion retailers are likely to choose to enter with an online store first and then expand with physical stores as conditions change. Consequently, this study provides a better understanding for fast-fashion retailers who are willing to expand their businesses to foreign markets via online stores.

Introduction Japanese convenience-store (CVS) chain retailers have grown by establishing store networks. In fact, Seven-Eleven, Lawson and Family Mart continuingly have opened about 1000 new stores per year. The reason for the rapid growth of their store-networks is that a key aspect of a chain retailer’s marketing strategy is the number of stores its needs to reach its customers (Srinivasan et al. 2013). In particular, CVS chain retailers seek to open new stores and obtain spatial dominance in a particular geographical area, which is called “area-dominance strategy,” so they can save on logistical costs, increase consumer proximity and loyalty, and prevent rival from opening new stores in the area (Ogawa 2004, Tamura 2014, Nishida 2014). Thus, a retailer’s decision of how to expand store-network in a given regional market is important to improve its sales. However, little attention has been paid to this problem in Japanese academic research. This study attempts to explain the influence of entry of rivals on a focal retailer’s store-network in regional markets of Japanese CVS industry. Especially, the author focuses on the regional competition between a focal retailer who is the first entrant and rivals who are late entrants in the region. First, we review prior research, and then propose hypotheses about the influence of entry of rivals, the degree of dominance of a focal retailer, and entry of rivals in multiple regions, on the number of the focal retailer stores. This is followed by an empirical analysis with panel data. Last, we discuss some implications and direction for future research. Literature Review and Proposed Hypothesis Entry of rival stores Prior research suggests that the existence of rival chain stores in the same market decreases the store-revenue of the focal retailer (Erickson et al. 2013, Nishida 2014).When rival retailers open the large number of new stores in a regional market, the focal retailer may be taken away their business of existing stores and latent new stores, so the focal retailer will be forced to close existing stores and slow down the pace of opening new stores. Then, we propose following hypothesis: H1: In a regional market, the higher the number of net increase of rival stores is, the lower the net increase of focal retailer stores is. Dominance of the focal retailer According to prior research, CVS chain retailers benefit from area-dominance (opening own stores aggressively in a given region), because it enables retailers to reduce their distribution and promotion cost, increase consumer loyalty and their power against manufactures (Ogawa 2004, Tamura 2014, Nishida 2014). If the focal retailer has already established a high density store-network, and had strong relationships with its customers and manufactures in the regional market, they will be less likely to suffer from entry of rival chain stores, and they will be able to continue expanding their store-network. These arguments lead to: H2: In a regional market, the higher the degree of dominance of the focal retailer is, the smaller the negative effect of entry of rival stores is. Entry of rival stores in multi-market Though H1 and H2 do not consider multi-market competition among chain retailers, this macro-level competition may have a great impact on their competitive action in a given region (Chen 1996). When a rival entries to multiple regions simultaneously where the focal retailer has already operated, the focal retailer will delay its decision making and competitive responses, so the impact of entry of rival will be larger (Poter 1980, Ferrir 2001, Boyd and Bresser 2008). Therefore, we propose following hypotheses: H3a: The higher the number of regions which rival entry is, the bigger the negative effect of entry of rival chain stores is. H3b: The higher the number of net increase of rival stores across the regions is, the bigger the negative effect of entry of rival chain stores is. Methodology To test the proposed hypotheses (see FIGURE 1), we collected panel data from the Census of CVS Market, which includes the number of stores of Japanese CVS chain retailers in each prefecture. Due to the restriction of data availability, we treated prefectures as the unit of regional market, and focused on the cases that Lawson was the first entrant, and Seven-Eleven and Family-Mart ware the later entrants in prefectures. Accordingly, the sample was limited in space to 17 prefectures, and limited in time to the period from the year that Seven-Eleven or Family-Mart opened their stores for the first time to 2014. Results We tested the hypotheses using panel date analysis by fixed effects model. The estimated results are shown in FIGURE 2. Regarding our hypotheses H1, involving the negative effect of rival entry on the focal retailer’s store-network, is not supported. However, the interaction of “the dominance of the focal retailer” with “rival entry” and the interaction of “rival entry in multiple regions” with “rival entry” are significant, although their signs of coefficients differ depending on whether the rival is seven-eleven or family-mart. Thus, hypotheses H2 and H3b are supported in part. Implication and Future Research Our findings have several important implications. First, our empirical results suggest that the effect of rival entry on a focal retailer’s store-network depends on (1) rival’s position in CVS industry, (2) the focal retailer’s dominance, and (3) rival’s multiple entry. Second, when a rival has a superior position than the focal retailer, dominance advantage of the focal retailer increases the negative effect of rival entry, which is contrary to our expectation. This implies that enhancement of the density of own store-network will cause cannibalization, so each store of a focal retailer may be highly vulnerable to entry by a rival who has superior competitive position (i.e. Seven-Eleven). Finally, multiple entry by a rival in superior position reinforces the negative effect of their entry on expansion of the focal retailer’s store-network in the regional market. Though this study was a rare attempt to explain regional competition among Japanese CVS chain retailers empirically, it did not include the prefectures that Seven-Eleven and Family-Mart were the first entrants. This may limit generality of the empirical results, hence it is valuable to take this problem into consideration in future research.

The emergence of a new marketing channel affects the economy by expanding the consumer's choice of products, altering the competitiveness of retail markets and having an influence on manufacturers' profitability. The electronic commerce channel through the Internet constitutes a typical marketing channel with these features. In this paper, we construct a vertical product differentiation model comprising an upstream manufacturer and two downstream retailers. Our model is closely related to that in Chiang, Chhajed and Hess (2003). We incorporate cost asymmetry across the retailers into the model, a new feature which is not in their model. In this model, the manufacturer not only produces a physical product it sells to the downstream retailers, but also has an option of "versioning" to open a new direct channel for an alternate digital product. We find that, when the marginal cost of the physical product is in some range given other cost parameters, the direct digital channel reduces the quantity of the physical product sold by the inefficient retailer even if it increases total quantity of the physical product. We also find that, when it is higher than the above-mentioned range, the direct digital channel increases the quantity of the physical product sold by the efficient retailer even if it reduces its total quantity. Cost asymmetry across the retailers plays a role in these results. Taking the above results into account, we discuss managerial implications for a manufacturer supplying the physical and digital products.

E-commerce is a global phenomenon that reshapes retailing and the appropriate multinational corporations. The goal of this study is to get a better understanding of the relationship between online customer reviews (OCRs), sales and sales after returns in the cross-national and cross-cultural context. We discuss our hypotheses by empirically analyzing a large and unique data set from a European fashion e-commerce company. This study links a wide range of transaction data (0.8 billion page clicks, 17 thousand different products, 499 brands, 50 product categories, 22 million sold and 11 million returned items) from six different countries (Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland) with a large set of OCRs (0.7 million). Our results show that positive OCRs can lead to higher sales and sales after returns with considerable cross-country differences. We argue that differences in culture provide a substantial explanation for these effects by using Hofstede's cultural framework.

This research investigates the power use in self and collective interests of retailers and small apparel suppliers’ relationships. Our findings highlighted that power use of fast fashion retailers in self-interest and collective interest related goals are evident mainly in the areas of capability development, production processes and innovation in asymmetric relationships with Turkish apparel suppliers.

The proliferation of the Internet and related technologies has led to a new form of distribution channels, namely online retailers. The conventional offline and the new online retailers have different transaction costs perceived by the consumers in the following perspectives: the accessibility to the product information, the traffic cost and the opportunity cost for the time to visit the store, the delivery time and the possibility of ‘touch and feel’ to test the quality of the product. In particular, the online retailers have lower distribution cost structure in that they do not have physical stores, which results in lower selling price. Thus they continuously offer price competition against offline retailers using the lower selling cost as competitive weapon. Moreover the emergence of the social commerce is likely to intensify the competition between the online and offline retailers. To survive in this fierce competition, the offline retailers are trying to defend their business interests by sticking to offline transaction in anticipation of increased customer loyalty, customer’s preference for ‘touch and feel’ style shopping, and others. Despite of these efforts, customers who touch and feel a product in an offline store but purchase the product through an online retailer are increasing. To protect such customers, recently, some of the offline retailers began to provide the mobile discount service (MDS) which enables the offline customers to purchase a product at a discounted price through the mobile applications. In business competitions, the price discount strategy is usually considered to secure more market share at the cost of lower profit. In this study, however, we analyze the effect of MDS as a weapon for securing more profit. To do this, we set up a game model between the online and offline retailers which incorporates the effect of the MDS. By numerically analyzing the Nash equilibrium of the game, some managerial implications for using the MDS for more profit are discussed.

Large retailers use strategic alliances with suppliers in order to obtain customized distribution services from the suppliers. Forming strategic alliances with large retailers requires suppliers to make relationship-specific investments in the retailers. Transaction cost analysis suggests that the investments create a potential of hold up and discourage suppliers from forming the alliance. This study considers that regulatory focus of suppliers is a determinant of forming strategic alliance. It hypothesizes that promotion-focused suppliers are likely to accept an uncertain alliance with larger retailers even if it requires them to make relationship-specific investments. On the other hand, it is suggested that prevention-focused suppliers are unlikely to accept the same offer under the same conditions.