Store Format Diversification, Customer Orientation and the Performance of Foreign Retailers

Abstract

Foreign retailers contend with unrelenting challenges to discover and resolve issues affecting their performance in different host country markets. These retailers bear some wealth of international experience and also some liabil-ity of foreignness. Accordingly, managers of foreign retailers must enact strategic decisions that will position their businesses in order to be competitive and profitable. In this study, the authors examine two generally overlooked fac-tors —degree of store format diversification and customer orientation— relating to improved foreign retailer per-formance. The authors also investigate the potential moderating effects of three host country characteristics —retail modernization, collectivism, and uncertainty avoidance— on this relationship. Based on the 2001-2015 panel data for 24 international retailers, results for main effects indicate that foreign retailer performance is influenced nega-tively by store format diversification and positively by customer orientation. These effects are moderated by host country retail modernization, collectivism, and uncertainty avoidance. In particular, host country retail modernization reverses, from negative to positive, the influence of store format diversification on foreign retailer performance. Fur-thermore, both collectivism and uncertainty avoidance strengthen the positive influence of customer orientation on foreign retailer performance. Finally, uncertainty avoidance strengthens the negative influence of store format diver-sification on foreign retailer performance.