Female Retail Research Articles

The Impact of Attractiveness on Retail Managers’ Decisions: Labor Market Discrimination when Hiring Salespeople

This paper investigates the role of physical attractiveness in retail managers’ decisions about hiring salespeople. Using data on attractiveness and the potential employment qualifications of 30 candidates, we found that retail managers prefer to hire candidates who are more physically attractive. This beauty premium can be explained by our findings on the positive correlation between candidates’ attractiveness and the perceived presence of traits essential for becoming a successful salesperson, such as charisma, kindness and persuasiveness. We also found that beauty plays a more important role for female candidates, from the earliest stage of the hiring process. No difference was found between the beauty premiums in the decisions of male and female retail managers. Based on our findings, we recommend that retail managers remain vigilant about the potential for intentional or unintentional biases based on physical appearance when hiring employees.

The Impact of Attractiveness on Retail Managers’ Decisions: Labor Market Discrimination When Hiring Salespeople

This paper investigates the role of physical attractiveness in retail managers’ decisions about hiring salespeople. Using data on attractiveness and the potential employment qualifications of 30 candidates, we found that retail managers prefer to hire candidates who are more physically attractive. This beauty premium can be explained by our findings on the positive correlation between candidates’ attractiveness and the perceived presence of traits essential for becoming a successful salesperson, such as charisma, kindness and persuasiveness. We also found that beauty plays a more important role for female candidates, from the earliest stage of the hiring process. No difference was found between the beauty premiums in the decisions of male and female retail managers. When this study’s results are coupled with results from previous studies demonstrating that an employee’s attractiveness has been found to influence both performance and behaviors of customers and managers, the managerial relevance of the attractiveness effect becomes apparent. Based on our findings, we recommend that retail managers remain vigilant about the potential for intentional or unintentional biases based on physical appearance when hiring employees.

Consideration of Assortment Decision Criteria : Men’s Wear vs. Women’s Wear and Male vs. Female Retail Buyers

Consideration of Assortment Decision Criteria : Men’s Wear vs. Women’s Wear and Male vs. Female Retail Buyers

Third Generation Discrimination: The Ripple Effects of Gender Bias in the Workplace

Third Generation Discrimination: The Ripple Effects of Gender Bias in the Workplace

The Heart of Capitalism: Contested Visions of Labor Reform in Lurana Sheldon's Department Store Novels

The Heart of Capitalism:Contested Visions of Labor Reform in Lurana Sheldon's Department Store Novels Ashley Elizabeth Palmer On 6 May 1890, the Working Women's Society (wws) of New York sponsored a meeting at Chickering Hall to protest working conditions in the city's department stores. Although it was led by middle-class men, the meeting obliquely featured one woman's voice when a male speaker read wws secretary Alice Woodbridge's harrowing account of the "miseries of the poor women" working in department stores ("To Help"). Woodbridge's "Report on the Condition of Working Women in New York Retail Stores" details physical and emotional hardships ranging from exhausting working hours to repulsive sanitary conditions. The circumstances she reveals were so extreme that speakers at the meeting pronounced their reform efforts "a battle for humanity" to "struggle for the emancipation of these poor women" ("To Help"). The meeting's goal was to expose the hardships of shopgirl labor to middle-class consumers who typically experienced department stores from only the other side of the counter. But although reformers arranged the meeting to enlighten middle-class consumers, the majority of attendees were in fact shopgirls. Demonstrably invested in their own welfare, shopgirls showed up in such large numbers that one news story observed that "there were more shop girls than consumers or clergymen" in attendance ("To Better"). Addressing them directly, the speakers encouraged the shopgirls to "combine for their own protection" ("The Interests"). The Chickering Hall meeting raised concerns about department-store labor reform that would reverberate not only through Progressive Era discourse but also through popular literature over the next two decades. Fiction using the department store for its main setting can help us understand how turn-of-the-century authors grappled with the complexities of labor reform within the nation's consumer palaces. American literary criticism that examines consumerism [End Page 106] at the turn of the century rarely considers the service industry labor behind consumer culture; such criticism has instead prioritized consumers' experiences and perspectives.1 While the critical emphasis on consumer culture is a productive perspective, we risk losing sight of the laboring people who enabled that consumption. For one formerly successful but now nearly forgotten author, Lurana Sheldon, the department store—where labor and consumption meet across the counter—served as an ideal space to consider possible models of labor reform. Two of her novels, For Gold or Soul? A Story of a Great Department Store (1900) and For Humanity's Sake: A Story of the Department Stores (1900–1901), offer a counternarrative to the scenes of glamorized consumption proffered by such writers as Theodore Dreiser and Émile Zola.2 Instead, Sheldon's novels enter the space of the department store expressly to illustrate the hardships its workers suffered. In this respect, her work echoes Zola's emphasis on the workers' lives in Au bonheur des dames (1883; The Ladies' Paradise) as he traces Denise Baudu's physically demanding and mentally discouraging experience as a department-store shopgirl. Sheldon's novels expand upon this interest in the figure of the shopgirl by envisioning reforms to alleviate her hardships in these massive, often corrupt sites of capitalist consumerism.3 In doing so, Sheldon's work both depicts and reshapes the world of department-store labor illuminated by the Chickering Hall meeting, pushing beyond existing nineteenth-century reform efforts in the United States to envision more just circumstances for female retail workers. Analyzing two of Sheldon's out-of-print novels published between 1900 and 1901, this essay explores how Sheldon worked within her cultural and political contexts to imagine possibilities of labor reform. Recovering Sheldon's work reveals the capacity for imagination that American writers brought to reform; the visions she presents for change in these novels include benevolent management, unified workers, labor-conscious consumerism, and labor unions that encompass both management and workforce. Yet if these novels suggest alternatives to labor exploitation from within consumer culture, they also reveal the limitations of such impulses. Despite Sheldon's evident sympathy for the plight of the shopgirl, even the most radical changes her novels envision retain systems of top-down reform that often leave the shopgirl...

Heavy Sacks, Cold Stores, and Black Marketing: Reminiscences of Female Retail Store Workers during World War II in Finland

Abstract This article analyzes interactions between women's experience narratives and the shared, cultural narrative of Finland in World War II (1939–45). The collective memory of World War II in Finland is based on a shared narrative of heroic sacrifice. This study questions this narrative by examining the reminiscences of retail store assistants whose work changed considerably when the war broke out in 1939. It uncovers the challenges they faced with regard to workplace fatigue, dishonesty, and black marketing. The use of oral-history methods allows the narrator to reflect and to produce a narrative of the past for today's audience. For the researcher, the materials reveal the connections of meanings and values to the time, place, and social environment. The article contributes to the growing scholarly challenge to the heroic narratives of World War II.

The Function of Commercial Streets in Montreal and Paris, 1853-1936

Urban spaces and streets have been studied in a variety of ways in Montreal and Paris, but rarely have historians examined the specific relationship between the function of the street and social usage to reflect changes over time. The argument here is for an analytical approach to photographs combined with textual evidence to reveal the urban processes affecting the retail streets of rue Notre-Dame and rue Sainte-Catherine in Montreal, the through street of Boulevard de Sébastopol, and the pedestrian street of rue Mouffetard in Paris. Photographs reflect the success of modern urban transformations to rework the images of the city from various perspectives and for different purposes. They include the bourgeois female shopper on the late nineteenth-century retail and through streets, female retail and office workers interspersed among men on early twentieth-century rue Sainte-Catherine, and the agency of working-class women in the market transactions and peddler trades of rue Mouffetard.

How can gender signal employee qualities in retailing?

The occupational structure in retail employment is known to be gendered, such that women tend to occupy ‘softer’ social roles, while men tend to occupy ‘harder’ physical and technical roles. This article presents an integrative model that illustrates the balance of KSAOs (knowledge, skills, abilities, and other personality characteristics) and retail sectors between male and female retail employees, and explains how gender can signal employee qualities in the retail sector. The empirical analysis uses data from a survey of 702 respondents employed across 40 ANZSIC (Australian New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification) retail categories. Based on signalling theory, the findings suggest that an employee's gender can be an unintentional signal for unobservable qualities in retail employment, which has implications for customer service, human resource management, and gender discrimination.

Will Women Lead the Way? Differences in Demand for Corporate Social Responsibility Information for Investment Decisions

Recent years have featured a leap in academic and public interest in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities and related corporate reporting. Two main themes in this literature are the exploration of management incentives to engage in and disclose this information, and of the use and value of this information to market participants. We extend the second theme by examining the interest that specific investor classes have in the use of CSR information. We rely on feminist intersectionality, which suggests that gender intersects with other identities to yield different values, experiences, and opportunities that can lead to gender-based preferences for CSR information. Based upon a survey of 750 US-based retail investors, we find that female retail investors have a greater interest in the use of CSR information, relative to male retail investors. Women express greater anticipated future demand for this information than do men. Further, the magnitude of the increase from current use to anticipated future demand is greater for women than men. Age is a significant modifying factor in that the discrepancy between women of any age and older men is greater than that between women and younger men. Finally, women also exhibit greater demand for streamlining of the information flow, consistent with pressures induced by time poverty. It appears that current disclosure practices provide a less than optimal match with the needs of the information consumers that are primarily interested in using this information. This mismatch may result in a systematic disenfranchisement of female investing classes which suggests an ethical need to level the playing field.

Salesperson preference among Hispanic and Asian immigrants

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine differences between Hispanic and Asian immigrants and their preferences in the appearance of and interaction with salespeople.Design/methodology/approachA total of 171 female Hispanic and 153 Asian female retail consumers in a midwestern city, who immigrated to the USA, were surveyed. Salesperson‐customer interaction and preference for salespeople with a similar ethnic appearance were assessed.FindingsFindings from F‐tests indicated that in this study Asians have a significantly greater preference for a salesperson similar in appearance to themselves and Hispanics have significantly greater preference for salespeople who offer attentive service.Practical implicationsRetailers will benefit by understanding and capitalizing on differences which will encourage customer loyalty to their retail stores.Originality/valueExtending the observable characteristics facet of the buyer‐seller similarity model, the research results suggest that buyers from different ethnic groups will assess salesperson characteristics differently.

Isolated Aspartate Aminotransferase Elevation: Think Macro-AST

Case Presentation and EvolutionA 25-year-old female retail manager, who had been gen-erally healthy, presented with complaints of mild fatigue.She denied fever, myalgia, jaundice, night sweats, orweight loss. She exercised regularly by running 2–3 milesper day and doing light weight lifting several times perweek, but did not engage in an excessive exercise regimen.She denied muscle pain or weakness. She had no previousmedical history, and her family history was only significantfor paternal dyslipidemia and an older brother with thyroidcancer. She occasionally took aspirin and/or ibuprofen forheadache or muscle cramping, and only drank a coupleglasses of wine per week. Physical examination wasessentially normal.Initial laboratory studies were significant for isolatedaspartate aminotransferase (AST) elevation of 283 U/L,with all other liver chemistry normal, including an alanineaminotransferase (ALT) level of 13 U/L. Complete bloodcount, including reticulocytes, was normal. Work-up forthe presence of chronic liver disease, including viral(hepatitis B and C serology, and Epstein–Barr virus andcytomegalovirus serology), autoimmune (antinuclear andmitochondrial antibodies), and genetic liver diseases(ceruloplasmin, alpha-1 antitrypsin level, and iron studies),was unrevealing, and an abdominal ultrasound was normal.The erythrocyte sedimentation rate, creatine kinase, andthyroid stimulating hormone were also normal. Serial liverchemistry showed persistently elevated AST levels withnormal ALT levels (Table 1). During this period of time,the patient’s fatigue resolved and she was asymptomatic.The striking elevation of AST with normal ALT levelsand negative work-up for the presence of liver disease ledto consideration of the presence of macro-aspartate ami-notransferase (macro-AST). Ultimately, a polyethyleneglycol (PEG) precipitation assay was performed, whichrevealed 89.1% PEG precipitable activity (%PPA), con-firming the presence of macro-AST.DiscussionElevated liver enzyme levels should prompt an extensive,but rational, evaluation for different causes [1], for

Choice or constraint? Tensions in female retail executives' career narratives

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the usefulness of Hakim's preference theory in the understanding of the attitudes of women retail senior managers and directors towards their career and non‐work lives. It provides a critical analysis of the main tenets of preference theory and evaluates the extent to which women have “free choice” in their careers.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative methodology consisting of 13 in‐depth interviews with women at senior executive and director levels in retailing was adopted. The interviews examined women's career paths and uncovered the choices and constraints impacting on their career progress and other aspects of their lives.FindingsThe findings demonstrate the complexity of careers and choices. While several women talk about the choices they have made, it is apparent that these choices have been constrained by extraneous variables, both at an individual and organisational level.Practical implicationsThe findings from the paper can enhance practitioners' understanding of some of the choices and constraints women make in their working lives, which in turn might lead to improved organisational policies for women to better accommodate work‐life balance issues.Originality/valueThe paper questions whether choice equates to preference and assesses the usefulness of Hakim's preference theory as a means of understanding the careers of women in contemporary organizations.

Gender, Retail Employment and the Clothing Commodity Chain

This article analyzes the conditions of employment in fashion retailing, arguing that fashion retailing constitutes a distinct sector of retailing. The fashion commodity chain is characterized by a unique spatiality and temporality and as a result, female retail workers share much in common with women situated at production, advertising and consumption sites in the chain. Given that many of the issues women confront at different sites are similar, the sector is amenable to organizing across the chain.

Women at the Top in British Retailing: A Longitudinal Analysis

The massive under-representation of women at the highest levels in British companies has been noted in retailing as elsewhere. But it has been difficult to set the current situation in perspective in the absence of longitudinal studies of recruitment patterns. This article examines the gender composition of the boards of directors of Britain's largest retail firms over the last 40 years. The results show that, following a lengthy period in which female retail directors were noticeable largely by their absence, a relatively small but significant breakthrough has recently taken place. The educational backgrounds, of the women members of today's retail boards, their length of board service, ages and the positions they hold both inside and outside retailing are also examined and compared with those of their male counterparts.

Stress and the female retail manager

Examines the sources of stress associated with male and female retail managers, a sector recognised as being stressful and where women are more likely than in other occupational sectors to be managers. Self‐completed questionnaires were distributed to males and females at various levels of retail management. The findings confirmed the two research hypotheses: male and female managers reported similar job pressures, in particular from “work overload”, “time pressures and deadlines”, “staff shortages and turnover rates” and “long working hours”. Moreover, female retail managers were more likely than their male counterparts to suffer from additional pressures caused by sex discrimination and prejudice. The outcome of these stressors can contribute to organisational deficiency, ultimately damaging the reputation of the company. Retail companies that successfully tackle the issue of work‐related stress will be better equipped to cope with the price of change within the retail environment.

A Profile of Female Retail Managers: Some Insights

A Profile of Female Retail Managers: Some Insights

‘Something to Deal With’: Customer Sexual Harassment and Women's Retail Service Work in Canada

While sexual harassment in the workplace has been extensively researched over the past two decades, the majority of studies have focused on employer–employee or co‐worker relationships. In contrast, the issue of ‘customer sexual harassment’ (i.e. the sexual harassment of employees by customers) has been less explicitly explored. This paper examines customer sexual harassment in the Canadian context, drawing on a study of 63 female retail service workers and 20 security workers. It focuses on the nature, prevalence, and consequences of this form of harassment for women who work in various jobs in retail sales (e.g. flower shops, book shops). Findings from the study suggest that customer sexual harassment is a significant problem. Not only have a majority of women been sexually harassed by customers in their current job, but they appear to be highly constrained in dealing with such behaviour. To the extent that the work environment privileges the customer, through its emphasis on customer satisfaction, women are reluctant to confront harassers and may engage in behaviours (e.g. avoiding male customers, being less friendly) which potentially impact their performance on the job. The paper examines the dilemmas facing female workers and the policy issues raised.

Barriers in the career progression of retail managers

Organizational and technological changes have altered the nature of retail management jobs, which in turn create new opportunities and barriers to career development. Using primary quantitative research, the paper details the relative barriers to career development experienced by male and female retail managers, the problems they have encountered in their jobs, and the reasons for the lack of women in senior retail management positions. It concludes that the reasons for a gender imbalance in retail management posts are grounded in gender and organizational analysis which upholds male values as the accepted cultural norms. Unless these are challenged it is unlikely that the current status of women in retailing will change. From a business perspective, companies need to retain and develop good quality managers. Recognizing that organizational culture is changing in response to company expansion also means recognizing that the talents of both male and female managers are required for the future success of businesses.

Same‐Sex and Cross‐Sex Mentoring of Female Protégés: A Comparative Analysis

This article describes a study of mentoring relationships for female retail protégés in cross‐sex mentoring relationships and female retail protégés in same‐sex mentoring relationships. The results of the study indicated no significant differences between groups on mentor and protégé age differences, protégé career level at relationship onset, company affiliation, mentor characteristics, benefits derived, problems reported, duration of the relationship, terminating causes, resulting feelings or reported value of the mentoring relationship. This research suggests that female protégés can and are benefiting from both male and female mentors due to overriding similarities in same‐sex and cross‐sex relationships.

Part-time Versus Full-time Employees: Different Tribes or Simitar People?

Recent employment trends indicate that more and more women are either taking or are being offered part-time work on a permanent basis. While many assumptions exist, however, about part-timers versus full-timers, little empirical research exists on the characteristics, attitudes and behaviours of these different types of workers. This paper explores the attitudes and behaviour patterns of 211 female retail sales assistants within the retail industry in Sydney. The results have importance not only for management hiring practices but also for the development of this trend within Australia.