Individual Stores Research Articles

Modelling the Effects of Shopping Centre Size and Store Variety on Consumer Choice Behaviour

In this paper it is argued that models of consumer choice of shopping destination have included few attributes related to the selection of stores available in a shopping centre. The authors seek to develop and illustrate empirically a way to define the selection of stores in shopping centres, such that effects of various modifications to the available selection can be modelled by conjoint analysis (or stated preference of decompositional choice) methods. Profiles of hypothetical shopping centres are developed that describe the total size of centres as well as the marketing mix positionings of the individual stores within these centres. The approach is implemented in choice experiments, one on food shopping and one on shopping for clothing and shoes. Logit models are estimated and compared for these two product categories and for large versus small centres.

Detecting life history trade-offs: measuring energy stores in "capital" breeders reveals costs of reproduction

Life history trade-offs should be detectable as negative correlations between the relevant traits (e.g. reproductive output versus energy storage), but may be masked by variation in resource levels among individuals. One way to detect underlying trade-offs, at least in organisms that rely on stored energy for reproduction ("capital breeders"), may be to monitor an individual's energy stores before and after reproduction. We analysed energy stores and reproductive output in Eulamprus tympanum, a viviparous scincid lizard that stores energy for reproduction in its tail. One predicted trade-off (that between the size and number of offspring in a litter) is consistently observed, and is detectable with minimal information. Another predicted trade-off (that between offspring size and subsequent energy reserves) is not apparent in our data, perhaps because of constraints imposed by correlations among other traits. Finally, trade-offs between reproductive output and subsequent energy stores are evident in this species, but are only detectable with information on the extent of pre-reproductive as well as post-reproductive energy stores. For "capital breeders", non-destructive measurement of pre- and post-reproductive energy stores may greatly enhance our ability to detect significant life history trade-offs.

Slow kinetics of inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate-induced Ca2+ release: is the release 'quantal' or 'non-quantal'?

Inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (InsP3)-induced Ca2+ release from intracellular stores is generally assumed to be a 'quantal' process because low InsP3 concentrations mobilize less Ca2+ than high concentrations and a submaximal concentration does not release all the InsP3-mobilizable Ca2+. However, some recent reports questioned the generally accepted view that a low dose of InsP3 is unable to empty the whole store. We have now challenged the stores of permeabilized A7r5 cells in InsP3 for much longer periods than previously reported, to assess directly whether the slow phase of the release would empty the whole store (a non-quantal response) or only a fraction of it (a quantal response). Addition of a maximal [InsP3] at the end of a prolonged (92 min) stimulation with a submaximal [InsP3] resulted in additional Ca2+ release. Experiments in which the stores were challenged with different submaximal InsP3 concentrations for long time periods revealed that a lower [InsP3] never released the same amount of Ca2+ as a higher [InsP3]. This quantal pattern of Ca2+ release occurred both at 25 degrees C and at 4 degrees C. There was a time-dependent increase in the fraction of Ca2+ recruited by the lower compared with the higher [InsP3]. This recruitment of Ca2+ persisted if the [InsP3] was decreased, but was largely prevented by palmitoyl-CoA, a potent blocker of the luminal Ca2+ translocation between individual store units. ATP, in the presence of InsP3, released Ca2+ under conditions permitting the recruitment of no additional InsP3 receptors, indicating that an all-or-none emptying of a fraction of the stores cannot be the only mechanism responsible for quantal Ca2+ release in A7r5 cells. We conclude that some of the previously published evidence for a non-quantal Ca2+ release pattern should be reinterpreted.

Body iron stores in relation to growth and pubertal maturation in healthy boys.

During male puberty, erythropoiesis is exceptionally active. Pubertal development and iron status were followed in 60 healthy boys at 3-month intervals for 24 months to evaluate changes in body iron stores with the serum transferrin receptor-ferritin ratio. The estimated amount of stored iron declined by about 50% over a 2-year period. Remarkable changes in iron stores were found even after as short an interval as 3 months and pubertal development was closely linked with a decrease in stored iron. The annual increments of estimated red blood cell (RBC) iron showed strong positive correlations with velocities in testicular volume and certainly in body height and weight. In contrast, the estimated changes in individual iron stores were not associated with any of those parameters. The lacking associations between iron stores and growth parameters are probably indicative of increasing intestinal absorption. Despite the relatively small quantitative role of iron stores in supplying iron for growth, falling iron stores probably play a more important regulatory role by stimulating iron absorption.

Spatial Competition Involving Chain Stores and Independent Unit Stores in a Distribution System

This paper presents a model of the distribution system as vertically related activities in which the wholesaler is a spatial monopolistic manufacturer and a retailer a competitive distributor owning independent unit stores. The manufacturer can make sales to all spatially separated retailers selling identical goods. The retailers are subject to Loschian competition while they are monopolists in their fixed market areas since each retailer conjectures hypersensitive rival reactions to own price changes. Part of the retailers contemplate organizing a chain of stores aiming to reduce their selling cost, management cost and physical distribution cost, which in turn tends to lower physical distribution cost for the manufacturer. The individual market radius, retail price and wholesale price in equilibrium depend on the cost structures of both the upstreamer and the downstreamers.We show that spatial competition under heterogeneous cost conditions due to chain operation induces an individual retailer's market radius to increase (decrease) and retail price to fall (rise), thereby increasing (decreasing) profits for individual chain stores (independent unit stores). A low cost operation of chain stores definitively raises wholesale price for independent unit stores, but such a strategy tends to raise the chain stores' burden share of physical distribution cost, which in turn lowers wholesale price for chain stores generally. In the process, both the profit for the manufacturer and the aggregate consumer surplus increase. The total social surplus increases with the establishment of chain stores-at the expense of remaining independent unit stores and their customers, however.

Kinetics of the non-specific calcium leak from non-mitochondrial calcium stores in permeabilized A7r5 cells.

We have investigated the detailed kinetics of the passive Ca2+ leak from non-mitochondrial Ca2+ stores in permeabilized A7r5 cells. The decrease in the content of stored Ca2+ in the presence of 2 microM thapsigargin deviated from a single-exponential curve in the initial phase of the efflux. The deviation persisted after correcting this efflux for passively bound Ca2+. The non-single-exponential nature of the spontaneous release also occurred when the initial store Ca2+ content was reduced to 40% of its original value by pretreatment with 200 nM inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (InsP3). The passive Ca2+ leak could be modelled by two exponential curves with discrete rate constants of 0.06 min-1 and 0.98 min-1, and not by any other type of non-exponential decay. We concluded that individual store units are heterogeneous with respect to their passive Ca2+ permeability. This non-exponential nature of the passive Ca2+ release is unrelated to the non-single-exponential InsP3-induced Ca2+ release.

Almost there: a new medium on the Web

In his famous article, Vannevar Bush (1945) envisioned memex (memory extension), a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. Memex stores, links, and retrieves annotated text, photographs, speech, video, and film recordings. One of its important functions is that it allows annotation and retrieval, or selection of multimodal information on the basis of semantic content. According to Bush, to facilitate content retrieval, there is a new profession of trailblazers, those who find a delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record. At the beginning of the article, he predicted that the interface to memex would use speech recognition and understanding. By the end, he envisioned an interface that could detect the electric waveforms from our brain to record thoughts and dreams and transform them into retrievable memex documents. In my opinion, the Web will eventually evolve into a truly dynamic multimodal medium without its current bias for static presentations. This medium will be different from and coexist with print, radio, cinema, television, cable, and video rentals. One of the features of memex that will materialize on the Web is the availability of audio and video media that can be linked and retrieved in much the same way as hypertext is.

Cost allocation in continuous-review inventory models

A centralized inventory system serves a number of stores with common ownership, and thus reliable and timely information sharing. Each of them pays a share of the inventory cost, and the reward structure leaves the owners of individual stores rewarded for their individual performance. Appropriate selection of a cost allocation method is important if such a centralized system is to last. In this work we propose three necessary criteria—stability (core of a related cooperative game), justifiability (consistency of benefits with costs), and polynomial computability. For a concrete example we demonstrate that common allocation procedures may not meet all three tests, and we present a method that that meets all three criteria. This kind of cost allocation analysis helps the common management to evaluate the trade-offs in choosing an allocation scheme for the cost of inventory centralization. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

The effect of retail store managers on Aboriginal diet in remote communities

Key nutrient densities of the diet of two remote northern coastal Aboriginal communities were measured using the store-turnover method during the periods that three store managers were responsible for each store respectively. Individual store managers were a greater determinant of nutrient density than the community itself. Furthermore, nutrient densities tended to be highest in both communities when their stores were administered by one particular store manager. The results support the notion that store managers wield considerable power over the food supply of remote Aboriginal communities, and raise questions concerning the ability of Aboriginal community members to influence their own food supplies in retail stores. However, the study also confirms that store managers can be important allies in efforts to improve Aboriginal dietary intake.

Circular nodes in neural networks.

In the usual construction of a neural network, the individual nodes store and transmit real numbers that lie in an interval on the real line; the values are often envisioned as amplitudes. In this article we present a design for a circular node, which is capable of storing and transmitting angular information. We develop the forward and backward propagation formulas for a network containing circular nodes. We show how the use of circular nodes may facilitate the characterization and parameterization of periodic phenomena in general. We describe applications to constructing circular self-maps, periodic compression, and one-dimensional manifold decomposition. We show that a circular node may be used to construct a homeomorphism between a trefoil knot in R3 and a unit circle. We give an application with a network that encodes the dynamic system on the limit cycle of the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation. This is achieved by incorporating a circular node in the bottleneck layer of a three-hidden-layer bottleneck network architecture. Exploiting circular nodes systematically offers a neural network alternative to Fourier series decomposition in approximating periodic or almost periodic functions.

An Enhanced Perspective

Vannevar Bush, the oft-cited architect of the post-World War II federal investment in academic scientific research, had a busy summer 50 years ago. Not only was he then drafting Science-The Endless Frontier: A Report to the President , he also managed to anticipate coming technological advances for use in harnessing the scientific literature, one of which Science On-Line is today adding to its offerings for our readers. In the July 1945 Atlantic Monthly , in an essay entitled “As We May Think,”* Bush conceived of a hypothetical device called “memex,” in which “an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility.” Bush9s memex was the forerunner of what is known today as hypertext, because it would enable a scholar to follow trails of information in a manner more like that in which the human mind associates facts—in an “associative indexing” arrangement that allows any item of information encountered to be used to select an associated item “immediately and automatically.” Items linked in this way and saved digitally for future use could then be linked to other trails of information gathered by scholars with different interests. With the on-line version of this week9s issue, Science and HighWire Press of Stanford University (our creative partner for distributing information on the World Wide Web) are offering for our readers9 assessment 11 Enhanced Perspectives (expanded versions of 10 Perspectives published between October and December 1995, plus this issue9s Perspective by Hilgetag et al. ). The enhancement is that a series of hypertext notes (HNs) have been added to the reference materials cited by the author in the original printed Perspective. A “click” on any of the HNs establishes live links to the additional bibliography, and these bibliographic notes in turn provide live links to the original sources of information cited, starting with the associated papers in Science or other journals. At these linked locations, a scholar may extend the search to related or contrasting items. The reader can even go beyond the text resources cited by the author (for example, to the National Library of Medicine9s Medline collection, whose complete citations and abstracts in turn become accessible). And there9s more. Some HNs link to larger databases, ranging from those containing genomic, protein, and crystal structures; to specialized dictionaries and glossaries; to collections of otherwise unavailable abstracts of unpublished information; to notes on the researchers, their laboratory settings, and the funding agencies who supported the work. Other HNs will take a scholar to a new database, such as the National Center for Biotechnology Information9s Entrez Browser of molecular information, whose remarkable data and search capacity can take a sample of text from a paper and find new references that have a similar keyword profile. And there9s still more. In addition to providing links to textual resources and databases, other HN links provide animated displays of the phenomena being discussed, which are immediately downloadable and operative. Any or all of these linked information items can be viewed with a scholar9s Web browsing software, thus making it possible to reach out to the information stored on the Web and bring it back to the scholar9s desk. All this is pretty heady stuff, even for the Web-savvy editors who have sampled it for the past several weeks. At first glance, the main value added by these latest enhancements is that they allow one to thread together information that is pertinent to what one is currently interested in, rather than simply to discover the existence of an inaccessible reference that will require a trip to the library someday. But that9s surely not all this technology will provide. Although the current links have been selected and constructed by human information specialists, if one looks only a short way ahead, one can conceive of intelligent links that know the content profile of the items they start with and of the items they find, and can lead the data hunter to other items of variably definable similarity. We assume that the Enhanced Perspectives series will soon expand beyond the life sciences to other parts of the scientific frontier. Do readers find such an effort to be useful for their work or intellectual enjoyment? Given the resources required to provide these enhancements, we really want to hear your answer.

Initiation sites for Ca2+ signals in endothelial cells.

Intracellular Ca2+ signals in response to inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate-producing agents often present themselves as Ca2+ oscillations and propagating Ca2+ waves originating at discrete initiation sites. We studied the spatial organization of the Ca2+ signal in single CPAE endothelial cells stimulated with adenosine triphosphate. The long, thin processes presented a higher agonist sensitivity and, for the same agonist concentration, a faster rise in cytoplasmic Ca2+ concentration and rate of wave propagation than the cell body. Ca2+ waves originated preferentially in one of these processes and then invaded the cell body. Removal of external Ca2+ induced a progressive inhibition up to blockade of the response in the process but not in the cell body. These findings suggest that CPAE cells contain many individual store units, each of which has the inherent ability to set the stage for Ca2+ release. A diffusing messenger originating from the initiation zone then coordinates the events leading to Ca2+ release in the individual store units to produce a Ca2+ wave.

Contracting with spatial externalities and agency problems The case of retail leases

This paper examines leasing arrangements between a shopping center landlord/developer and individual stores in the presence of inter-store shopping externalities. The problem is to design individual leases so that (i) stores internalize inter-store externalities, and (ii) the landlord does not underprovide marketing effort that is beneficial to all stores. We show that the key element for achieving these goals is the ability of the landlord to cancel the leases of stores whose sales fail to achieve a target level. Such cancellation, or ‘recapture’, clauses are common in commercial leases. We also show that in the absence of such a clause, familiar types of commercial leases fail to achieve the above objectives.

Lessons Learned from a Retail Food Industry Ergonomics Task Force

Three individuals on the panel have participated in the formation and functioning of the Food Marketing Institute Ergonomics Task Force; the retailer on the panel has benefitted from the recommendations of the task force. The panelists will discuss lessons learned from the task force activity both for the retail food industry and for individual stores.

Quantal Ca2+ mobilization by ryanodine receptors is due to all-or-none release from functionally discrete intracellular stores.

Low caffeine concentrations were unable to completely release the caffeine- and ryanodine-sensitive intracellular Ca2+ pool in intact adrenal chromaffin cells. This 'quantal' Ca2+ release is the same as that previously observed with inositol Ins(1,4,5)P3-induced Ca2+ release. The molecular mechanism underlying quantal Ca2+ release from the ryanodine receptor was investigated using fura-2 imaging of single chromaffin cells. Our data indicate that the intracellular caffeine-sensitive Ca2+ pool is composed of functionally discrete stores, that possess heterogeneous sensitivities to caffeine. These stores are mobilized by caffeine in a concentration-dependent fashion, and, when stimulated, individual stores release their Ca2+ in an 'all-or-none' manner. Such quantal Ca2+ release may be responsible for graded Ca2+ responses in single cells.

From Memex to Hypertext: Vannevar Bush and the Mind’s Machine ed. by James M. Nyce, Paul Kahn

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 441 Is not theory itself a little explanation machine? Constructivism retains interpretative flexibility and remains not yet black-boxed. Suffice it to say that there are enough surprises to make this second iteration required reading for those who live where sociology abuts the history and philosophy of technology. Thomas F. Gieryn Dr. Gieryn teaches in the Department of Sociology at Indiana University. From Memex to Hypertext: Vannevar Bush and the Mind’ s Machine. Edited by James M. Nyce and Paul Kahn. San Diego, Calif.: Academic Press, 1991. Pp. xi+367; references. $39.95. The phrase “from Memex to Hypertext” well expresses this book’s central concern with the current state of computer-based data storageand -retrieval systems. This is apparent in the two essays by the editors, James M. Nyce and Paul Kahn, and also in the seven essays by Vannevar Bush, centering on his classic “As We May Think” of 1945, and the seven essays by computer scientists and information specialists on the extent to which Bush’s ideas have been achieved. Whatever the merits of the essays by historians Larry Owens (a study of Bush’s differential analyzer previously published in Technology and Culture) and Colin Burk (a study of the rapid selector, a component of Memex), they stand outside the chief concern of the book and thus of this review. This collection has appeal for historians for the same reason that Bush conceived of Memex during the 1930s: he required, as a researcher and writer, a simpler means of gathering, storing, and retrieving data. Bush sought control of an expanding, personal database so that he could retrieve specific items or streams of information. He envisioned a memory system that, as he wrote in 1945, would not be “prone to fade.” Bush lauded human intelligence, finding “the speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures . . . awe-inspiring.” Memex, being “a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility,” would serve as “an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory” (p. 102). None of this could have been achieved with the technology Bush had to draw on throughout the twenty-plus years he massaged his idea of Memex. Yet microfilm, dry photography, vacuum tubes, and massproduction techniques would not solve the problems of specialization and the vast and increasing bodies of knowledge being created during the 1940s—even if Bush could have gathered these components into a desk along the lines imagined by a Life magazine illustrator in 1945. In assessing the larger meaning of Memex, Nyce and Kahn obscure the issue when they attempt to prove that it was more than a “pragmatic solution to a particular problem” by placing Memex in a utopian literary 442 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE tradition (p. 43). The editors might better have chosen authors to examine Bush’s idea in its economic, political, and ideological contexts. Considerations of the growth of big science, the Cold War, and the post-World War II belief in the supremacy of science and technology are more likely keys to the meaning of Memex than utopian literary traditions. Norman Meyrowitz comes closest to a social perspective when he quotes Bush on the manned space program: “The welfare of the children depends far more upon effective libraries than it does on the collecting of a bucket of Talcum powder from the moon” (p. 298). Here exists an entry point for comprehending Memex as a historical construct. Yet Meyrowitz turns from doing history when he states that the problem in the 1990s is probably not the space program, but other programs that expend funds needed to build our “intellectual superstructure” (p. 298). Instead, this collection presents an intriguing discussion of the present impossibility of Bush’s central notion of trails and trailblazing. Classicist Gregory Crane, in an essay entitled “Aristotle’s Library,” doubts its pos­ sibility in the absence of a “common library” such as that studied by 19th-century scholars. Authors Theodor H. Nelson, Linda C. Smith, Tim Oren, and Randall H. Trigg consider Memex more directly, discussing in detail...

Environmental selection and retail change

In Finland and the other Nordic countries the debate on structural change in retail trade has been mainly concentrated at the macro-level. Reasons for the changes have been sought in the economic, technological and social structures, and in changes in these structures. Committees and others connected with community planning have played a central role in the debate. Considering the extent of the debate, there has been relatively little real research, and the various studies have generally been based on a limited number of variables. In view of the social importance of retail trade, it might seem surprising that researchers have shown so little interest in the structural changes in retail trade and in the results of such changes. The explanation probably lies in the lack of theory, and maybe also in problems connected with the availability of material. Research now needs to focus more on individual stores. This article presents a study intended to re-focus the debate on structural change in retail trade by studying the reasons for the closure or survival of operations in the rural store. The results emphasize external factors: the environment selects those stores that are best suited to its purposes.

A theory of retail change

Existing theories of retail change are examined and discussed from an ecological perspective. A new theory is proposed, based on an open systems view, that modifies previous ecological approaches. This theory recognizes that, while the environment sets a limit on the feasible set of retail store types, actions of individual stores also play a major role in determining survival.

Defining the Supermarket “Item”: An Informal Look

Most food supermarkets appear to have some sort of an express checkout lane arrangement for customers with a small number of items, generally 10 or less. Variations include having the lane operational throughout the day or only during peak periods, accepting any type of tender or limiting transactions to cash sales, and packing for the customer or requiring them to pack for themselves A review of the literature, and a query of the Food Marketing Institute (Washington, DC), suggesting no standardized definition of an item, the seemingly key operational element, a Lrmrcd informal inquiry was conducted to determine how this term is construed in practice. During the spring and summer of 1990, one checker at each of 63 different supermarkets in a large urban area in the northeast selected on a convenience basis, was questioned as to how she defined an express lane item. The following interrogatory was presented: if a six-pack of soda is considered one item, would six individual cans of the same type of soda be considered one item or six items? None of those providing answers were in managerial positions; all of the stores were outlets of nine regional chains; about two-thirds of the checkers were women and one-third men. No attempt was made to ascertain whether the answers provided were personal preferences, store practice, or company policy. Checkers who declined to answer or provided conditional responses were not counted. All of those responding were employed in stores having a mechanized, rather than a manual, checkout system. Thirty-three checkers (52%) sald that the six cans of soda would be treated as one item; the remalnlng 30 checkers (48%) would consider it as six items. There was no marked difference noted between women and men in the responses, nor was there any consistency observed among checkers of the same chain, but in different stores. While not specifically examined, intuitively it was felt that the definition of an item was a matter of individual store preference and policy, with checkers having discretion as to interpretation and enforcement. Recognizing the inherent subjectivity of the methodology, the presence of local cultural biasing, and the limitations on replication of the inquiry, the results suggest the potential for stress for both shoppers and checkers. While low to moderate amounts of stress can sometimes be beneficial, higher levels tend to have deleterious effects, such as needless negatlve shifts in moods, unnecessary illness, and unwarranted mental exhuastion. As it would sccm reasonable that food shopping should generally not be a contributing factor to the amount of aggravation encountered in life, food marketea might want to give some thought to standardizing the definition of the express lane item. In these hectic days of the overload society, every bit of pressure relief counts.

Introduction to hypertext and hypermedia

?Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mecha nized private file and library. It needs a name, and to coin one at ran dom, 'memex' will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is me chanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibi lity. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.?