Retail Sites Research Articles

An assessment of nutrition information on front of pack labels and healthiness of foods in the United Kingdom retail market

BackgroundFront of pack nutrition labelling is part of United Kingdom government’s programme of activities aiming to tackle diet-related diseases. There are several front of pack labelling formats available and they differ in the information they deliver. This study assessed the frequency of usage of front of pack food labelling systems on food products in the United Kingdom grocery market. It also measured the healthiness of some foods in the online market by categorising them according to their nutrient contents.MethodsFive hundred food products in five categories [(1) cereals and cereal products, (2) dairy products, (3) beverages, (4) packaged meats and meat products, and (5) pre-packaged fruits and vegetables] from three main United Kingdom retail websites were investigated. A simple random sampling method was used for product selection according to the categories on the retailers’ websites. The healthiness of foods was also assessed by categorising them into ‘healthier’, ‘moderately healthy’ and ‘least healthy’ based on fat, saturated fat, salt and sugar contents.ResultsThe total number of label types assessed comprises 19.6% of Guideline Daily Amounts or Reference Intakes and 43.8% had a combination of Traffic Light and Reference Intakes (hybrid label). Slightly over a quarter (27.4%) of products included nutritional information in a grid or table, 3.4% of the foods had two of any of the following: Health Logo, Reference Intakes and Traffic Light labels, and 5.8% did not have any Reference Intakes, Traffic Light, Health Logo or Hybrid label. Most of the foods assessed were manufactured in the United Kingdom with only 30.8% imported from 32 countries across four continents.ConclusionsTraffic Light and Guideline Daily Amounts were the most used front of pack labelling formats on the assessed food product. A higher number of assessed products belonged to the “moderately healthy” and “healthier” categories than the “least healthy”. The imported foods that were found in the United Kingdom retail market showed that food choices could be made from the diverse food types.

Creating retail websites

Creating retail websites

Is this the beginning of the end for retail websites A professional perspective

This paper expects to understand professionals' opinion concerning the impact of the increasing use of social media (SM) and commercial mobile applications (MA) instead of retail websites in their online strategy. Unstructured interviews with internet professionals were applied on the LinkedIn professional SM platform, and 127 professionals provided their perspective. Data were analysed using a text mining approach and the outcome revealed professionals' resistance to set SM in the centre of the online strategy and highlighted the preference of users to use search engines that, in turn, will lead them to a retail website.

Do You Buy or Not? The Effect of Recommender Slogans on Retail Sites

Recommender systems solve the current information overload problem in the online world. By predicting and presenting relevant information, web users do not need to waste time searching and browsing for contents that they are interested in. However, in addition to the accurate contents, slogans associated catching the customers’ eyes are worthy of exploration. This study aims to discover the effects of various recommender slogans. Two categories of slogans were designed in the study: slogans associated with customer inputs and slogans associated with price promotion. Actual customers’ webpage clickstreams and purchase decisions were collected from a Taiwanese retail shopping Website. The effects of recommender slogans on product categories are different. Customers generally were drawn by the slogans associated with price promotion. This study brought to light the effects of different slogans on online shoppers. With the empirical findings, this study provides online retailers important guidelines regarding online customers’ behaviors towards the employment of recommender slogans.

To Hinder or to Facilitate: Retailers' Strategy of Consumer Information Sharing and Target Segment

Motivated by the phenomenon that some retailers with high-end brand images, such as Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman, prefer to hinder consumers from sharing information through online reviews, we study an online retailer's strategy of hindering or facilitating consumer information sharing in a supply chain and its dependence on the retailer's brand image and target consumer segment. To capture the dynamics of consumer information sharing, we employ a two-period model in which consumers, with heterogeneous valuation of a product, arriving in the first period make purchase decisions based on the retailer's brand image and can find out the product quality only after their purchase, and consumers arriving in the second period learn about the product quality from the first-period consumers if the online retailer's website facilitates information sharing among consumers. We find that a high-end retailer is likely to benefit from hindering information sharing among consumers because hindering information enables the high-end retailer to induce all consumers to purchase. Such a target strategy prevents the manufacturer from extracting all of the profit from the retailer, as compared to a target strategy where the retailer only sells to consumers with high levels of willingness to pay. We also show that, interestingly, the retailer's dominant consumer information sharing strategy often benefits the supply chain when the product quality is exogenously determined. However, when the product quality is endogenous, the retailer's dominant consumer information sharing strategy can hurt the supply chain. Surprisingly, deterring consumers from learning about a product's true quality may generate more consumer surplus. Our work sheds light on the retailer's information sharing strategy by taking into account the target consumer segment as well as the interaction with upstream manufacturers.

Price Setting in Chile: Micro Evidence from Consumer On-Line Prices During the Social Outbreak and Covid-19

In this paper we analyze the price setting behavior in Chile by using scraped data from public websites of the main retailers including supermarkets, a pharmacy retailer and car dealerships. The data collection started in July 2019 and the dataset covers two major recent events: (1) the social outbreak and (2) the state of emergency declaration due to Covid-19, both episodes led to disruptions in the economy. With information on product varieties that accounts for 22% of the CPI basket, we document several empirical findings as regards price setting behaviour in terms of stickiness, that is, frequency, implied duration and the size of price adjustments. We find that in spite of facing large shocks, prices adjusted very little, at a lower frequency and at a smaller size than prior to these two events. We also find that there was a reduction on product variety availability on-line, a typical feature that also has been found during natural disasters such as earthquakes. The reduction in product availability poses additional difficulties to construct CPI indexes and to properly capture price rigidities, which are relevant for monetary policy.

Perceptions and behavior-related intentions of consumers in smartphone-based mobile commerce

Research background: This article presents an empirical study carried out to evaluate and analyze perceptions and behavior-related intentions of consumers in smartphone-based mobile commerce globally. Purpose of the article: Building our argument by drawing on data collected from Nielsen and Statista, we performed analyses and made estimates regarding positive and negative aspects of smartphone shopping according to EU mobile shoppers, mobile shopping activities among smartphone and tablet owners, mobile visits to leading retail websites in the U.S., and most popular payment methods for everyday transactions according to Internet users worldwide. Methods: Data collected from 4,400 respondents are tested against the research model by using structural equation modeling. Findings & Value added: The sudden advancement of mobile technology has driven numerous retailers to strive and capitalize on smartphones as a supplementary tool in the operation of sales. Smartphone applications as an innovative channel can be carried out in retail marketing mix for the purpose of constituting constructive customer relationships. Consumer use of mobile shopping applications constitutes a thought-provoking difficult task for retailers and application developers. Habit and omnipresence unswervingly shape customers’ purposes and concrete mobile shopping usage behaviors. The browsing extent and rate of recurrence of non-shopping applications clarifies the quantity of shopping software mobile users hold on their smartphones. Product reviews are paramount to users and a manner of gaining information unspecified by the retailer.

Systematic content analysis of online information on herbal smoking products

BackgroundHerbal smoking products (HSPs) are marketed as a safer alternative to tobacco. These are easily available at affordable prices in the online retail websites. This study aimed to analyze the HSP-related informational content available in the most popular online platforms. MethodsGoogle, Yahoo, Bing and YouTube online platforms were searched for HSP related content using appropriate keywords. First 50 search results were retrieved and screened for potential eligibility. The included web-pages were categorized as video and still records. From each included record, information regarding source, primary theme, health benefits/hazards and tone was abstracted. Additionally, video production quality, like ratio and video power index was also computed for each video record. All included records were subjected to descriptive statistics and Chi-square test, as appropriate. Level of significance was set at <0.05. Results174 still and 94 video records were included. 35.6% of the included still records were sourced by manufacturers/suppliers while that of scientific origin was 12.1%. 83% of the video-records were posted by general public. About 90% of the included records had not mentioned anything regarding age restrictions. 67.8% of the still records and 87.2% of the video records promoted the use of HSPs. ConclusionsThe informational content presented online is huge, mostly posted by the general public without any scientific rationale and exclusively favors the use of HSPs. There is no age restriction as to who can access the information, making this content easily accessible to people of all ages. Such spread of information may mislead the public in adopting the smoking of these herbal products. Since HSPs may act as a potential gateway to tobacco smoking, there is an urgent need to regulate the content available online.

Sustainability Issues in the Traditional Cashmere Supply Chain: Empirical Evidence from Kashmir, India

Considering the emerging global markets for the consumption of cashmere products, current sustainability issues prevailing in the traditional cashmere industry are explored in this study. To get a deeper understanding of the sustainability concerns in the cashmere industry, it is important to understand the cashmere supply chain operations to uncover the key sustainability issues prevalent in the present-day traditional cashmere industry. For this, a single case study was conducted in Kashmir, India using qualitative approaches. Data collection was carried out using semi-structured interviews, observations, cashmere retailer websites and documentary evidence. Due to the impact of mechanization and lack of industry standards, the research findings indicate deteriorating socio-economic conditions of the artisans; especially, women spinners and weavers. Mechanization promotes economic sustainability for the manufacturers and retailers which helps them strengthen their market base. However, with this, artisan communities are rendered jobless who are dependent on their manual skills for sustenance as they have limited alternate revenue generation options. Moreover, the lack of motivation among the artisans to use institutional support further escalates sustainability concerns in the traditional craft industry.

FREQUENCY AND USE OF ONLINE TRAVEL SITES WHEN PLANNING A LEISURE VACATION

The growth of online travel agencies has modified how consumers explore possible vacation choices by allowing greater access to the travel and tourism supply chain. This growth also empowers potential travelers to be more discerning when purchasing travel products and services by giving them the opportunity to align their preferences (i.e., price, value, amenity, etc.) with the multiple product offerings available to them via online travel retail sites. This research explores a visitor’s frequency of using online travel sites when planning a leisure vacation and if similarities exist in how frequently these sites are used in the planning process. It also examines if generational differences exist in utilizing these sites. The factor analysis showed that 10 types of online travel sites can be categorized into two factors, and the ANOVA indicated that site frequency usage differs by generation. These findings can be beneficial to both managers of online travel sites and direct suppliers of travel products.

온라인 의류 쇼핑 사이트의 제품 사이즈 정보 실태 분석 : 여성용 테일러드 재킷을 중심으로

온라인 의류 쇼핑 사이트의 제품 사이즈 정보 실태 분석 : 여성용 테일러드 재킷을 중심으로

Nutrient density and affordability of foods in Brazil by food group and degree of processing.

Affordable nutrition refers to the relation between nutrient density of foods and their monetary cost. There are limited data on affordable nutrition in low- and middle-income countries. The present study aimed to develop a nutrient density score and nutrient affordability metrics for 377 most consumed foods in Brazil. The foods were aggregated into seven major food groups and four NOVA food categories. Nutrient composition data were obtained from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. Food prices were obtained from retailer websites and were converted to prices per 100 g and 418 kJ. The Nutrient Rich Food (NRF8.2) score was based on protein, fiber, vitamins A, C and E, Ca, Fe and K. Nutrients to limit were sugar and Na. Affordability was measured as kcal/R$ and nutrients/R$. Grains, fats and sweets were more energy dense and had lower NRF8.2 scores than dairy, vegetables and fruits. Grains, fats and sweets were the lowest cost sources of energy. Vegetables and fruits, beans, nuts and seeds and eggs and dairy were the lowest cost sources of multiple nutrients. Ultra-processed foods (48 % of total) had higher energy density and lower NRF8.2 scores than did unprocessed foods. In Brazil, fruits, vegetables and dairy products offered the most nutrients per real. Analysis of the relationship between nutrient density of foods and their cost can help identify locally available foods that are nutrient rich, affordable and culturally acceptable. Achieving high nutrient density at an affordable cost should be the goal of Brazil's food systems.

Acquiring customers through online marketplaces? The effect of marketplace sales on sales in a retailer's own channels

Online retailers are increasingly using third-party online marketplaces (e.g., Amazon, Taobao) as an alternative sales channel to their website. While cross-channel sales elasticities have been established for many sales channel combinations (e.g., adding bricks to clicks), we lack an understanding of whether the use of third-party marketplaces grows or cannibalizes a retailer's sales. Practitioners argue that firms can build their e-commerce business through acquiring customers by selling on the marketplace. Indeed, a marketplace could complement a retailer's offering (e.g., acquiring new customer segments), although inventory effects might mitigate this complementarity. Alternatively, cannibalization might occur from losing customers from one's website to the online marketplace. The present research investigates which of the two opposing forces prevails using a time series of category sales data from one of the largest global marketplace sellers. The authors use vector autoregressive modeling to show that marketplace sales increase sales on a retailer's website (0.014% for every 1% in marketplace sales). This effect is strongest for categories with large choice and low product prices. Acquiring customers through the marketplace might be cheaper than through other sources (estimated at 24% of initial sales). However, online retailers should be aware that this strategy strengthens the marketplace and may have potential negative long-term consequences (e.g., through marketplace control of the customer relationship).

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in the Americas: systematic review and metanalysis of prevalence in food-producing animalsStaphylococcus aureus resistente a la meticilina en la Región de las Américas: revisión sistemática y metanálisis de la prevalencia en la actividad agropecuaria

RESUMOObjetivo.Determinar a prevalência de Staphylococcus aureus resistente à meticilina (MRSA) em animais destinados à produção de alimentos na região das Américas.Métodos.Foi realizada uma revisão sistemática nas seguintes bases de dados: Scopus, Web of Science, MEDLINE, EMBASE e Biblioteca Virtual de Saúde (BVS). Foram selecionados artigos publicados nos últimos 10 anos, sem restrição quanto ao idioma. O desfecho de interesse foi a prevalência de MRSA em animais destinados à produção de alimentos. As prevalências foram agrupadas em metanálises de efeitos aleatórios pelo método de DerSimonian e Laird. A distribuição geográfica dos microrganismos resistentes e o decurso temporal das tendências de resistência também foram analisados.Resultados.Dos 19 estudos incluídos, 11 foram conduzidos nos Estados Unidos e 11 analisaram amostras em suínos. Cinco estudos foram realizados na América do Sul. As amostras analisadas foram coletadas em locais de criação, de abate e de venda. A prevalência de MRSA na região das Américas foi de 7,6% (IC95%: 5,6 a 9,5%) e apresentou-se maior em suínos [12,6% (IC95%: 7,0 a 18,2%)], seguidos por bovinos [2,4% (IC95%: 1,2 a 3,7%)] e aves [1,8% (IC95%: 0,3 a 3,4%)]. Observou-se maior prevalência de MRSA na população de suínos da América do Norte e de bovinos da América Latina. Não houve variação significativa da prevalência de resistência nos 10 anos analisados.Conclusões.A prevalência de MRSA em animais destinados à produção de alimentos na região das Américas foi maior em suínos, sem variação significativa da prevalência no decurso temporal.

A novel unified deep neural networks methodology for use by date recognition in retail food package image

There exist various types of information on retail food packages, including use by date, food product name and so on. The correct coding of use by dates on food packages is vitally important for avoiding potential health risks to customers caused by erroneous mislabelling of use by dates. It is extremely tedious and laborious to check the use by dates coding manually by a human operator, which is prone to generate errors thus an automatic system for validating the correctness of the coding of use by dates is needed. In order to construct such a system, firstly it needs to correctly automatic recognize use by dates on food packages. In this work, we propose a novel dual deep neural networks-based methodology for automatic recognition of use by dates in food package photographs recorded by a camera, which is a combination of two networks: a fully convolutional network for use by date ROI detection and a convolutional recurrent neuron network for date character recognition. The proposed methodology is the first attempt to apply deep learning for automatic use by date recognition. From comprehensive experimental evaluations, it is shown that the proposed method can achieve high accuracies in use by date recognition (more than 95% on our testing dataset), given food package images with varying lighting conditions, poor printing quality and varied textual/pictorial contents collected from multiple real retailer sites.

Early Impact of India's Nationwide Lockdown on Aggregate Population Mobility and COVID-19 Cases

Background: In March 2020, India imposed a strict nationwide lockdown, making social distancing the primary nonpharmacologic mitigation strategy for the COVID-19 pandemic. To date, there has not been a comprehensive evaluation of the policy’s impact on mobility changes and state-level trajectory of COVID case growth. Understanding the effectiveness of the initial lockdown will inform policy efforts, given rising case counts in India following relaxation of the lockdown. Methods: Using a dataset on aggregated mobility changes in India, we conducted a retrospective interrupted time series analysis between February 15th and April 26th, 2020 to assess the combined impact of India’s nationwide curfew and lockdown on aggregate community mobility. Our primary outcomes were change in mobility to retail and recreation sites and change in state-level COVID-19 case growth rate. Secondary outcomes included mobility changes to other sites and time spent at home. We next assessed state-level variation. Finally, we examined the relationship between changes in aggregate mobility and the case growth rate of COVID-19. Findings: We observed an immediate and pronounced decrease in mobility following the policy’s implementation for all location categories examined. For our primary outcome, the national lockdown was associated with an 86% decrease to retail and recreational sites. However, the effects were not homogeneously sustained in the post-policy period. Visits to grocery stores and pharmacies (slope = 0.62% increase in visits per day) and transit stations (slope = 0.24%) began to recover, whereas visits to retail and recreation (slope = -0.41%), and parks (slope -0.47%) continued to decline during the post period. Significant state-level variation in mobility response was observed (71% to 95% decrease in visits to retail and recreation sites). States with the largest decrease in visits to retail and recreational sites were associated with a 7.2% rate of increase of COVID-19 in contrast to those states with the lowest decrease in mobility, which exhibited a 53% rate increase in COVID-19 cases (p=0.03). Interpretation: Our findings provide early evidence that India’s nationwide policy has been effective in both achieving its initial goal of decreased mobility and slowing the spread of COVID-19 cases. As the policy was nationwide, further research is needed to understand the drivers of state-level variation in mobility and COVID-19 case growth. Funding: This study was not funded. Declaration of Interests: GAW is a paid visiting scientist at Google Research. Other authors declare no conflict of interest.

The conditional enjoyment-enhancing effect of shipping box aesthetics

Online retailers increasingly use aesthetically appealing shipping boxes to deliver products to their customers. However, little is known about the potential effects of delivering products in aesthetically appealing shipping boxes on customer responses. This study applies the Affective Expectations Model to propose that the effect of shipping box aesthetics on customer responses depends on customers' expectations. Three experiments provide evidence that delivering products in aesthetically appealing shipping boxes can increase customers' loyalty intentions and that the effect is driven by enjoyment of the product delivery experience. The authors further find that the enjoyment-enhancing effect of shipping box aesthetics manifests when customers purchase products from a value online retailer, when they purchase functional products, and when the delivered product matches the description on the retailer's website. The effect diminishes when customers purchase products from a luxury online retailer and when they purchase hedonic products. The effect reverses when the delivered product does not match the description on the retailer's website. These findings contribute to the packaging, e-commerce, and customer experience literature and provide actionable implications for online retailers.

Designing profitable and responsive supply chains under uncertainty

In this paper, we develop a multi-objective two-stage stochastic programming model, which takes into account the selection of warehouse and retailer sites and the decision about production levels, inventory levels, and shipping quantities among the entities of the supply chain network. The first objective function is to maximise the chain’s total profit over multiple periods, and the second objective function is to minimise the total travel times for unsatisfied customers, whose demands must be met by retailers which have been established in other markets, to maximise the chain’s responsiveness. Demands, selling prices and productions times at manufacturing sites are all considered as uncertain parameters. The two objective functions are in conflict with each other, and we use ϵ-constraint method to generate a set of Pareto optimal solutions for the proposed multi-objective problem. We then generalise the case and assume the uncertain parameters are continuously distributed random variables and use a simulation approach called sample average approximation (SAA) scheme to compute near optimal solutions to the stochastic model with potentially infinite number of scenarios. A computational study involving hypothetical networks of different sizes and a real supply chain network are presented to highlight the efficiency of the proposed solution methodology.

The Impact of Online Consumer Reviews on Online Sales: The Case-Based Decision Theory Approach

In this paper, we conduct a two-stage study to examine whether and how consumer reviews influence other consumers. In the first stage, we utilize a difference-in-difference specification to identify the causal effect of online reviews on sales and apply the proposed model to electronic appliances on a large Chinese retail website. In the second stage, we design a computational model with agents guided by case-based decision theory and we calibrate the simulated market to the real data. The literature identifies two channels for the effect of reviews on sales: the awareness effect and the persuasive effect. We find evidence for both effects, but we find the persuasive effect is slightly larger than the awareness effect. This suggests that consumers who have had a bad experience should not hesitate to leave bad reviews. We also find evidence that consumers are concerned whether reviews are genuine, but that the method used by this website of tying a “user grade” to volume of previous purchases may be an effective way of communicating whether a reviewer is a genuine customer. We use the computational model to predict unobserved consumer behavior: consumers’ loyalty. We find the loyalty of artificial consumers is relatively high but falls. We also believe the case-based decision theory simulation approach may help estimate other unobserved consumer behaviors.

What retailers need to understand about website inaccessibility and disabled consumers: Challenges and opportunities

AbstractThis research uniquely contributes to the marketing policy literature by illuminating the widespread yet seldom studied problem of online inaccessibility of retail websites affecting approximately 30 million disabled Americans. When a website is not designed to be navigated easily or is not compatible with assistive technology such as a screen‐reader, these potential customers are not able to independently search for information and conduct transactions. Blind and low vision participants in an empirical study provide their opinions regarding accessibility policy issues and reveal that their frustrations with inaccessible retail websites may result, not only in avoidance of the retailer in its different sales channels but also in antifirm behaviors driven by negative attitudes toward perceived retailer accessibility/disability policy that spur feelings of online marketplace discrimination. Using two different evaluation tools, the top 100 retailers in the United States were evaluated on the accessibility of their websites over the past 4 years (2015–2018). Results show that most websites contain many design errors making navigation very difficult or even impossible for vision impaired consumers. The argument is made that online retailers who proactively address these inaccessibility issues on their websites may significantly increase their customer base and profitability.