Retail Channel Research Articles

A STUDY ON THE IMPACTS OF E - COMMERCE ON DOMESTIC RETAILERS WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO CHENNAI

The advent and rapid proliferation of e-commerce have ushered in transformative changes in the retail landscape, impacting domestic retailers across various dimensions. This research paper aims to comprehensively analyze the multifaceted impacts of e-commerce on traditional domestic retailers. Through an examination of pertinent literature, empirical data, and case studies, this study sheds light on the economic, technological, and social ramifications of e-commerce adoption by domestic retailers. The paper explores how e-commerce has altered consumer behaviour, redefined market dynamics, and introduced new challenges and opportunities for brick-and-mortar retailers. It also delves into the strategies employed by domestic retailers to adapt to the evolving retail ecosystem, emphasizing the significance of omnichannel approaches and technological integration. Furthermore, the paper addresses the implications of these changes on employment patterns, urban spaces, and regulatory frameworks. The method used here was the empirical method. The sampling method taken here was the convenient sampling method and the sample size was 200. The sampling frame was set within Chennai, Tamil Nadu. The dependent variables are level of awareness regarding the impacts of domestic retailers, major impacts faced by the retailers after the development of E-commerce business, main advantages of selling through e-commerce platforms compared to traditional retail channels, e-commerce has affected traditional brick-and-mortar retail stores in India and the independent variables are age, gender, educational qualification, salary and occupation. The research tools used here are simple bar charts, independent sample T test, univariate analysis of variance and correlation. By offering a comprehensive analysis of the impacts of e-commerce on domestic retailers, this research paper contributes to a deeper International Journal of Scientific Research in Engineering and Management (IJSREM) Volume: 07 Issue: 10 | October - 2023 SJIF Rating: 8.176 ISSN: 2582-3930 © 2023, IJSREM | www.ijsrem.com DOI: 10.55041/IJSREM26287 | Page 2 understanding of the dynamic interplay between traditional and online retail paradigms, while also providing insights into potential pathways for sustainable coexistence in the ever-evolving retail landscape. KEYWORDS: Convenience and availability, Distribution channel, E - commerce, Impacts on retailers, Traditional retailers.

Determinants of Marketing Channel Choice Among Handloom Micro-entrepreneurs: Evidence From Rural Assam, India

Using primary data collected from 230 handloom micro-entrepreneurs of rural Assam, present study made an attempt to understand the marketing efficiency across different marketing channels of handloom products, and identify the factors determining handloom micro-entrepreneurs’ decision to select a marketing channel. Marketing efficiency was examined using standardised indices. A multinomial logistic regression model was estimated for identifying the factors determining marketing channel choice decision of handloom micro-entrepreneurs. Analysis of data reveals that though the retailer channel was economically most efficient among the three identified marketing channels in the study area, majority of handloom micro-entrepreneurs have chosen the least efficient channel of travelling traders for selling their produce. Using travelling traders as reference category, the results of regression estimate suggest that education of the entrepreneurs, firm size, access to market information, collective action through weavers’ groups, access to credits, and transaction cost-related factors significantly influenced the decision of handloom micro-entrepreneurs in the choice of marketing channels.

A Further Step toward Sustainable Development: The Case of the Edible Mushroom Supply Chain.

This study provides an accurate economic characterization of the supply of edible mushrooms throughout Italy within the European context to fill the relevant research gap and highlight barriers and opportunities that are consistent with the Sustainable Development Goals. Italian companies operating in this field were identified and economically characterized using the Chamber of Commerce's Register of Companies. A qualitative web content analysis was then conducted to extract information about the marketed products, mushroom species, and retail channels, as well as the adopted certifications. The obtained data were quantitatively analyzed through descriptive statistics and multiple correspondence analysis. The Italian market is concentrated in northern areas of the country, and the limited company size indicates fragmentation at the production level, which led to Italy not being competitive enough and, thus, heavily rely on imports. Production is limited to less than 10 species, and innovative mushroom-based products, such as burgers, have shown a limited presence on the market, although they are gaining market share online. The novelty of growing kits highlights the potential to use food production waste to create fungal substrates. Investments in training new mushroom growers and studying new formulations and new fungal species are needed; these investments could allow greater market differentiation and be a good opportunity to promote local economies and create new job opportunities, thus meeting the requirements for sustainable development.

The selection of sales channels considering consumer behavior preferences in a co-branding strategy

As a marketing strategy, co-branding has become popular among brand manufacturers in recent years. Unlike previous studies on co-branding, we extend the research from manufacturer-to-manufacturer coopetition strategies to a platform-based supply chain. This paper builds two game theory models involving two manufacturers and one online platform, and divides consumers into Mavericks and Herds, who seek uniqueness and uniformity, respectively, and discusses the channel selection and the market positioning strategy. Some interesting findings are obtained, first, the equilibrium decisions are improved and the optimal profits are enhanced by considering the upstream and downstream cooperation. Second, the online retail channel is chosen when the revenue-sharing ratio is medium and the commission rate is low. Third, brand manufacturers have more opportunities to choose the online retail channel when the co-branded product is marketed to Herds, which is summarized as the market segmentation effect.

Spirit & Free: adapting assortment strategies across rapidly growing channels in fashion retail

Social implications This paper aims to describe the cross-channel challenges experienced by a leading US fashion retailer and illustrates the adaptation to consumer needs as led by a female divisional head and female executive. Learning outcomes The teaching objectives include to understand the assortment planning complexities experienced by merchandise managers; address critical issues surrounding channel strategies; identify the data needs for assortment improvement and cross-channel management; investigate responsive solutions for customer-focused assortment diversification; and explore the challenges associated with continual retail channel adaptation. Case overview/synopsis The fashion retailer Spirit & Free (S&F) (pseudonym) is a Fortune 500 retailer. As a multi-channel retailer, S&F is proud of the consistency of the brand’s identity across channels. However, recently, S&F has noticed a difference between their mobile (m-commerce, social commerce) and in-store/e-commerce customers. Through this case study, students will follow the Women’s Apparel Divisional Merchandise Manager and explore how the business will maintain a consistent brand identity and capture both sets of customers through assortment planning. Resources will be provided for assortment planning analysis, and students will be asked to consider assortment opportunities regarding category mix and pricing strategy. Complexity academic level The case would be relevant to upper-level undergraduate courses or introductory master's level course in retail, management, fashion merchandising and omni-channel retail. Supplementary materials Teaching notes are available for educators only. Subject code CCS 8: Marketing

Centralized Decision Making in an Omnichannel Supply Chain with Stochastic Demand

With retailers increasingly adopting the omnichannel retailing model as a core strategy in their daily operations, this study investigates the impact of random demand on the omnichannel supply chain that employs a combination of the online channel, retail channel, and buy online and pick up in store (BOPS) channel, in light of the more stochastic market after the occurrence of COVID-19. To enhance the sustainable profitability of the omnichannel supply chain, this study considers price and lead time dependent demand with both known and unknown distributions, and establishes mathematical models to maximize profit under centralized situations. The study analyzes the variations in demand with lead time in the three channels and examines the effects of price and lead time on profit. Additionally, it investigates the interactions between price and lead time. Through numerical examples, the study illustrates the effects of the mean and variance of random demand on decision variables and examines the influence of potential demand and the sensitivity of lead time. Overall, this analysis provides valuable insights into the impact of demand randomness on the profitability of an omnichannel supply chain, highlighting the importance of considering price and lead time in the decision-making process.

Examining B2B channel decision-making within differential quality-level zone: a supply chain design using a non-cooperative strategic game theoretic approach (“Stackelberg Supply Chain for B2B”)

Purpose The consumers want to purchase the target products in the right place, whereas the manufacturers want to allocate their possible products to optimal distribution channels. The manufacturer must know how to handle itself in this business. The study aims to examine the B2B channel decision-making with different product qualities in a non-cooperative supply chain. Design/methodology/approach The authors develop a B2B Manufacturer-Stackelberg game as an analytical framework, combining asymmetric preference of purchase channels choice by the consumers, a continuous quality setting of the manufacturer and differential channel structure to study the manufacturer’s product strategy and channel optimisation. By horizontal comparisons across four channel structures, product variety can be classified into the differential quality-level zone through exogenous quality intervention, and the preference of manufacturers in each quality-level zone within the structures can be ranked. Findings Theoretically and practically, the hybrid-channel structure should be completely neglected when the direct channel dominates the retail channel. In contrast, dual-channel structures dominate single channels irrespective of the channel power, and channel preferences between high-quality and low-quality zones are stable, whereas the preference in medium-quality zone is unstable. In addition, the supply chain system cannot achieve global Pareto improvement without any additional coordination mechanism between the manufacturer and the retailer. Originality/value The extended results by numerical examples suggest that the bigger the area of the medium-quality zone, the more significant the product variety of the manufacturer.

Analysis of a dual-channel green supply chain game-theoretical model under carbon policy

In today's worldwide markets, supply chain members have to control carbon emissions for a clean environment. This study addresses a dual-channel green supply chain model by contemplating dual selling channels, carbon diminution rate and online delivery lead-time as marketing efforts to fascinate customers to buy more products. Moreover, the carbon tax protocol, green technology, carbon cap-and-trade protocol are applied to the supply chain to save the environment by reducing carbon emissions. The customers' demands for both the direct and traditional retail channels are dependent on direct selling price, retail price, carbon reduction rate, and delivery lead-time of online products. The objective of this work is to maximise the supply chain profit by minimising the amount of carbon emissions. To determine optimal outcomes, a centralised system, manufacturer-leadership Stackelberg game and retailer-leadership Stackelberg game are employed. A comparison among the centralised system and the two Stackelberg games is also carried out. The results presented that to enhance the profits of the manufacturer as well as retailer and to decline carbon emissions, manufacturer-leadership Stackelberg game is the adequate game policy. Some managerial inspirations of this proposed work are listed. The paper ends with conclusions and possible future research directions.

The pricing strategy of group buying under a dual-channel supply chain with price discounts and waiting time

PurposeAs an important form of the e-commerce industry, online group buying is under the spotlight from with two sides: cheaper price but longer waiting time. The purpose of this paper is to adequately investigate the interaction between saving and waiting time of group buying comprehensively.Design/methodology/approachTo fill the research gap, the authors elaborate a dual-channel supply chain (SC) with regular retail (individual buying) and group-buying channel, and formulate the demand based on the consumer utility with the positive effect of saving money and the negative effect of wasting time.FindingsThe authors find that power structure only changes the optimal prices, instead of the waiting time. The selling price mainly influences consumer demands, instead of the price discount of group buying. The SC profits are only positive to the channel preference, and it is the decisive parameter of consumers' choice. The price sensitivity lays a more remarkable impact on the SC compared to the time sensitivity. Above all, the price is the main factor of group buying, instead of time.Originality/valueThese results underscore the improvement for the dual-channel SC of group buying, providing managerial insights for the group-buying industry.

Showrooming: a retrospective and prospective review using the SPAR-4-SLR methodological framework

PurposeThis article undertakes a literature review on showrooming, offering an exhaustive overview of research publications and future research objectives that will contribute to extending the understanding of the phenomenon.Design/methodology/approachThe showrooming literature has been collected from journals indexed by SCOPUS and ranked by ABDC. This was later analysed with the SPAR-4-SLR framework and the TCCM methodology (theories, contexts, characteristics, and methodologies) proposed by Paul et al. (2021) and Paul and Rosado-Serrano (2019).FindingsThe insights of this review include bibliometrics of showrooming research and the number of explored showrooming theories, methodologies, and contexts from which the phenomenon has been studied. It also highlights the various aspects that might be considered while building an optimal approach.Research limitations/implicationsArticles published in SCOPUS-indexed and ABDC-ranked journals between 2012 and August 2022 were considered. Some articles published in conference proceedings and journals, not fulfilling the aforementioned criteria, might have been missed.Practical implicationsSPAR-4-SLR and TCCM methodologies would aid the researchers in further exploration of this phenomenon and suggest options for enhancing customer experience (CX) eventually leading to customer retention. Retail channel managers will find this knowledge handy in “encouraging loyal showrooming” and ensuring business sustainability.Originality/valueThis study uses the novel SPAR-4-SLR framework to structure the review, while TCCM methodology sheds light on the showrooming from the perspective of various theories, contexts, characteristics, and methodologies. The scope for further research identified through the above-mentioned framework and methodology would be of high value to the researchers and practitioners alike.

Pricing and Coordination of the Extended Warranty Service Supply Chain that Considers Fairness Concerns

For the product dual-channel supply chain composed of one manufacturer and one retailer with fairness concerns, considering that the decision of products and extended warranty services in the supply chain is affected by the fairness concern behavior of retailers, the Stackelberg game method was used to establish the profit decision model of manufacturers and retailers, solved the product price, extended warranty service price and profit of each member of the supply chain during centralized and decentralized decision-making, and discussed the impact of retailer fairness concern on the optimal decision and profit of supply chain members. The results showed that with the increase of retailers' fairness concern coefficient, the wholesale price of products and the price of extended warranty service decrease, and the price of direct sales channel and retail channel price of products increase. Retailers' profits increase, manufacturers' profits, and the total profits of supply chain systems decrease.

Learning to be consumers of “smart” retail channels: The baby boomer experience

ABSTRACT A global shift in aging populations points to greying consumers as an important market for retailers and an underserved segment for researchers. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digital expansion in the marketplace, innovated new industries, and encouraged new participants. This acceleration provides significant implications for the greying population whereby the adoption of smart-enabled platforms and channels becomes essential. Most of the digital and smart-consumer socialization research has focused exclusively on younger generations because of their digital nativity. This study aims to expand our understanding of baby boomer consumers’ attitudes and behaviors in the smart retail context using a consumer socialization framework. Findings suggest that perceived usefulness, ease of use, reliability, and fun were significant influences on global attitudes toward shopping in smart retail channels. Global attitudes toward shopping in smart retail channels significantly influenced behavioral intention and digital mass media exposure significantly influenced all dimensions of attitudes toward shopping in smart retail channels suggesting interest and engagement in smart retail channel participation among older adults.

The impact of adopting customization policy and sustainability for improving consumer service in a dual-channel retailing

In recent decades sustainability and dual-route retailing have been adopted by many big industries. Companies are now bound to maintain such strategies that fulfill the sustainable goals developed by the United Nations. Industries face a huge penalty if carbon emissions exceed a certain boundary. Moreover, factories should maintain sufficient flow in retail chains and product quality. This paper demonstrates 3-pillar sustainability in dual channel retailing, empowering firms to integrate the financial-economic pillar with the non-financial (environmental, social, and ethical) pillar. The core product is made available through the traditional channel and customized products are through online channels. The model is enabling the customers with customization provisions where they can influence the products. Thus, as a novel approach, the article incorporates a presumed threshold limit on the product's (standard and customized) selling price difference. Due to customization, a new product is developed which needs extensive quality checks. The study introduces an investment in checking the quality of the customized product which reduces the probability of customization defects exponentially. Additionally, current research adapts the carbon emission cost, penalties charged to a firm for overshooting the limit, and social costs in a smart supply chain. It also exemplifies that production is directly proportional to financial investments in meeting sustainability objectives. The numerical analysis reflects that as production increases, penalty costs decrease at a significant rate but after reaching optimal production penalty cost again starts to increase. It is observed that the downfall of penalty is 20% more for the single-channel than dual. Adaptation of the customization policy makes the retailing strategy more cost-effective. The model exemplifies that it is more economical to adopt dual-channel retailing compared to single-channel as there is approximately a 14.0625% reduction in total cost in dual-channel retailing. Moreover, an 80% improved quality is observed with a financial investment, which improves consumer satisfaction.

Postharvest monitoring and consumer choice on traditional and modern apricot cultivars

Apricot (Prunus armeniaca L.) fruit qualities are affected by harvest date and rapid off-tree ripening progression that limits their shelf life and marketability. Nowadays, consumers are generally dissatisfied with the sensory quality of apricot fruit sold on large-scale retail channels. Pomological analysis (color, firmness, total soluble solids, and total acidity), volatile organic compounds fingerprint and sensory evaluation were performed during the postharvest in two different apricot genotypes with the objective to: (1) characterize and compare two different apricot cultivars at harvest and at different postharvest times; (2) understand how the sensory quality changes during the postharvest process; (3) elucidate which sensory quality parameters drive the consumer's choice. For this purpose, ‘Portici’ (traditional cultivar) and ‘Lady Cot’ (modern one) grown in the same environment, were evaluated at commercial maturity harvest and for the following 15 days. Results indicate that the sensory quality of the selected cultivars was different, with ‘Portici’ showing better performances in terms of aroma, sweetness and juiciness, while ‘Lady Cot’ stood out in terms of firmness. Results also indicate a different trend of the traits analyzed and of the shelf-life, that was reduced for the traditional cultivar.Graphical abstract

Influences of risk‐aversion behavior and purchasing option in a cross‐border dual‐channel supply chain

AbstractConsidering the rapid development of cross‐border e‐commerce, this paper constructs a cross‐border dual‐channel supply chain with a supplier and a retailer in different countries. The supplier directly sells products to overseas market through an online channel and a retail channel. Since the supplier expands the overseas market and bears the potential risk of exchange rate volatility, the supplier is risk‐averse. In the presence of exchange rate volatility, the risk‐averse supplier decides whether to purchase an option to hedge against the risk of exchange rate volatility. Conditional value at risk is applied as a measure of the supplier's risk‐averse behavior. To identify the conditions under which the risk‐averse supplier should purchase an option, we analyze two scenarios: the benchmark model and the option model. By comparing the benchmark model with the option model, we show that if the option premium is lower than a threshold, the risk‐averse supplier prefers to purchase an option, which also makes the retailer better off. Interestingly, when the supplier becomes less risk‐averse, as the exchange rate volatility increases, both players benefit a higher utility in the option model. Finally, we verify the results’ robustness using numerical analysis.

Discounting strategies' effects on a closed-loop dual-channel environmentally friendly supply chain of complementary products under sales effort

ABSTRACT The relevance and impact of the internet are growing in every aspect of daily life, particularly in business which has the potential to address a lot of issues and transform many conventional techniques and procedures, including distribution. Many manufacturers have expanded their traditional retail channels to include a channel to trade the products to consumers exclusively. This paper investigates the pricing decision and the effect of discounting in a dual-channel closed-loop supply chain with two green complementary products by exploring the market demand is linearly correlated with the product selling prices, sales effort level and green innovation level. Here, four different models are analysed analytically under a game-theoretic methodology and then validated the findings using a numerical example. Additionally, the sensitivity analysis is performed to investigate the impacts of a few significant critical parameters on the supply chain participants. The findings of the article demonstrate how environmentally and economically advantageous green innovation can raise profits throughout the supply chain. Also, it is worth noting that sales efforts contribute to an increase in supply chain profit. Moreover, the discounts policy proves to be more profitable when the discount rate surpasses a specific threshold.

Coordinating a dual-channel supply chain with pricing and extended warranty strategies under demand substitution effects

With technology innovation and market complexity, this paper examines a dual-channel supply chain with one manufacturer and one retailer. A manufacturer performs the encroachment by selling products through offline retail and direct online channels. It also provides an extended warranty service with the product sold in both channels. This study identifies the best pricing and extended warranty strategies as decision variables to maximize profits for the dual-channel supply chain under the demand substitution effect. Despite the centralized scenario, a decision-making model in the decentralized scenario is also developed using Stackelberg’s game to determine optimal decision variables. The results demonstrate that the centralized scenario consistently outperforms the decentralized scenario. Thus, coordination contracts are proposed considering the profit structure, revenue-sharing and cost-sharing contracts to coordinate and promote a win-win situation for supply chain members. Furthermore, demand substitution effects are investigated for channel parameters represented in the initial market size, price sensitivity coefficient, and warranty length sensitivity coefficient on optimal decision variables. From the sensitivity analysis, these parameters have a different substitution effect on the optimal decision in each channel. The price and extended warranty length offered in a dual channel positively correlate with the market size and warranty length sensitivity coefficient of the corresponding channel. However, they negatively correlate with the price sensitivity coefficient. Accordingly, a similar situation occurs for the profit of each channel. Last, the discussion supports the theoretical results and generates managerial insights for practical decision-making

Dimensions of Omnichannel Retail Quality on Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty

The shift in consumer shopping from offline to online, and then to a hybrid of the two, combining the benefits of each to overcome the disadvantages of both. This study focuses on the dimensions of omnichannel retail quality. The emphasis is on analyzing consumer behavior in offline, online, and combined omnichannel retail channels. The rapid growth of this retail channel is due in part to the ease and security of payment, though there are still those who use the cash-on-delivery system. The methods employed include a review of the literature on omnichannel research articles, consumer surveys, and data documentation on business phenomena. SEM was used to examine the relationship between IOC, VOC, CS, and CL. The software used is Smart PLS 4. The goal of path modeling, particularly reflective models such as PLS, is to estimate the variance of endogenous constructs, as a result from their respective manifest variables. The findings of this study can be used to test OC intensity and OC shopping value in providing consumers with shopping experiences that result in customer satisfaction and loyalty. Relevant marketing implications and future research are advised.

Supplier encroachment in the presence of asymmetric retail competition

Suppliers are increasingly adopting direct channels in addition to their incumbent retail channels. In many industries, heterogeneous retailers with different selling costs compete with each other in the retail channel. Yet, the extant literature on supplier encroachment has not addressed the impact of asymmetric retail competition on supply chain interactions. In this paper, we investigate the supplier’s encroachment strategy in the presence of asymmetric retail competition using a game theoretic model. Our analysis reveals the following insights. Retail competition enhances a cost-efficient retailer’s benefit from supplier encroachment. This result contrasts with the established understanding that retailers are less likely to benefit from supplier encroachment in the presence of retail competition. Further, it is well known that retailers cannot benefit from supplier encroachment when the number of retailers competing is beyond a certain threshold. We show that the above result does not necessarily hold when the retailers are asymmetric. Specifically, we prove that the efficient retailer might benefit from supplier encroachment irrespective of the number of competing retailers. Finally, we show that asymmetric retail competition not only makes it easier for the supplier to encroach but also boosts the direct selling quantity. Our study contributes to the supplier encroachment literature by revealing the impact of asymmetric retail competition on the supplier’s encroachment strategy.

Analysis of Omni-Channel Evolution Game Strategy for E-Commerce Enterprises in the Context of Online and Offline Integration

With the upgrading of people’s consumption patterns, the omni-channel supply chain becomes the mainstream form of e-commerce platform enterprise development. Aiming at two different e-commerce enterprises, we construct an evolutionary game model for enterprises’ “online+offline” omni-channel construction strategy by self-build or cooperating with brick-and-mortar stores. It is based on the Stackelberg and Cournot competition model, combined with the omni-channel pricing strategy, using the theory of perfect rationality and bounded rationality, and combing the non-cooperative game and evolutionary game to realize. Moreover, the evolutionary game process is simulated. Through the dynamic changes of the system, the strategy selection behavior mechanism of the retail channel subjects is deeply analyzed. It is found that enterprises’ strategy choices are influenced by both competitors and profits, and evolutionary stabilization strategies are not unique. In addition, changes in consumer loyalty, physical feelings, and sharing ratio during the evolutionary process will affect the stability rate of enterprises’ behavioral choices.