Traditional Retail Outlets Research Articles

The online shopping change the retail business model: A survey of the people use online shopping in China.

The Internet is a global communication medium that is increasingly being used as an innovative tool for marketing goods and services. The Internet has added a new dimension to the traditional nature of retail shopping. The internet offers many advantages over traditional shopping channels and the medium is a competitive threat to traditional retail outlets. Globally, consumers are rapidly adopting Internet shopping and shopping online. It is becoming popular in China. If online marketers and retailers know and understand the factors affecting consumers’ buying behavior, they can further develop their marketing strategies to attract and retain customers. There is a conceptual gap in the marketing literature as there has been very limited published research on the factors influencing consumers’ choices between online shopping and traditional shopping in China. This study seeks to fill this conceptual gap in the context of online shopping by identifying the key factors influencing Chinese consumers’ online shopping behavior. This research offers some insights into the links between e-shopping and consumers’ decisions to shop or not shop online. This information can help online marketers and retailers to develop appropriate market strategies, make technological advancements, and make the correct marketing decisions in order to retain current customers and attract new customers. Moreover, managerial implications and recommendations are also presented.

Gender, social acceptability and the adoption of supermarkets: evidence from Libya

AbstractThis paper explores factors affecting consumers' adoption of supermarkets in a nation whose retail environment has been dominated by traditional markets and small independent stores for generations. In‐depth interviews with Libyan shoppers (n = 32) indicate that social acceptability is a major factor governing adoption of supermarkets. In Libya, food shopping has traditionally been a task for male household members, with markets regarded as inappropriate spaces for female alone or with other women. However, the safer, cleaner and less crowded environment offered by large supermarkets has contributed to women feeling more comfortable shopping for food, and henceforth being able to shop as independent consumers. This has been welcomed by both men and women; traditional culture, rather than constraining the spread of supermarkets, may act as a facilitator. For practitioners, a critical factor underpinning the development of supermarkets in Libya will be the degree to which they offer a more female‐friendly and safer shopping experience than traditional retail outlets.

Outlet patronage in on-the-go consumption: An analysis of patronage preference drivers for convenience outlets versus traditional retail outlets

This study investigates patronage preferences of consumers who purchase and consume food and beverages while they are on-the-go (on-the-go consumption). The focus is on the drivers of patronage preferences for convenience outlets versus traditional retail outlets. A literature based model of patronage preferences is developed in this paper. It is tested based on data collected from a Dutch online sample (n=669) through binary logistic regression. The results reveal that significant relationships exist between patronage preferences in on-the-go consumption and the assortment offered as well as the opportunity to consume products without effort. Moreover, significant relationships between patronage preferences and consumers' time pressure as well as their health orientation exist. Consumers' income and their place of residence allow for limited inferences only. Based on the findings managerial recommendations are developed and avenues for further research are pointed out.

Study of Consumers’ perceptions about Malls and Traditional Retail Outlets

Cooperative marketing is not new to India. To get the economies of scale, Indian craftsmen and traders made shrenies or groups of similar products and trade during 6th and 7th centuries. This was the basis of caste system. The villages during medieval and British period grew with cooperative trade. Cooperative marketing is just an extension and application of the philosophy of cooperation in the area of agricultural marketing. It is a process of marketing through a cooperative society, formed for the producers, by the producers. It seeks to eliminate the middlemen between the producer and the consumer, thus getting the maximum price for their produce. Kirana shops are traditional retail outlets in India. However with the advent of new cooperative marketing with modern all-facility malls, there is general perception that retails consumers are getting skewed towards malls and consequently Kirana stores are experiencing tough competition to retain their customers. This paper is an attempt to know consumers’ perception of Malls and Kriana stores.

A Study on the Role of Demographic and Psychographic Dynamics in Food and Grocery Retailing

The Indian food and grocery retail sector is in the transformation mode for various reasons like strong macro-economic fundamentals and the changing socio-economic scene are driving what were once traditional and small scale retail outlets into organised retail formats aimed at catering to the evolving tastes and needs of the discerning consumers. But the very fast changing trends in food and eating habits of consumers have contributed immensely to the growth of ‘Western’ format typologies such as convenience stores, departmental stores, supermarkets, specialty stores and hypermarkets. This has happened for various conspicuous reasons namely demand and supply, socio-cultural, demographic, psychographic, economic and technology advancements like a large segment of young population, a rapidly expanding middle class, rising income levels, growing literacy, increasing number of working women and nuclear family structures which in turn have created an enormous demand for consumer goods and paved way for modern retail formats. The ever changing consumer's psychographic variables like activities, interests, opinions, values and lifestyles have also completely changed the formats namely convenience stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets etc. are the crystal clear reflections of tectonic shifts in demographic and psychographic changes of consumers. However, little is known about its actual influence and contribution to the organised retailing in food and grocery sector from an empirical analysis. Thus, understanding of demo-psychographic dynamics has become an imperative in designing modern food and grocery retail formats based on the purchase patterns. The study is purely based on primary data and necessary secondary data to reinforce the model. A total of 200 retail customers in Hyderabad actively participated in the survey. Findings, various managerial and marketing implications are extensively discussed.

FDI in Indian Retail Industry

India is one of the largest emerging markets, with a population of over one billion. India is one of the largest economies in the world in terms of purchasing power and has a strong middle class base of 300 million.Around 70 per cent of the total households in India (188 million) reside in the rural areas, where mostly traditional retail outlets, commonly called kirana stores exist. These are unorganized, operated by single person and runs on the basis of consumer familiarity with the owner. However, recently organized retailing has become more popular in big cities in India and most of the metropolitan cities and other big cities are flooded by modern organized retail stores. Many semi-urban areas also witnesses entry of such organized retail outlets. Till now, entry of foreign retailers was restricted in Indian retail market because of the ban on Foreign Direct Investment in Indian Retail Sector. But recently, as government has changed its policy and the cabinet has allowed 51 per cent FDI in single-brand retail, the prospects of foreign players entering India became high.

A Model of the Joint Distribution of Purchase Quantity and Timing

Prediction of purchase timing and quantity decisions of a household is an important element for success of any retailer. This is especially so for an online retailer, as the traditional brick-and-mortar retailer would be more concerned with total sales. A number of statistical models have been developed in the marketing literature to aid traditional retailers in predicting sales and analyzing the impact of various marketing activities on sales. However, there are two important differences between traditional retail outlets and the increasingly important online retail/delivery companies, differences that prevent these firms from using models developed for the traditional retailers: (1) the profits of the online retailer/delivery company depend on purchase frequency and on purchase quantity, whereas the profits of traditional retailers are simply tied to total sales, and (2) customers in the tails of the frequency distribution are more important to the delivery company than to the retail outlet. Both of these differences are due to the fact that the delivery companies incur a delivery cost for each sale, whereas customers themselves travel to retail outlets when buying from traditional retailers. These differences in costs translate directly into needs that a model must address. For a model intended to be useful to online retailers, the dependent variable should be a bivariate distribution of frequency and quantity, and the frequency distribution must accurately represent consumers in the tails. In this article we develop such a model and apply it to predicting the consumer's joint decision of when to shop and how much to spend at the store. Our approach is to model the marginal distribution of purchase timing and the distribution of purchase quantity co nditional on purchase timing. We propose a hierarchical Bayes model that disentangles the weekly and daily components of the purchase timing. The daily component has a dependence on the weekly component, thereby accounting for strong observed periodicity in the data. For the purchase times, we use the Conway-Maxwell-Poisson distribution, which we find useful to fit data in the tail regions (extremely frequent and infrequent purchasers).

Consumer Costs in Electronic Commerce: An Empirical Examination of Electronic Versus Traditional Markets

Business to consumer electronic commerce has been growing at a rapid pace over the last few years. This growth is only sustainable in the future if consumers feel they are receiving a good value. In this article, I explore the costs to the consumer of participating in electronic markets and compare those costs with traditional retail outlets. Empirical data were collected and analyzed. The results show that there is no significant difference in the price of goods sold via electronic markets versus traditional markets. The results also indicate that consumers perceive electronic commerce as more risky (as measured by concern over credit card and personal data) than traditional markets. The implications of these findings are discussed.

The Impact of Electronic Commerce on the Travel Agency Sector

The Internet appears to be playing a role in the re-structuring of some traditional business sectors in which some organisations profit and some decline. Travel agencies are being subjected to increased competition from virtual on-line travel agencies. These agencies do not possess the traditional retail outlets but exist predominantly on the Web. In addition, airline companies and travel wholesalers are beginning to market their products directly to the consumer. Despite the threat of disintermediation, the Internet has created opportunities for the travel agency by aiding in providing service to anybody anytime from anywhere.The study presented in the paper is based upon three separate pieces of research on the Australian travel agency sector and provides a macro and micro level view. Together the three research projects provide an in-depth study of key issues related to the travel agency sector. A survey of owners/managers of travel agencies provides information on the diffusion of Web technology and the levels of planning and strategies used by travel agencies when investigating the use of the Web. The second study provides an analysis of travel agency Web sites. The third study reports the results of a survey of travel consultants and their views on the likely impact of the Web on their profession and career prospects.The findings highlight that a significant number of travel agencies have adopted the use of the WWW but most only use a fraction of its business potential. The lack of enterprise-wide strategic planning being conducted by travel agencies suggests that they are underestimating the potential of Web based commerce. The results of the analysis of Web sites found that the majority of agencies had a Yellow Pages or Cyber Brochure model for their Web site. A small percentage of Web sites allowed transactions to be performed but a significant number provided information on a range of destination and service related topics. Many travel consultants believe that the Internet will not have a profound influence on their job position. Seventy three percent of travel consultants have not even visited a virtual travel agency Web site. Staff are often pessimistic in relation to their own careers with many admitting that they are not prepared for the changes taking place.Whilst the pessimists forecast a very bleak outlook for travel agencies, those that do re-engineer with a new vision and strategy have the opportunity to be amongst the leaders in the sector. Focusing on becoming information service providers is one option that travel agents can take. However, given the rapid rate of change in electronic commerce and the varying patterns of adoption, it is still not clear how severe the shake out of this important industry sector will be.

The Impact of Internet on Travel Industry in Australia

The Internet appears to be playing a role in restructuring of some traditional business sectors in which some organizations profit and some decline. Travel agencies are being subjected to increased competition from virtual on-line travel agencies. These agencies do not possess the traditional retail outlets but exist predominantly on the Web. In addition, airline companies and travel wholesalers are beginning to market their products directly to the consumer. Despite the threat of disintermediation, the Internet has created opportunities for the travel agency as it provides a method of providing service around the clock and of being accessible from home and workplace. This paper reports on an Australia-wide study that has been undertaken to investigate: the take-up rates of Web technology within travel agencies; the perception of travel agents of the significance of the WWW on the industry; the levels of planning and strategies used by travel agencies when investigating the use of the WWW; the perceptions of the key obstacles and barriers to adopting the WWW; the key issues in the process of implementing the technology in travel agencies. Whilst the pessimists forecast a very bleak outlook for travel agencies, those that do re-engineer with a new vision and strategy have the opportunity to be amongst the leaders in the sector. Focusing on becoming information service providers is one option that travel agents can take. However, given the rapid rate of change in electronic commerce and the varying patterns of adoption, it is still not clear how severe the shake-out of this important industry sector will be.

Variety engineering in the changing competitive environment of Japanese retail distribution

The authors propose to define the revolution occurring in Japanese retail distribution from a systems-theoretic perspective, and to identify factors leading to the success of certain types of retailers and the decline of others. It is proposed that large general merchandising stores and national supermarkets are meeting the increased variety of the environment brought on by the bursting of the Japanese economic bubble, increased price consciousness of consumers, government deregulations and appreciation of the yen. These retailers are redefining their functions to enhance their internal variety, leading to greater efficiency and lower consumer prices. In contrast, traditional retail outlets, such as department stores and small individually-owned stores, have not been able to review their operations within the context of the changing environment and are trapped within their traditional business paradigms and reference models. As a result, they are facing decline. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

THE RISING COST OF TIME OF FEMALES, THE GROWTH OF NATIONAL BRANDS AND THE SUPPLY OF RETAIL SERVICES

A rise in the relative cost of time of women has increased the demand for brand names and reduced the demand for information traditionally supplied by retailers. A theory of the optimal allocation of shopping responsibilities in a two-earner household shows that a rise in the woman's wage increases the demand for brand names by more than an increase in the man's wage. An increase in the relative earnings of women is related to a rise in male shopping, the growth of trademark filings, an increase in manufacturer advertising, and a reduction in retail personal services in several industries. I. INTRODUCTION Although the female work force has expanded greatly since World War II, women's earnings did not begin to rise relative to men's until the mid-seventies. As the relative cost of time of women increased, the demand for products that save time, and shopping time in particular, should also have increased. Consumers can save shopping and search time by purchasing nationally advertised brandname products and by patronizing stores that provide a higher level of service. This paper pursues this theme and explores some consequences of the rising cost of time of women. We present evidence that branding has grown more rapidly than the economy, particularly in consumer good industries, and suggest that the rising cost of time of women is one reason for this growth. Concurrent with this change is the decline in the quality of service in many retailing industries with the diffusion of discount-type retailing and the growing use of part-time workers. The decline in the quality of retail services in a period when women's time is becoming more valuable appears paradoxical. Our way of resolving this paradox is to suggest that the information in a brand's name is a substitute for the product information supplied by a retail store. We suggest the growth of brand-name goods has devalued the certification function traditionally performed by retail stores and decreased shoppers' demand for information supplied by retail stores. In some respects, the retail store is performing a more limited role now than in the past--it has become more of a provider of inventory and less of a supplier of information. We are not the first to suggest a relationship between branding and store services. Steiner [1978] and Bresnahan [1986] have also suggested that information obtained by the consumer directly through manufacturer promotions is a substitute for information obtained at the retail outlet. Steiner suggested the growth of the large discount toy store was due to the growth of manufacturer promotion of games. Bresnahan argued the cost of providing information through traditional retail outlets increased relative to the cost of supplying it through the mass media. He presented some evidence of increasing returns in the use of television and magazines in the beer industry. We place greater emphasis on demand determinants and give supply determinants a lesser role since we do not find the rates for national network TV advertisements have changed much relative to the rates for newspaper advertisements. We believe the rising cost of time of women is an important key to understanding why manufacturers are supplying more information in recent years through the branding of products. Section II presents a theory of the allocation of shopper responsibilities within a two-earner family where a change in the wage rate of one member alters the shopping responsibilities among the members and changes the shopper's demand for brand names and retail store services. In section III we show the rise in the relative earnings of women began in the mid-seventies and coincides with (1) an increase in the growth rate of consumer good trademark filings (a proxy for branding), (2) an increase in the intensity of advertising by manufacturers of consumer goods, (3) an increase in the intensity of advertising by manufacturers relative to retailers, and (4) a decrease in personal services at retail stores. …

Wer kauft wo? Zur Einkaufsstättenwahl japanischer Konsumenten

The Japanese consumer of today has a wide variety of retail outlets to choose from. These include not only the traditional mom-and-pop stores or the department stores but also speciality stores and all types of supermarkets, such as general merchandising stores, food supermarkets, discount stores, convenience stores and home centers. The main purpose of this article is to give an account of how the Japanese consumer chooses between these alternatives. This is done in three steps using data from various surveys. First, the choice among the alternative retail store types is shown in relation to the type of goods purchased. Second, results relating to the general image of the various retail stores among Japanese consumers are presented. Finally, the special demands Japanese consumers associate with certain retail store types are listed. The analysis leads to the conclusion that the role of small traditional retail outlets – supported for a long time by state intervention in the distribution sector – is increasingly being taken over by modern retail-store types such as the convenience store or the food supermarket. There is a gap between the marketing policy of Japanese department stores and general merchandising stores and the demands the Japanese consumer directs toward these types. Whereas stores of both types have been moving up into a high pricing position, Japanese consumers, especially after the bursting of the bubble economy, have become more price conscious.