Editorial

Citation

Fernie, J. (2002), "Editorial", International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Vol. 30 No. 10. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijrdm.2002.08930jaa.001

Editorial

This is a themed issue on aspects of electronic retailing. Michelle Morganosky and Brenda Cude published their first study of consumer responses to online shopping in IJR&DM in 2000. It recorded the most online "hits" of any paper in the journal that year and was one of the most downloaded papers in the MCB suite of journals. This is the third of their longitudinal studies in 2001 and was an extension of the second survey in that re-contact was made with the 260 participants in study two. The current study shows a maturing of the online customer with quite high customer retention rates. In fact the main reason for defection was relocation to another region of the USA where the same online service was not available to them.

The second paper, by Ruby Roy Dholakia and Outi Uusitalo also is based on a survey of US shoppers. This mail survey of 1,600 households in five major cities sought to determine consumers' perceived benefits of electronic retailing over conventional store shopping. As the study was compiled before the dot.com hype, it is interesting to note that the key managerial implication from the research was that e-retailers need to improve hedonic benefits and not concentrate solely on utilitarian benefits. This ties in with the third paper by Richard Feinberg and his team who report on electronic customer relationship management (E-CRM) in retailing. Analysing 41 E-CRM features on the Website of the top 100 US speciality stores, general retailers and Internet retailers, they show that only a limited number of attributes were associated with customer satisfaction. Furthermore, standard retailers were lagging in the implementation of E-CRM features.

Many of the problems associated with Internet shopping are that Internet users need not be Internet shoppers. Tino Fenech from Australia makes the same assumption in that cellular phone users may not use WAP for shopping. Fenech received co-operation from a national telecommunications carrier to target their customers in an online survey. The main conclusion from the research is that WAP users are impulse shoppers who need to be targeted with purchase opportunities to trigger potential sales.

The final paper addresses the question posed by Morganosky and Cude at the end of their paper in that it is the supply, not the demand, side of the equation which needs to be resolved in online shopping. This journal has published much of the research by the Helsinki University of Technology on this topic. Punakivi and Tanskanen offer solutions for the "last mile" problem which leads to the "killer costs" undermining e-grocery businesses (see the "Viewpoint" by Ring and Tigert last year, Vol. 29 No. 6). One possible solution to the problem is the shared reception box. Using a sample of sales data from one of the largest grocery retail companies in Finland, the authors modelled four home delivery concepts (from the Tesco model of attended reception with two-hour delivery slots to shared boxes). The results show that transport costs using shared reception boxes are up to 55-66 per cent lower than the Tesco concept. To achieve such savings, however, a change in consumer attitudes will be required – a demand side solution!

John Fernie