Editorial

International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management

ISSN: 0959-0552

Article publication date: 1 December 2003

140

Citation

Broadbridge, A. (2003), "Editorial", International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Vol. 31 No. 12. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijrdm.2003.08931laa.001

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2003, MCB UP Limited


Editorial

In this final issue of Volume 31, we present a series of general articles for Retail Insights.

The first article in this issue is by Daniel Corsten and Thomas Gruen from the Universities of St Gallen and Colorado respectively. They provide a fascinating account of the incidence and extent of out-of-stocks worldwide. Contrary to belief, their report shows that retail out-of-stocks have not gone down over the last decade. Their article provides an overview of a world-wide study they have conducted into the extent, causes and consumer responses to out-of-stocks in the fmcg industry.

The second contribution to this issue is a case study on town centre management by Andrew Paddison, lecturer at Stirling University. Paddison argues that town centre vitality and viability is of importance to a range of stakeholders: users, producers and intermediaries. Utilising evidence from a range of Scottish town centres, his case study illustrates the contextual issues that town centre management (TCM) operates under. He begins his case by outlining the formative stages of strategy formulation and development. This is then followed by a review of the first three years, focusing in particular on infrastructural issues, funding sources, TCM marketing and management structures. Finally, the initial progress is reviewed against the original plan and a number of emergent issues are prioritised for the second stage of TCM.

There follows a piece by Brenda Soars, an independent retail consultant, with many years of practitioner experience. Her article delves into consumer psychology and she advocates that retailers have much to gain from paying more attention to such research. She claims that companies should spend more on below-the-line and through-the-line strategies. She argues that customers need to feel they have a one-to-one relationship with the store and this, she believes, will result in repeat patronage.

Next, Andy Wood, managing director of Total DM presents an account of how invaluable customer databases are to retailers. He shows how such database material can be analysed and of use. He presents a case study of a leading children's goods retailer to show how the data gathered from a simple loyalty scheme and stored in a marketing database have reaped the benefits to the company concerned.

Finally, Anne Findlay, from the Institute for Retail Studies at the University of Stirling has compiled an invaluable article on the collection of Web-based sources. She directs the reader to a useful portal site which provides the links for accessing a large number of the world's national statistical data. She alerts the user to some potential problems (e.g. language difficulties) in using the sites and the fact the data may only be on the site for a limited time before they are archived. Her article concludes with five case studies providing examples of what can be retrieved from such links.

Adelina BroadbridgeUniversity of Stirling

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