Editorial

Citation

Broadbridge, A. (2004), "Editorial", International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Vol. 32 No. 12. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijrdm.2004.08932laa.001

Editorial

Issue 12 of this volume of IJRDM continues the theme of the CIRM conference and complements issue 11 guest edited by David Bennison. This issue contains another four papers presented at the conference.

Greg Lawrence gave a fascinating presentation entitled “Designing out crime: the retail perspective” in which he demonstrated to the audience the pitfalls that retailers presently face with regard to potential criminal activity. He continued to explain that a little more thought about criminal activities when designing the store and its surrounds can help to significantly reduce the incidence of crime, or at least make it far more difficult for the deliberate opportunist criminals to be successful in their attempts, which in turn may curtail their activities.

In his paper, Clifford Guy considered the viability of neighbourhood food stores in supplying nutritionally healthy food items in socially deprived areas of Cardiff. He found that availability of the food items was highest within multiple stores (superstores and discounters) and lowest in the independents. A price comparison also revealed that the multiple stores (all located in the fringe of the areas and not very accessible by foot for most residents) were cheapest, with affiliated stores (symbol groups) being the most expensive. Independent stores were found to offer a more restricted range of items although some vegetables were competitively priced with the multiples. His findings suggest that neighbourhood food stores play a limited role in making such foodstuffs available locally. One of the solutions put forward would be to improve access to larger supermarkets.

Stephen Doyle’s contribution to the conference was a case study which considered urban regeneration in Harlem, New York. His research took the form of interviews with members of the community, voluntary groups and council bodies to ascertain the role that community members themselves had in instigating the regenerative process. He found his respondents, in describing Harlem, spoke of a spiral of degradation that was self-perpetuating. They highlighted the withdrawal of retailers as a crucial point in this sequence. However, included in the response was the establishment of community gardens where residents grew their own produce and sold it locally via their own form of “farmers market”. This helped to resolve the unavailability of fresh produce in the area, and provides an interesting contrast to Guy’s paper in how issues of unavailability might be resolved. The cases could be used to provide an interesting classroom discussion for students to compare and contrast ways of dealing with urban degeneration and regeneration issues.

Salim Jiwa, Dawn Lavelle and Arjun Rose presented a paper on a simulation called “Netrepreneur simulation – enterprise creation for the online economy” which simulates the initial start up phases of e-business creation in the online economy. It can be utilised as a good teaching aid by encouraging participants to “learn by doing” in the simulated virtual world. In so doing, it provides a flexible approach to learning, making available a range of activities and functions that closely resemble actual e-business operations. Their paper reviews the underpinning objective for design conceptualisation and the integration of the real and virtual business worlds within the Netrepreneur system development, and then carries on to report the findings from the pilot investigations.

Adelina Broadbridge