Editorial

Citation

Fernie, J. (2007), "Editorial", International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Vol. 35 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijrdm.2007.08935aaa.001

Editorial

Welcome to the first issue of 2007. Our opening paper by Hayley Myers and Nick Alexander received the Best Paper Award at the ACRA Winter Conference in 2006. Their research focuses upon cross border expansion in Europe and measures the number and diversity of retail outlets over a decade. Using data from the research consultancy, Mintel, the growing scale of international activity was charted from retailers domiciled in 15 Western European countries with retail operations in 23 countries. Two-thirds of moves occurred within other markets in close geographical proximity to the home market with France and Germany the home to the most internationally active retailers within Europe.

Steve Wood and Neil Wrigley examine the impact of the merger of the two largest US department store companies on the nature of competition in the sector. Utilising semi-structured interviews with department store executives and retail analysts the authors provide a context for the merger of Federated and May as the department store sector has undergone considerable change in the last 20 years to meet growing competition from other retail formats. They note how the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) treated the merger as a defensive one yet 75 stores were ordered to be divested ($2.1 billion of sales equivalent) to give competitors a presence in West and East coast markets.

Our third paper by Richard Jones is on a topic which I published some work myself in the 1990s – factory outlet centres (FOC). Richard was in a unique position when he carried out this work for his MBA in that he was Marketing Director of the leading FOC operator at the time–McAthur Glen. The research is different from earlier work in that it focuses upon retail tenants within the sector. He carried out extensive interviews with managers, owners and leading tenants within the business. He provides a classification of four types of tenant–the brand conscious, intermediate, evolved and entrepreneur–which relates to tenants' understanding of channel entry and stage of commercial evolution.

Our penultimate paper is by Suzanne Richbell and Victoria Kite and is an exploratory study of night shoppers who frequent a “24 hour open” UK supermarket in an off centre location. Research was carried out on consumers between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. in the morning to monitor shopping patterns and with store management to glean a supply side perspective. Very few people shopped between midnight and 6 a.m. and it is unlikely that the store would lose sales if it closed during these hours as consumers would change their shopping patterns. Most shoppers were under 50 years of age and not surprisingly many were engaged in shift work.

Our final paper by Carmine Sellitto, Stephen Burgess and Paul Hawkin is concerned with the information quality attributes associated with RFID benefits across the retail supply chain. Many of the benefits associated with RFID implementation are associated with technological issues to better manage inventory. This research argues that the information attributes are of increasing importance especially in quality attributes such as visibility, timelines, accuracy and completeness which enhances organisational decision-making.

John Fernie