Editorial

Citation

Fernie, J. (2007), "Editorial", International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Vol. 35 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijrdm.2007.08935eaa.001

Editorial

This issue has contributions from Greek, US and Finnish authors. On a personal note, it is good to see the first paper co-authored by one of my former students, Paris Aryouslidis. Along with George Baltas from Athens University of Economics and Business, they identify a gap in the existing literature on consumer level factors on store brand proneness. Using a random sample of Athens consumers (η = 700) their questionnaire focused upon shopping behaviour, socio-demographics of the sample and the ratings of store brands in comparison with manufacturing brands on a range of attributes. The main results of the survey contradict some evidence that consumers are price focused and of low socio-economic groups in that the survey showed that quality had a more significant role and that store brands had strong endorsement from consumers of higher socio-economic status.

Our next paper is also from Greece and deals with a more specific market segment – the olive-oil market. Nikolaos Matsatsinis and colleagues from the University of Crete have undertaken research of both consumers and distributors of olive oil to glean their perceptions of the key attributes of olive oil and the specific channels to market. Quality was considered important to both consumers and distributors although this has to be qualified in that quality is assessed by a range of product attributes such as colour, texture, taste and odour. Image and packaging were deemed to be of relatively low importance.

The papers in the middle of this issue are from the USA. David Burns, David Duganne and Terry Deiderick discuss the hardware store/home center preferences of consumers with regard to their attributes towards chain stores in comparison to local small hardware stores. The paper provides an overview of the evolution of the chain store and the hardware retailing sector prior to administering a telephone questionnaire to households in two adjacent metropolitan areas which contained 59 small hardware stores, 13 national chains and five regional home center outlets. Respondents were asked to rate their most frequently visited store according to eight attributes developed from the literature. Results showed that there were no noticeable differences in consumer preferences on these attributes between small and chain stores. Indeed, the only factor, a demographic one, was income, in that shopping who frequented large centers tended to have significantly higher incomes than those who shopped at small hardware stores.

Dee Knight, Hae-Jung Kim and Christy Crutsinger then examine relationships between role stress, customer and selling orientation and job performance of retail sales people. Using scales developed from the literature, a pilot survey was conducted and then sales people were asked to complete a self administered questionnaire from eight stores of a national department store chain in SW USA. As hypothesised, role stress did affect customer orientation and have affects on job performance indicating that retail managers need to create a culture conducive to customer orientation to mediate the effects of role stress.

Our final paper is by Tommi Laukkanen from the University of Kuopio in Finland and addresses channel preferences of online bank customers in the Finnish market which has one of the highest use of the internet in the world. The internet study sought to determine the different methods which customers paid their bills, including the use of mobile phones. For internet users the screen size, location and response time are the most important attributes in bill paying whereas for mobile users location was the key attribute preference.

John Fernie