Editorial

Citation

Towers, N. (2010), "Editorial", International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Vol. 38 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijrdm.2010.08938faa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Volume 38, Issue 6

For this edition, we have four international contributions on the diverse activities found in entertainment malls in the USA, Chinese consumers’ international outshopping motives, antecedents of kiosk use intention in Taiwan and consumers’ preferences for cash, debit and credit card payment modes in Saudi Arabia.

The first contribution, by Sherry L. Lotz, Mary Ann Eastlick, Anubha Mishra and Soyeon Shim, examines the nature of participation in diverse types of activities that may be offered in an entertainment mall setting. The paper proposes an alternative theoretical focus derived from a better understanding of consumers’ choice, skills and abilities, and motives for pursuing the mall shopping and/or entertainment experiences. Their study’s purpose is to better understand the process by which entertainment mall patrons participate in shopping and/or entertainment activities, which ultimately lead to future intentions to undertake these activities in this mall setting. To achieve this objective, flow theory is used to investigate roles played by motives and other variables (e.g. skill, challenge and freedom of choice) in influencing shoppers’ mood states (e.g. involvement) that lead directly to participation in entertainment and/or shopping activities. The indirect impact of mood states on future mall patronage intention is also studied. Supporting flow theory the results suggest that future mall patronage intention is most directly influenced by participation in mall entertainment activities followed by shopping activities. Entertainment and shopping participation were indirectly and positively influenced by patrons’ intrinsic motivations, freedom of choice to patronize the mall, and perceptions of challenges and skills in participating in mall activities through their effects on mood states. The results demonstrated that mall patrons do experience “flow-like” mood states which influence activity levels in pursuing both mall entertainment and shopping.

The second paper, by Yong Jian Wang, Samuel K. Doss, Chiquan Guo and Wenjing Li, aims to investigate Chinese consumers’ international outshopping motives from a culture perspective. The objective of the study is to investigate how Chinese consumers’ outshopping motives, determined by the country’s cultural idiosyncrasy, affect their propensity of shopping abroad. The results show that there is no significant relationship between the perceived morality to support domestic industries and the propensity of shopping abroad. Several salient variables identified as outshopping motives in this study provide some insights for retail business to understand why Chinese consumers like shopping abroad. First, Chinese outshoppers are looking for luxury brands and quality consumer products made in Western countries, such as perfumes in France, watches in Switzerland, fashion dresses in Italy. The findings indicate a fundamental ideological change of Western retailers when they specifically deal with Chinese outshoppers. Second, a main reason for many Chinese to shop overseas is that they face uncertainty and risks when shopping in China. In addition to their inventories, western retailers should highlight their reputation and service quality when they target Chinese outshoppers. Different forms of radio and wall ads featuring their reliability and trustworthiness may be used in terminal airports to effectively attract Chinese outshoppers. Third, an outshopping trip for Chinese consumers is a trip of materialistic experience. They want to spend time and money in spectacular and exotic shopping streets.

The third paper, by Yen-Ting Helena Chiu, Shih-Chieh Fang and Chuan-Chuan Tseng, analyses the antecedents of kiosk use intention and how perceptions of antecedent factors vary among potential and early adopters. Their results show that while performance expectancy, effort expectancy, facilitating conditions and social influence impact overall use intention, the perceptions of these antecedents vary significantly between potential versus early users. Further, individual technology readiness does not intervene with technology perceptions. The findings provide a variety of practical implications for retail practitioners. As with any innovative technologies, marketing efforts during the introduction stage are directed primarily at two market segments, i.e. the potential adopters and the early adopters. Managerial interest is focused on the question of how to effectuate consumer’s first time use and continued use of the technology, in other words, how to convert potential adopters into first-time users and early adopters into regular users. In the highly competitive convenience sector, where service innovation holds the key to sustained market growth, understanding consumer’s motivation and antecedents to adoption decision is an important precondition for identifying effective strategies to ensure use intention and continuance intention. The results of this study confirm performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions as explanatory variables for consumer intention to adopt the kiosk system. Given that within this research context technology readiness does not significantly intervene with use intention, managerial implications are formulated with focus on the kiosk system characteristics and kiosk application environment.

The final paper, by Alhassan G. Abdul-Muhmin, examines how the monetary value of a retail transaction (transaction size) impacts consumers’ preferences for cash, debit, and credit card payment modes. An experimental survey methodology is employed which systematically varies product prices (transaction sizes) to observe the impact of changes in transaction sizes on consumers’ payment mode preferences. The study results indicate that demographic variables are potentially significant explanatory factors for moderating the impact of transaction size on payment mode choice, albeit selectively. Most promising are the effects of gender and income as these occur across the entire spectrum of transaction values included in the study. In this regard the payment mode switching behaviour of females is decidedly different from males. This suggests that the communication initiatives need to be designed separately for males and females. Income groups also differ in the way they switch to alternative payment modes as transaction size increases. The difference is primarily in medium value transactions where the two lower income groups are likely switch to debit and credit with almost equal probability, whilst the two higher income groups decidedly switch to credit.

Neil Towers