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To cope with the complexity of modern retail stores and personal time constraints, shoppers must be selective in processing information. During a typical shopping trip, they visit only a fraction of a store’s departments and categories, examine a small subset of the available products, and often make selections in just a few seconds. New research techniques can help marketers understand how customers allocate their attention and assess the impact of in-store factors on shopper behavior. This chapter summarizes studies using observational research, virtual reality simulations, and eye tracking to identify the drivers of shopper attention, product engagement, and purchase conversion. These include shopper goals; product assortment, package appearance, price, and merchandising; shelf space allocation, organization, and adjacencies; and salesperson interaction. The research reveals that small changes in a product’s appearance and presentation can have a powerful impact on consideration and choice.

In the context of increasing competition between chained retailers and family-owned retailers, it is key to understand the customer's format choice. Using a logistics regression (i.e., binary logit) model, we explain customers' preference to buy in supermarkets or in small-scale, mom-and-pop stores like nanostores. We collect a representative sample of over 110 surveys from customers in the district of Surco, Lima, Perú, which is a representative area of the features of Lima's residents. We asked customers to focus on analyzing their preference between two retail formats: modern channel (i.e., big-box retailers, supermarkets, and hypermarkets) and traditional channel (i.e., mom-and-pop stores, nanostores). Our surveys included factors pertaining retail format attributes as well as factors related to the purchasing process. The results showed that time available for purchase and a comparatively better perceived service at a mom-and-pop store (i.e., nanostore) are significant factors that explain a higher probability of selecting these retailers, while a better store's ambience benefits more supermarkets. The overall discrete choice model is able to explain 65% of the variance using pseudo R-squared of the actual format choice decisions.

China represents around 20% of the world's population, and her economy is still performing well under economic crisis. Historical events have shaped different parts of China with different economic developments and cultural encounters. The most prominent difference is between Hong Kong and the Mainland. This chapter would like to examine the development and issues of fashion retailing in China. For better understanding, this chapter starts with a brief discussion on apparel industry development and fashion culture in Hong Kong and the Mainland, follows by historical development and then presents systems of fashion retailing in both Hong Kong and the Mainland. Desktop research and exploratory research techniques were employed. Stores of international fashion luxury brands in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing were visited. Comparison of branding issues, particularly for luxury market in Hong Kong and the Mainland are discussed, so are future directions of fashion retailing in these places.

Retail, by definition, used to be an industry focused on local markets and aiming to distribute goods to consumers in a narrow geographical area. In developed market economies, the internationalization of retail operations started with global sourcing, while in Eastern Europe the process of retail internationalization intensified after the fall of communism in late 1980s and early 1990s. Although there are plenty of papers discussing the conceptual framework of retail internationalization, publications analyzing the present level of internationalization and the current status of specific geographic markets are scarce. Therefore, this chapter will analyze and compare the Croatian and Polish markets in order to explain the paths and drivers of retail internationalization in postcommunist economies.

Research has focused on the Polish and Croatian markets. The first and second part of the chapter explain retail internationalization per se on the basis of existing relevant literature, as well as elaborate on the process of retail internationalization in the postcommunist economies of Poland and Croatia. The main part of the chapter presents the results of a comparative study. This comparative study has been based on secondary data available in official statistical publications of Poland, Croatia, and European Union. As the source of information on large retailers, secondary data has been used as well. Our research analyzes key trends and calculates and presents key indicators showing the importance of retail in national economies.

Both Croatia and Poland are considered attractive host markets for the largest global retailers. Dynamics and intensity of retail internationalization have been different, but the process of retail internationalization is currently intensified in both countries. Retail internationalization is changing the scope of domestic market conditions. Several indicators and effects are observed in this chapter: growth of larger formats within the retail structure, growth in the number of employees per outlet, and growth of the share of trade in GDP creation.

The chapter explains the process of retail internationalization and the level of retail internationalization reached in Croatia and Poland. International retailers from different countries entered the Polish and Croatian markets driven by opportunities offered by these non-saturated markets. The process of internationalization, which is currently intensified, is analyzed in this chapter. Poland and Croatia are markets and countries with similar socioeconomic development. Therefore, this chapter contributes to a better understanding of retail internationalization and its effects on transitional, postcommunist economies.

Purpose – This article examines the operating lease cost stickiness characteristics exhibited by retail firms.

Methodology/approach – Anderson, Banker, and Janakiraman (2003) laid important groundwork for the study of asymmetric cost behavior or cost stickiness. The authors found that a firm’s selling, general, and administrative costs (SG&A) costs increase more with a sales increase than those expenses decrease with an equivalent sales decline. Their findings provided avenues for many studies with differing focal variables; however, extant research has not explored the degree of cost stickiness associated with operating lease expenses. Recognizing the nature and magnitude of operating leases and the competitive and changing environment for retailers, this study adapts Anderson et al.’s (2003) model to provide insights into operating lease stickiness. The study uses archival financial data from 1997 through 2016 for specialty retail firms in testing the lease cost stickiness hypotheses.

Findings – The results of this study supported the hypotheses that operating lease expenses exhibit stickiness behavior and are relatively stickier than future lease commitments for retail firms.

Originality/value – By focusing on retail firms and related lease expenses, this study provides insights into the increasingly competitive retailer environment. This article’s findings will enhance understanding of how specialty retail firms’ managers react to reduced revenues. Finally, given recent authoritative pronouncements affecting accounting for leases and the significance of leasing transactions, research providing insights into cost behavior and managerial actions stands to make an important contribution to literature and practice.

Purpose – This chapter seeks to understand what occurred with five different types of crime among eight retail sectors during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020–2021 to allow retailers to respond to crime, risk, and loss.

Methodology/Approach – Data as reported by police in seven major US cities during the first six months of 2019, 2020, and 2021 were analyzed from a Routine Activities perspective.

Findings – The study results show that crime varied by type and location during COVID-19.

Originality/Value – This analysis provides the first examination of crime across several types and eight retail sectors.

The circular economy is a system that aims to conserve resources at every level for as long as possible with a minimization of waste. The core concept of the circular economy is to improve resource efficiency and prevent valuable materials from leaking out of the system. Better use of increasingly scarce resources can provide both economic and environmental benefits. When excess inventory, returned products, and end-of-life products are disposed of improperly, unnecessary waste is created, often with a detrimental impact to the environment. An effective system must exist to facilitate the proper handling of these products, and secondary markets are a crucial component in this system. In this chapter, we discuss the secondary markets’ role as an important mechanism for achieving a circular economy.