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The past 25 years have witnessed a dramatic rise in the dominance of big‐box retailers in the global retail sector and the decline of small retailers. The purpose of this paper is to explore how the intensity of competition with big box retailers moderates the relationship of strategy choice to expected growth.

This study uses cross‐sectional survey data from a group of 199 small retailers in the USA. Hypotheses are tested using linear regression of expected growth on the use of three growth‐oriented strategies. These relationships are subjected to tests of the moderating effect of direct competition with big box retailers.

This study shows that small retailers pursue strategies of offering previously unavailable goods or services, high quality, and better service to pursue future growth. The interaction effect of strategy with directness of competition with big box retailers, however, has a negative and significant effect on expected growth.

The data set is from 2003 and is cross‐sectional. Future research on small retailers' strategic preferences should reflect a more recent competitive landscape and employ longitudinal data sets to establish cause‐and‐effect relationships.

Small retailers need to understand that the strategies they use to pursue growth essentially become strategies for mere survival when competing directly against big box retailers. One small retailer's growth strategy is another small retailer's survival strategy, depending on direct competition with a big box retailer.

This study provides support for the argument that small retailers should pursue growth‐oriented strategies that create value and differentiate them from big box retailers. Under direct competition from big box retailers, however, these growth‐oriented strategies seemingly become mere means for survival. Small retailers need to be aware of blind spots that prevent them from understanding strategy‐performance relationships.

This study aims to examine the evolution of category killers or big‐box retailers over a 17‐year time span and the impact that this retail format has had on seven retail sectors, sales revenue, and per capita retail consumption in the USA.

Sales revenue, average store size and per capita income were examined over a 17‐year period – 1988‐2004 – for the book, sporting goods, home center, electronic, toy, home furnishings and the grocery sector (warehouse stores) to determine the effect of large retail formats on sales revenue and per capita spending.

This longitudinal study demonstrates that evolving to big‐box formats had a positive impact on both sales revenue and per capita spending in each of the retail sectors.

It is a starting‐point for fully understanding the impact of large retail formats on the retail industry.

The evolution of large format retailers has not been studied from a macro view. Most studies have focused on their impact on small markets. This study focuses on the overall trend and examines their impact on the industry and per capita spending.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight points of differentiation for small family businesses, relative to larger “big box” retailers, which may provide marketing‐oriented competitive advantages.

From a conceptual perspective, the authors illustrate how small family‐owned businesses may be able to successfully compete against big box retailers by differentiation in three key areas.

The authors conclude that small family businesses may be able to successfully differentiate themselves from the larger big box retailers by: establishing a relationship with customers based on trust; competing on value (not price); and focusing the business on serving a specialized segment of the market.

The paper offers theory‐based advice for practitioners, as well as thoughts on future directions for academic research.

Much of the research that has been done on family‐owned businesses has focused on the characteristics of the family operating the firm, and how they interact with one another while running the business. Less attention has been given to the exploration of points of differentiation for small family retailers, relative to big box retailers, and how these areas may provide marketing‐oriented advantages. Thus, this work offers substantial benefit for practitioners and the authors’ suggestions for future research will benefit academics.

Focusing on the early development of the three major forms of local advertising employed by independent department stores across the USA – newspapers, radio, and television – this paper examines continuity in the industry's commercial use of new technologies.

The research draws on different types of primary sources, including department store financial records and correspondence, retailing trade literature, industry publications, newspaper advertisements, and radio advertisement transcripts.

The local and regional markets of the independent department store, and to some extent, department store chains, required local advertising, something best served by newspapers in the period under study. While many retailers embrace the commercial potential of radio and television as they appear in the 1920s and late 1930s, respectively, others are reluctant to divert their advertising budget away from newspapers. Trade writers for the department store industry and radio and television reveal tension between the National Retail Dry Goods Association, with its progressive orientation and professionalizing goals, and the more traditional merchants these experts are trying to modernize. The paper also suggests, perhaps as a subject for future research, that as radio and television lost their local orientation and became increasingly commercialized and national, independent department store advertising would not have been able to compete with department store chains.

Although much has been written about national advertising, cultural, and business historians have conducted little research on local advertising, the type typically employed by independent department stores. This paper provides an introduction to the three major advertising formats most often used by independent department stores as each medium first emerged as a potential selling tool.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate a set of preventive measures required for mitigating fire risks in big box retail facilities.

The paper identifies the potential sources of ignition and fuel in big box retail facilities. It describes the variety of hazardous situations commonly found in such facilities worldwide. The paper then endeavors to discuss the series of fire protection challenges that could be faced during fire emergencies. It also explores the challenges of evacuation and rescue in such mega store facilities.

Mega stores, distribution centers and large retail stores are amongst the most challenging occupancies from a fire protection perspective. Fires can occur in big box retail facilities at any time and from a number of causes. These facilities represent a type of occupancy that poses considerable challenges to both fixed fire suppression systems and fire departments in cases of fire emergencies. The paper also describes the responsibilities of building management staff towards their employees and the public. Facility managers should always seek proactive measures to reduce the risk of fire and fire spread in big box retail facilities. These measure include providing sufficient number and capacity of exits; clear exit access; efficient smoke detection systems; voice communication systems; and efficient automatic sprinkler systems.

This paper serves to increase the awareness about fire and its effects in mega store facilities. The paper provides practical value to property directors and facility managers responsible for the daily operations of mega store facilities and for surveyors inspecting such properties.

The understanding of the motives for consumers’ support of business underdogs is generally limited. The purpose of this paper is to help address this important research topic by conceptualizing underdog affection as a theoretical construct capturing the emotional attachment held by some consumers toward underdog business entities and advances two perspectives (self- and other-oriented) to unravel its motivational underpinnings.

To test the conceptual model, a survey study was conducted involving 365 respondents drawn from an electronic alumni association list from a medium-sized Midwestern university in the USA. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analyses were used to validate the scales, and the structural equations modeling method was used to test the hypothesized effects.

The data support most of the hypotheses (eight out of nine). Under the self-oriented perspective, commerce underdog affection is positively influenced by underdog orientation, need for uniqueness, nostalgia proneness, and hope, and is negatively impacted by their materialism level. Only hope did not impact consumer underdog affection. Under the other-oriented perspective, balance maintenance, top dog antipathy, and empathic concern positively influence underdog affection. The other-oriented factors, especially top dog antipathy and balance maintenance, show stronger effects on commerce underdog affection than self-oriented factors.

The sample was geographically restrictive in the sense that it measured only one group of respondents in the USA. The conceptual model is limited in terms of its coverage of the consequences of underdog affection. While discriminant validity is established in the scale development phase of the study, relatively close relationships do exist among some of these theoretical constructs.

Given the significant evidence linking consumers’ underdog affection to underdog support in commerce, small locally owned businesses could use underdog positioning advertising to differentiate themselves against national retailers. Due to their tendency to display higher underdog affection in commerce, people with higher levels of balance maintenance, top dog antipathy, underdog orientation, emphatic concern, and nostalgia proneness, and lower levels of materialism can be segmented for marketing purposes.

This research indicates that there are ways in which small business entities and non-profits alike can operate in a business setting that is increasingly more competitive and challenging for underdog entities.

This study integrates the various underdog studies across contexts to examine motives to underdog affection, a construct not yet operationalized in business studies. In addition, hypotheses linking eight specific antecedents to commerce underdog affection, via two theoretical perspectives, are empirically examined to assess relative as well as absolute effects.

This study considers an under-explored pathway of immigrant business expansion beyond contemporary models of ethnic entrepreneurship.

We push against dominant theories of immigrant adaptation and small business, such as assimilation theory, to explain a rise of franchised small businesses among Indian Americans. We combine two cases on Indian American small business ownership, based on years of qualitative fieldwork each.

Indian Americans have forged a new path of immigrant business growth beyond either enclave or middleman minority businesses. The growth of franchised stores by immigrants remains underexplored in the immigration and work literature. Their growth in the industry signals a type of mobility, by moving more into corporate models of business ownership and performance. Yet, their success has depended on many of the same mechanisms that define lower end, informal ethnic businesses, such as a reliance on ethnic social capital for information and financing, strategies to avoid racism, co-ethnic labor, and the like.

Like any qualitative study, it is limited by its lack of breadth. But, given that it combines two cases, it compensates for this challenge more than otherwise.

This chapter furthers the argument that immigrant mobility does not necessarily mean assimilation and in fact can represent a collective response against assimilationist tendencies. This continued collective strategy to mobility is all the more necessary in the face of neoliberal economic models that place greater burdens on individuals.

Since 2016, organized retailers in Colombia have struggled against a new retail format: Hard-discount stores. This sales channel fulfills essential shopping basket products with consistent low prices. To be competitive and preserve their market position, organized retailers must improve their processes and their pricing decisions. Promotions and discounts have been considered as an effective alternative to compete. This study analyzes the impact of joint prices decisions over the individual and global financial key performance indicators when a collaborative strategy is adopted. Our case study comprises a supermarket chain Colombian retailer and a consumer packaged-goods manufacturer to analyze its supply chain performance. The analysis considers different product categories (food, personal care, and cosmetics) and country regions. The results highlight that benefits are unequally distributed along different echelons and supply chain performance is affected when pricing decisions are made independently.

This paper aims to describe the transdisciplinary, multiphase, mixed methods, generative design research, participatory planning and social design activities developed and implemented by the West Virginia University Rural Tourism Design Team and associated outcomes.

The multiphase methodology included quantitative and qualitative research in initial stages of the study (key informant interviews, resident attitudes toward tourism survey, visitor preferences survey, economic impact analysis) which informed social design activities at latter stages (asset mapping, landscape design/visualization of opportunities and sites targeted for development and cultural identity design) using generative design tools facilitating co-design with the communities and helping the destination take sequential steps toward achieving their goals and objectives.

Opportunities and challenges identified through multiple methods were triangulated and pointed to the same conclusions including the need for long term planning and managed growth; protecting community values; underutilized natural, cultural and historic assets; the opportunity to develop nature-based, cultural and historical attractions; and the need for a common vision and collective identity.

This study makes a unique contribution to literature on sustainable tourism planning by incorporating social design activities to visualize findings of more traditional planning methods and provide tangible, visible outcomes of planning activities which can guide local stakeholders in rural destinations more directly to funding for planning recommendations and project implementation.

The transdisciplinary and social/generative/participatory approach provided a scaffolding of outputs to the community with citizen control and active involvement throughout the planning and design process. The incorporation of social design provided tangible outcomes including site designs and a cultural identity. Generative design research gives people a language with which they can imagine and express their ideas and dreams for future experiences.

This paper investigates the role of social design in a transdisciplinary, multiphase project to support sustainable tourism planning.