Search results

The Internet has enabled consumers to act as their own travel agents and to verify independently the accuracy of the information provided by airlines through the CRSs and travel agents. As a result, the relationships between consumers and the suppliers of air-travel information have been radically altered, and we document these changes. We identify the relevant market for air-travel information, which includes CRSs, online travel agencies, and the websites and call centers of individual carriers. We determine market concentration and market shares using the Herfindhal-Hirschman Index. Based on our analysis, we argue that there is no longer any need to regulate independent CRSs. However, airlines that own CRSs continue to have an incentive to withdraw their flight and fare information from rival CRSs and, to prevent this from happening, the mandatory participation rule adopted in 1992 should be maintained.

In confining the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing was key, with traditional, bricks-and-mortar retailing being shut-down for weeks, and have nearly universally moved into online channels. At the same time, online players have started to operate physical stores. This chapter provides an analysis of how COVID-19 has accelerated the digitalization of retailing, focusing on the shift towards the online and mobile shopping channel. On the basis of success stories and failures in retail business practice, lessons are distilled for developing effective future phygital scenarios.

We review the implications of the mobile technology for different stages of the consumer path to purchase including awareness, search, evaluation, store visit, and product choice. Real-time and location-specific access to information and products are identified as distinguishing characteristics of mobile devices. While the literature on digital marketing is well developed, knowledge of the effects on the consumer path to purchase in the presence of dynamic and location-specific information is still scarce. Path to purchase models need to recognize the central and powerful role of user-generated content. Better management of marketing resources would require models that connect investments in mobile marketing to sales, and also model the synergies among different digital and offline media. We conclude with a framework that connects mobile media impressions to product choice, in the presence of other marketing media, and consumer and firm feedback loops.

Innovations in technology and evolution of internet elicited the usage of technology and internet during the shopping process of consumers. Changes in consumer shopping processes opened doors for shifts in consumer buying behavior. As a result of the variations in consumer buying behavior, retailers formed new channel structures to fulfill customer requirements. New channel structures created different retailing formats and enhanced the complexity of retailing processes. As the complexity of retailing processes increased, complexity of consumer shopping behavior increased as well. In this sense, multichannel retailing emerged and expanded all around the world and paved the way for omnichannel retailing. Transformation of multichannel retailing to omnichannel retailing created two different shopping forms as: Showrooming and Webrooming. In this chapter, showrooming and webrooming concepts will be studied and the complementarity dimensions of these concepts will be explained in detail.

Developments in online learning today closely resemble the development of modern traditional education. In the latter half of the twentieth century, new judicial decisions and law guided traditional education from exclusive to inclusive, from inaccessible to accessible, and from curriculum-centered to student-centered. The authors present a brief history of these developments and compare them to current trends in online learning. Notably, online learning programs seem to be making the same mistakes present in traditional education’s development – mistakes that took decades to correct. The authors suggest theories and practices that can bridge the gap between current trends and online learning’s future promise.

This chapter offers a specific point of view on the Town Centre retail, in ­order to develop a new way to enhance the customer retail experience in this place. The combination of shopping over the Internet and the interactive technologies represents for Town Centre retailers one of the possible solutions in the creation of a multisensory experience for people living in and visiting this urban area. By welcoming the challenge of creating multisensory experiences, “bricks and mortar” stores need to integrate digital solutions to create and handle experiences. Customers can interact with people and contents via digital technologies such as Quick Response, Electrochromic Glass, Touch Systems, Outdoor Totems, Holographic Technology, and Augmented Reality. From the analysis of the academic literature emerges an agreement that the use of the Internet and interactive technologies are not totally exploited as tools able to revitalize the Town Centre retail and create animated, lively streets that offer multisensory experiences. Based on the above considerations, this chapter provides a theoretical model in order to create an immersive retail experience within the physical store by combining the use of the Internet to conduct shopping and the interaction with several kinds of technologies.

In an omnichannel environment, customers switch channels from product discovery to eventual purchase decision strategically. Hence, the biggest challenge for retailers nowadays is how to operate an effective omnichannel strategy. To improve inventory operational efficiency, this chapter investigates the influences of price setting and customers’ return probability on inventory forecasting. Subsequently, we explore how retailers participate in providing appropriate information delivery and product fulfillment. Specifically, a stylized newsvendor model, which incorporates customers’ showrooming behavior, is developed to address retailers’ inventory problem. Furthermore, we compare the benefits of buy-online-and-pick-up-in-store (BOPS) and showroom strategy which originates offline but is completed online. Three main findings are obtained as follows: (1)online and offline inventory order quantities augment with the ascending of pricing offline and online, respectively. Meanwhile, the inventory decisions increase when customers’ return probability declines; (2) the implementation of showroom helps retailers expand their pure online market coverage than BOPS, while it reduces the total inventory quantity if the proposition of unit online inventory cost accounting for product price exceeds physical store; and (3) showroom strategy is more profitable than BOPS option as long as unit online inventory cost is small enough. In addition, we find this boundary where showroom increases total profit expands with the attenuating of return probability.

Inner city centers not only provide opportunities for shopping, dining, and entertainment, but with their lively atmosphere and other vital attributes, also create attractive destinations for residents and tourists alike. However, inner city retailing, potentially the most important reason to visit an inner city, is facing serious competition from e-commerce and out-of-town shopping malls. Dying inner city centers have become a severe issue in recent years, worldwide. To counteract this devastating trend and ensure the vitality and viability of inner city centers, stakeholders from the public and private sectors regularly join their forces in initiatives to strengthen urban structures. However, academic insights into the contribution of retailing on perceived city attractiveness remain sparse. Relying on an extensive data set that combines survey and observational data, the authors are able to quantify a variety of inner city characteristics, ranging from its store and service provider portfolio to its ambience and accessibility, and measure their association with its perceived attractiveness. They show that a city's portfolio of retail stores is not only related to people's perceptions of the city's overall attractiveness but also perceptions of its ambience. However, not all retail categories contribute the same way; while the presence of clothing stores or booksellers is strongly associated with cities' ambience as well as attractiveness, other retail categories such as optometrists or electronics stores are negatively associated with consumers' inner city perceptions. Importantly, these relationships also depend on the size of the focal city. Based on their results, the authors provide important managerial and societal implications on how to leverage the local retailing environment to improve inner city attractiveness. For example, the results may inform (local) governments on which sectors to subsidize in order to attract those store and service provider categories that benefit inner city attractiveness.

This paper presents a case study concerning the recovery of a young woman's wellbeing after a personal crisis in the summer of 2019. The analytical approach used draws on a conceptual model where wellbeing is a balance point between an individual's resources and the challenges they face. Therefore, stable wellbeing is when individuals have the physical, psychological and social resources they need to meet the physical, psychological and or social challenges they face. When individuals have more challenges than resources, the balance dips, along with their wellbeing, and vice versa. After outlining the theoretical base of the model, this paper presents a highly subjective analysis of the challenges faced by and resources available to the young woman in the case study. The daughter of a pig man and a Horrobin, she had worked three jobs in order to purchase a house for her young family. Her plans were precipitously destroyed leading to a breakdown in her marriage. This paper considers her path to recuperation in the aftermath of the crisis with a reference to her notion that ‘security is everything.’