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The purpose of this paper is to examine shelf management practices of grocery retail chains and their category captains (CCs) in the marketing of consumer packaged goods.

This is a qualitative, exploratory study that is set in a duopoly retail environment in the Asia-Pacific region. The study employed 18 in-depth interviews with executives and managers of two umbrella retail organisations and their suppliers/manufacturers. The method of data analysis employed was content analysis.

Despite CC input in merchandising decisions, it is the retail chains that have the final say on shelf matters. There is no risk of strategic loss of power in employing CCs to manage store product categories on behalf of, or in partnership with retailers provided the retail chains closely monitor the activities and decisions/recommendations of the captains.

The paper is developed from data obtained from the grocery retail industry of one economy. Future research would need to extend this study to other economies with similar as well as different conditions.

The research offers reassurance to grocery retail practitioners who may be contemplating lessening the burden of managing all their store categories by themselves and switching to CC arrangements. The reassurance is that the reported risk associated with loss of power is manageable.

The paper has created a typology termed the “category captain arrangement/grocery retail concentration matrix” and specific directions for further research.

Despite massive efforts of suppliers and retailers in the fast‐moving‐consumer‐goods (FMCG) channel to adopt the efficient consumer response (ECR) practices, many of the expected benefits have not been realized. This study examines the history and implementation practices of ECR in the USA and in Germany and presents conceptual models that compare the likely outcomes when ECR‐based category management practices are initiated either by the supplier or by the retailer channel partner. Combining the knowledge gained from a series of interviews with industry experts with their own ECR experiences, it is shown how a strategic competitive advantage can be realized through the combination of both supplier and retailer views and expertise in category management practices. The article concludes with an examination of barriers to implementation of category management plans and suggests ways to overcome these barriers.

What core strategic capabilities should multinational and domestic firms possess to create competitive organization in Russia? In this chapter, we try to answer this question with our pilot case study of six firms operating in the Russian high-tech, low-tech, and services markets – four global companies and two Russian firms. Our research shows that customer orientation is the crucial strategic capability, highlighted by all of the firms involved in the research. For multinational and high-tech players, this is followed by research and development, mentioned by two-thirds of the respondents. Moreover, the four multinational companies leverage their strategic capabilities of cross-cultural management and general sales capabilities as keys for their success in Russia. Russian firms emphasize importance of entrepreneurship, understanding local customer needs, and an engaged team as strategic capabilities that particularly differentiate them from the multinational players in the Russian market.

The category captain system (CC) of retailer category management (RCM) is established, accepted, and widely adopted. The paper empirically assesses the application of this system in building collaborations between retailers and their suppliers to generate growth following COVID-19. This study applies service-dominant logic (S-D logic) to RCM and establishes the current ‘practical’ application of the five axioms of S-D logic within the CC system.

The researchers adopted a qualitative research design which examined both category managers and retail buyers currently involved in the CC system, using thematic analysis of transcripts from 25 practitioner participants.

The study reveals service is not a fundamental basis of exchange in the CC system. Value is uniquely, independently, and separately created by the retailer that significantly restricts the scope of the category service eco systems and the opportunity to innovate through value co-creation.

Significant change is required to realise value co-creation and innovation applying S-D logic to RCM. The study indicates there is potential to start this change by the formalisation of wider informal category relationships between non-captain suppliers and retailers through consumer insight technology, and by aligning suppliers and retailers to make more effective and sustainable trading decisions.

The study indicates that certain elements of the CC system proposed by the literature's games-based theoretic models, are not applied in practice. The lived experiences of practitioners suggest informal ways of by-passing the formal system using S-D logic.

The process of institutionalizing police reform has been relatively ignored in the policing literature. Owing to this, there is no established framework for institutionalizing police reform. This article seeks to add to the knowledge regarding the institutionalization of police reform by presenting the results from a study that examined the institutionalization of problem‐oriented policing (POP) in the CMPD.

The research was guided by the limited amount of organizational change in policing research and the limited amount of organizational development literature pertaining to institutionalization. The research utilized captain interviews and rank‐and‐file surveys to determine officer knowledge, behaviors, and attitudes towards POP in the CMPD. The CMPD's policies, procedures, and practices pertaining to POP were also outlined.

It was found that POP has become institutionalized in the CMPD. POP principles are evident in the captain's culture, rank‐and‐file's culture, and the policy and procedure of the CMPD.

The study puts forth a framework for assessing and institutionalizing police reform that other departments can test and utilize in their efforts to institutionalize police reform.

The paper is one of the first to examine the institutionalization process of police reform. A framework is put forth to assess and aid in other police departments' efforts to institutionalize police reforms.

The purpose of the paper is to explore the degree to which the drug industry is changing from a product orientation to a more strategic category captain management (CCM) approach.

The paper is based on secondary research sources.

The paper shows that the drug industry is starting to move toward a more strategic approach to partner with downstream customers as opposed to a sales‐oriented approach.

The paper suggests that there is another fundamental way to compete for the drug industry, more as partners than just suppliers.

There are significant social implications. The drug industry has been battered for serious faults regarding regulatory issues. The industry has come under scrutiny for questionable marketing conduct. By providing more than just physical product and hard sell tactics, CCM can serve as an alternative model for the drug industry to compete.

The paper is unique in that timing is ripe for this kind of analysis. To the best of the author's knowledge, there is no research to date on the issue of substantial ways that the pharmaceutical industry can change its business model.

The aim of this research is to investigate the adoption and implementation of SCM practices by small retail firms. Past research has established the benefits of SCM practices on performance of large enterprises, but the impact of these practices on small retailers merits attention due to the importance of this sector in the economy and organizational difference due to scale.

A survey instrument based on existing scales is developed and distributed to small retailers in Upstate New York. A total of 79 valid responses were received. A theoretical model is developed relating implementation of supply chain management practices to performance at both retail and supplier levels. The theoretical model was tested using partial least squares (PLS) methods.

This research suggests that supply chain management practices are positively related to performance at both the retail and suppler levels. Moderate implementation levels of supply chain management practices are reported among the small retailers studied.

This research employed perceptual performance measures. Future studies can expand on this research by examining objective data on performance metrics at both the retail and supplier level to better quantify costs and benefits of supply chain management in this context.

This research is the first paper to attempt to empirically test supply chain management practices among small retailers, thus generalizing our understanding of the supply chain management practices in a context not previously studied. Implications for suppliers and retailers are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the performance impact for small, local retailers by the means of category management (CM) practice and implementation. The authors utilized survey methodology to investigate both the immediate and cumulative impact of CM on several regional retailers.

The results suggest CM practices have a positive impact on the performance of small, local retailers. category captain (CC) and minor supplier (MS) performances are also positively related to CM execution. CM practices, however, do not have a direct significant influence on MS performance, but rather have a cumulative impact through CC and CM performances.

Small retailers should implement CM principles informally to match with their specific limited resources and management structures. Additionally, results from this study also suggest that local retailers may benefit from leveraging suppliers through tighter relationships encompassed within CM.

This research is the first to empirically test the immediate and cumulative impacts of CM practices on small, local retailers, and to determine their implications. Cumulatively, small retailers have a large impact on developed economies with a particularly large impact on employment, therefore major retail initiatives such as CM merit scholarly attention.

The study explores structural devices designed to enhance collaboration between sales and marketing groups. The paper aims to develop a conceptual framework of how such integrative devices link to higher levels of sales‐marketing collaboration and also to higher levels of business performance.

A total of 20 in‐depth interviews and a review of the literature are used to examine the nature and effects of sales‐marketing integrative devices in UK consumer packaged goods firms.

The study identifies two main types of integrative device in operation: trade marketing and category management. The exploratory interviews highlight how these two types of integrative device operate, respectively, at operational and strategic levels. All of the organisations were found to operate some kind of integrative device. However, the organisations studied manifest different levels of collaboration between sales and marketing groups. The conclusion drawn from this and subsequently included in the conceptual framework is that it is the effectiveness of integrative devices, rather than their mere existence, that differentiates between higher and lower levels of sales‐marketing collaboration.

The effectiveness of sales‐marketing integrative devices appears to have positive effects for collaborative sales‐marketing intergroup relations. The results therefore support the development and effective use of such devices to enhance collaborative relations between sales and marketing.

This study reveals the importance and dimensions of effective sales‐marketing integrative devices and uses in‐depth interviews to support the development of a conceptual framework for future empirical testing. Specific hypotheses to test are developed, together with suggestions regarding the measurement of constructs.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how several aspects of supplier category management policy might affect category sales performance at Korean supermarkets.

Aggregated (market‐level) Nielsen time‐series category management and sales data for several variety enhancer categories in the Korean supermarket industry are analyzed.

Across both small and large supermarkets, both the number of brands and the forward inventory level had positive effects on sales while days of supply of a product had a significant negative effect. For large supermarkets, the out‐of‐stock rate also had a significant negative effect, while for small supermarkets the retail distribution rate had a significant positive effect.

Using data for the Korean supermarket industry, this study demonstrates which policies for product assortment, pricing, stocking, and product replenishment can affect category sales and how these effects may vary between large and small stores. However, the findings rest on market‐level aggregated data and may be limited in scope to variety enhancer (i.e. low purchase frequency and high penetration) categories. Future research could try to relax these limitations.

The value of this study lies in confirming findings such as how category sales are higher in categories with a relatively larger number of brands (as has been observed in the US supermarket industry), as well as in the surprising finding that category pricing policies do not have a significant effect on category sales even though variety enhancer categories are generally considered price sensitive.