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Determining the right number of customers inside a store (i.e. human or customer density) plays a crucial role in retail management strategies. On the one hand, retailers want to maximize the number of visitors they attract in order to optimize returns and profits. On the other hand, ensuring a pleasurable, efficient and COVID-19-proof shopping experience, would go against an excessive concentration of shoppers. Fulfilling both retailer and consumer perspectives requires a delicate balance to be struck. This chapter aims at supporting retailers in making informed decisions, by clarifying the extent to which store layouts influence (perceived) consumer density. Specifically, the chapter illustrates how new technologies and methodologies (i.e. agent-based simulation) can help in predicting a store layout's ability to reduce consumers' perceived in-store spatial density and related perceptions of human crowding, while also ensuring a certain retailers' profitability.

The paper aims to study the challenges and solutions of city logistics in the new retail era. The new retail, which is characterized by omni-channel, fragmented orders and decentralized 2C distribution, is becoming the mainstream of the retail industry worldwide. In order to achieve a comprehensive breakthrough in new retail, the change of order fulfillment mode is the most noteworthy issue. The aim of this paper is to design a city logistics operation model for new retail and verify its feasibility and efficiency.

A physical internet (PI) enabled two-tier city logistics solution is proposed by redefining the key facilities in city logistics with the PI concept. A “Container-as-a-Warehouse” operation mode is designed to provide a more flexible store and transfer solution. A mathematical model of the proposed solution is established. An adaptive large neighborhood search (ALNS) is designed based upon an iterative procedure, which ensures consistent and optimal results.

To quantitatively assess the feasibility of the proposed solution, a computational experiment is designed to compare the performance of the proposed model against the conventional two-tier city logistics operation. The effects of geographical location pattern, utilization of PI-hub as well as the fluctuation of customer orders are analyzed. The results show that the PI-enabled city logistics is more advantageous than the conventional solution.

This study does not consider the impact of new technologies in city logistics; for example, the replenishment problem of unmanned vending machines and the charging problem of electric vehicles.

The proposed PI-enabled solution and analysis results in this paper have positive guiding significance for future practical application.

Based on the concept of PI, this paper proposes an innovative and practical operation model to solve the city logistics challenges.

The purpose of this paper is to put forth an expanded servicescape framework that shows that a perceived servicescape comprises physical, social, socially symbolic, and natural environmental dimensions.

This conceptual paper offers an in‐depth literature review on servicescape topics from a variety of disciplines, both inside and outside marketing, to advance a logical framework built on Bitner's seminal article (1992).

A servicescape comprises not only objective, measureable, and managerially controllable stimuli but also subjective, immeasurable, and often managerially uncontrollable social, symbolic, and natural stimuli, which all influence customer approach/avoidance decisions and social interaction behaviors. Furthermore, customer responses to social, symbolic, and natural stimuli are often the drivers of profound person‐place attachments.

The framework supports a servicescape paradigm that links marketing, environmental/natural psychology, humanistic geography, and sociology.

Although managers can easily control a service firm's physical stimuli, they need to understand how other critical environmental stimuli influence consumer behavior and which stimuli might overweigh a customer's response to a firm's physical dimensions.

The paper shows how a servicescape's naturally restorative dimension can promote relief from mental fatigue and improve customer health and well‐being. Thus, government institutions (e.g. schools, hospitals) can improve people's lives by creating natural servicescapes that have restorative potential.

The framework organizes more than 25 years of servicescape research in a cogent framework that has cross‐disciplinary implications.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how a retail distribution network can be rationalised from a spatial perspective to improve service responsiveness and delivery efficiency.

This paper applies spatial analytics to examine variability of demand, both spatially and from a service delivery perspective, for an auto-parts retail network. Spatial analytics are applied to map the location of stores and customers to represent demand and service delivery patterns and to delineate market areas.

Results show significant spatial clustering in customer demand; whilst the delivery of products to customers, in contrast, is spatially dispersed. There is a substantial gap between revenue generated and costs. Market area analysis shows significant overlap, whereby stores compete with each other for business. In total, 80 per cent of customers can be reached within a 15-minute-radius, whilst only 20 per cent lies outside the market areas. Segmentation analysis of customers, based on service delivery, also shows the prevalence of the Pareto principle or 80:20 rule whereby 80 per cent of the revenue is generated by 20 per cent of customers.

Spatially integrated strategies are suggested to improve the efficiency of the retail network. It is recommended that less accessible and unprofitable customers could be either charged extra delivery cost or outsourced without the risk of a substantial reduction in revenue or quality of service delivery.

Innovative application of spatial analytics is used to analyse and visualise unit-record sales data to generate practical solutions to improve retail network responsiveness and operational efficiency.

To assess the introduction and performance of light electric freight vehicles (LEFVs), more specifically cargo cycles in major 3PL organizations in at least two Nordic countries.

Case studies. Interviews. Company data on performance before as well as after the introduction. Study of differing business models as well as operational setups.

The results from the studied cases show that LEFVs can compete with conventional vans in last mile delivery operations of e-commerce parcels. We account for when this might be the case, during which circumstances and why.

Inherent limitations of the case study approach, specifically on generalization. Future research to include more public–private partnership and multi-actor approach for scalability.

Adding to knowledge on the public sector facilitation necessary to succeed with implementation and identifying cases in which LEFVs might offer efficiency gains over more traditional delivery vehicles.

One novelty is the access to detailed data from before the implementation of new vehicles and the data after the implementation. A fair comparison is made possible by the operational structure, area of delivery, number of customers, customer density, type of packages, and to some extent, the number of packages being quite similar. Additionally, we provide data showing how city hubs can allow cargo cycles to work synergistically with delivery vans. This is valuable information for organizations thinking of trying LEFVs in operations as well as municipalities/local authorities that are interested.

This paper aims to examine empirically if the encouragement by government policy of merger and acquisition activity involving municipal and provincially owned electricity distribution utilities (LDCs) in the Province of Ontario has had positive effects in terms of value creation, operating performance and economies of scale.

It was anticipated that with LDC consolidation, there will be increased operational efficiency and improvement in the cost-effectiveness of the merged electrical utility. Using matched pairs dependent t-testing and Wilcoxon signed-rank testing, the authors compared data for three years before and after the merger or acquisition of 16 municipal utilities (616 total observations) to determine if there were any statistically significant changes (positive or negative) in measures of financial, operational and service efficiency.

The findings indicate statistically significant increases in debt as a percentage of shareholder equity in post-merger/acquisition utilities and consequently leveraged higher returns on equity. However, there were no statistically significant changes in financial, operational or service efficiency measures (with the exception of decreased efficiency in telephone response).

A total of 16 mergers or acquisitions were reviewed involving 32 of 79 LDCs, with the research implications pointing to a need for existing policy to be reviewed to determine whether a more detailed examination is required by the provincial energy regulator, including a closer examination of managerial motives, before approving mergers between municipal electricity distributors. This research involves only a quantitative approach and further research would examine these transactions using qualitative measures for a deeper examination as to managerial motives.

The results suggest that the mergers or acquisitions to date have served only to increase shareholder risk without improvement in other financial, operational or service efficiencies, a contradiction to the rationale behind the Province’s merger policy.

The consolidation policy for Ontario LDCs has not resulted in any statistically significant improvement in electricity rates or service for consumers.

This paper is the first examination of the effects of Ontario’s LDC consolidation policy in terms of specific financial, operational and service efficiency measures.

This paper aims to explore the evolution of the service environment literature and speculates about future research in this area. This paper focuses on studies regarding how the interior and exterior environments of physical service settings (including retail stores) influence consumer response. Web atmospherics are not covered in this paper. In addition, while a number of studies have been conducted on retail and service atmospherics elements in other disciplines, such as environmental psychology and leisure and hospitality, the focus is on research published in marketing and consumer-related journals.

This paper reports the results of empirical studies; however, as there are few empirical studies on the effects of exterior environmental characteristics (e.g. storefronts) in marketing, two conceptual papers on this topic will be reviewed to set the stage for future research on exterior design.

Over the past 40 years, there has been a proliferation of articles on how service environments influence consumer responses. The review covers illustrative examples of articles in several categories of environmental topics. The areas for future research based on the review are suggested.

An up-to-date review of service environment research that is broad in scope is provided. The authors also propose 41 different research questions based on the review that services scholars can use to take this area of inquiry forward.

One of the biggest challenges in B2C e‐commerce is the so‐called “last mile”, the home delivery service for the customer. Particularly in electronic grocery shopping it is difficult to combine profitability and high service level. The authors’ simulations suggest that the unattended reception of goods reduce home delivery costs considerably, by up to 60 percent. Unattended delivery has not been widely used because it requires investments and commitment from the customer. The two main approaches to unattended delivery are the reception box concept and the delivery box concept. The reception box is a refrigerated, customer‐specific reception box installed at the customer’s garage or home yard. The delivery box is an insulated secured box equipped with a docking mechanism. The reception box concept results in more effective home delivery transportation and the delivery box concept in smaller investment to achieve unattended receipt. This article assesses these two different concepts. The cost savings in transportation are analysed using simulation. The operational cost savings are compared to the respective investments required to calculate the payback period. Both concepts proved to be feasible but which one works better is not only a question of financial justification. The possible additional value to customers and overall suitability to the market must also be considered.

Recognizing that crowding in a restaurant waiting area forms a first impression of service and sets service expectations, the purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of crowding in the effective control of the waiting environment. The study seeks to examine the impact of crowding on customers' emotions and approach‐avoidance responses and to examine the mediating role of emotion and the moderating role of desired privacy in the relationship between crowding and approach‐avoidance responses.

Using real‐scale, interactive virtual reality (VR) technology that allows high‐fidelity representations of real environments, the authors created a navigable, photo‐realistic three‐dimensional model of a restaurant waiting area. Through an experimental study which manipulated crowding levels in the VR restaurant, they surveyed the subjects' responses toward crowding conditions.

The study found significant effects of crowding on emotions including arousal and dominance, but not pleasure, and on approach‐avoidance responses. The impact of crowding on approach‐avoidance responses was more direct than indirect, without having emotion as a mediator. It was also found that the desire for privacy as a psychological trait moderated the relationship between crowding and affiliation.

The findings of this study offer restaurant managers insights toward the effective management of the pre‐process service environment during the waiting state that minimizes the negative consequences of waiting/crowding. This study provides three courses of management actions that can make unavoidable crowding in the restaurant waiting situation more enjoyable and comfortable.

By using VR simulation, this study adds a new approach for crowding studies. Theoretically, this study broadened the scope of crowding studies by adding a potential mediating variable, emotions, and a moderating variable, desired privacy, in examining the relationship between crowding and approach‐avoidance responses. Also, by focusing on a restaurant waiting area, the authors were able to explore the pre‐process service expectations.

The objective of the present study is to evaluate and analyse the performance of Indian electricity distribution utilities post the implementation of landmark Electricity Act 2003.

Stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) that incorporates exogenous influences on operational efficiency is adopted in the present study. Specifically, a stochastic frontier production function model with a technical inefficiency effects model (Battese and Coelli, 1995) is chosen as a preferred model. In this model, the function that explains the inefficiency scores is estimated in a single stage with the production technology. This avoids the problem of inconsistency which is possible in the two-stage approach.

The sample involved 52 Indian electricity distribution utilities for seven-year period from 2006 to 2013. Major findings of SFA show that Indian electricity distribution utilities post the implementation of Electricity Act (2003) had, on average, experienced efficiency improvement during the observed period. The overall mean technical effciency score is estimated as 78.5% which indicates that there exist wide scope for effciency improvement in the sector. Further, the empirical findings also indicate that publicly owned distribution utilities obtain average technical efficiencies of 71.3%, which is lower than privately owned distribution utilities, which achieve average technical efficiencies of 85.7%.

Power supply quality indicators such as SAIFI, SAIDI, CAIFI, etc. and unobserved heterogeneity also influence the efficiency analysis of electricity distribution utilities. Hence, these parameters as explanatory variables can be incorporated in the future work.

The results obtained from this empirical study would likely be helpful for utility managers and policymakers to know how well they are performing, and how a better corporate strategy a particular utility can formulate to improve its operational efficiency and also its position in the marketplace.

This paper is amongst the first significant attempts that implement SFA approach to the panel dataset over a longer period of time – 2006 to 2013, so, as to evaluate and analyse the operational efficiency of Indian electricity distribution utilities in a single framework after the enactment of Electricity Act (2003). Unlike previous studies, this study investigates the degree to which various exogenous (or environmental) factors influence efficiency levels in these utilities.