Search results

This chapter explores how department stores came at the end of the 19th century to be at the origin of what is now called “fashion tourism.” Contributing to a new “geography of commerce,” it highlights the role of the space of the department store both as a place of conspicuous fashion consumption and tourism. Further, it demonstrates how Parisian department stores helped consolidate Paris's place as the capital of fashion and luxury. Far from being only places to buy the latest in fashion, the latter became indeed a symbol as quintessentially Parisian as the Eiffel Tower and as necessary to visit for the “Paris experience.”

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of physical environment design (PED) and its antecedents on consumers’ emotional well-being (EWB). Drawing on place identity and emotional theories, the study aims to provide a new perspective to retail store experiences.

A survey of 800 respondents was conducted in London, out of which 764 responses were constructively used. The data was collected from international retail outlets, and structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data.

The empirical results show that PED has a positive effect on consumers’ EWB. Among the antecedents, visual identity does not have any significant effect on PED and EWB. In contrast, communication had a significant effect on PED but did not have any effect on EWB, and further, cultural heritage had a positive effect on both PED and EWB. Further, moderator analysis identifies the boundary conditions under which specific theories hold.

The value of this paper lies in its potential to be used for creating the perfect design planning in retail stores. Significant implications for managers and researchers are highlighted.

This paper presents an innovative approach to develop the principles of retail store’s PED to support the EWB of consumers.

This article delineates the pilot implementation of the Rohingya Archive (R-Archive). The R-Archive seeks to both confront and exploit the roles of documentation and recordkeeping in forced displacement of Rohingya people through targeted physical and bureaucratic violence in Myanmar. This grassroots activist intervention is located at the intersection of technology, rights, records, jurisdictions and economics. Using Arweave's blockweave, the R-Archive secures copies of records, such as identity documentation, land deeds and personal papers, carried into diaspora by Rohingya refugees against unauthorised alteration, deletion and loss, providing a trust infrastructure for accumulating available evidence in support of rights claims and cultural preservation.

Iterative development of functional requirements, data collection processes and identification of a technological solution for the community-based, post-custodial, blockchain-inspired R-Archive; design and testing of the R-Archive pilot; and analysis of trust and economic concerns arising.

A complex set of interconnecting considerations is raised by this use of emerging technologies in service to a vulnerable and diasporic community. Hostile governments and volatile cryptocurrencies are both threats to the distributed post-custodial R-Archive. However, the strength of the community bonds that form the archive and articulated in its records speak to the possibility of perdurance for a global Rohingya archive, and working through the challenges surfaced by its development offers the possibility to serve as a model that might be adaptable for other grassroots archival activist projects initiated by oppressed, marginalised and diasporic communities.

Personal and community safety and accessibility concerns, especially in refugee camps and under Covid-19 restrictions, presented particular challenges to carrying out the research and development that are addressed in the research design and future research plans.

The goal of this pilot was to collect and store examples of a range of documents that demonstrate different aspects of Rohingya culture and links to the homeland as well as those that record formal evidentiary relationships between members of the Rohingya community now in diaspora and the Burmese state (e.g. acknowledgements of citizenship). The pilot was intended to demonstrate the viability of using a blockchain-inspired decentralised archival system combined with a community-driven approach to data collection and then to evaluate the results for potential to scale.

The R-Archive is a community-centred and driven effort to identify and preserve, under as secure and trusted conditions as possible, digital copies of documents that are of juridical, cultural and personal value to the Rohingya people and also of significance as primary documentary evidence that might be used by international legal institutions in investigating genocide taking place in Burma and by academic researchers studying the history of Burma.

The R-Archive is novel in terms of its technological application (Arweave), the economic concerns of a vulnerable stateless population it is trying to address, and its functional complexity, in that its goal is simultaneously to serve both legal evidentiary and community archive functions. The R-Archive is also an important addition to other notable efforts in the diasporic Rohingya community that have attempted to employ the tools of technology for cultural preservation.

This paper aims to examine why retail firms seldom achieve full integration of online and offline channels as prescribed in omni-channel literature. It examines the intermediate process of channel integration from an internal, operational perspective.

This study is composed of two parts. In the first part, the authors interviewed informants from nine firms that were engaged in channel integration. In the second part, the authors conducted case studies with three firms from the cosmetics and skincare industry against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic to find evidence to support or negate the propositions made in the first part.

The first part identified six operational challenges to channel integration. The authors categorized these challenges into two groups: inter-channel communication and inter-channel competition. Inter-channel competition carries more weight at the latter stage of integration. The authors also identified two antecedents that affect the seriousness of these challenges: heterogeneity among channels in business operation and external competitive pressure. In the second part, the authors found that both inter-channel communication and inter-channel competition were improved because of the external competitive pressure exerted by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the heterogeneity of offline channels against online channels in business operation is a double-edged sword.

The study identifies the changing effects of the challenges of channel integration and their antecedents in the midst of integration. The positive influence of a specific dimension of channel heterogeneity against other channels increases and then decreases along channel integration. The identification of the changing effects lays the foundation for a finer stage model of channel integration.

The case is written based on publicly available data from primary sources such as the company’s annual reports, company website and the company’s presentations, as well as from secondary sources comprising newspaper articles, research papers, research magazines, magazine articles, industry reports, research reports, etc. as indicated in the references. The company’s financials and peer data are sourced from the Thomson Reuters Eikon database.

The case examines the financial position of Macy’s, Inc., America’s largest and one of the oldest premier departmental stores, with a consolidated annual turnover of US$18,097m in the fiscal year 2020/2021 (FY, 2021). Over the previous few years, the company had been struggling with decreasing market share and profitability mainly due to increasing competition from online retailers and deep discounters, which was affecting the company’s share price. With the appointment of a new chief executive officer (CEO) in fiscal year (FY) 2017, Macy’s, Inc. undertook several changes to revive its financial health and improve its market share. However, it still registered heavy losses of US$3,944m in the FY 2020/2021, the company’s first time in the past decade. With many retailers filing for bankruptcy, was there more that Macy’s could do to improve the company’s position and regain lost investor confidence? Will its entry into emerging markets play a crucial role in its turnaround?

The case can be used in undergraduate and postgraduate courses such as accounting for managers, financial statement analysis, management accounting, introduction to accounting and advanced financial statement analysis. The case can also be effectively used to understand the primary fundamental analysis of the company that involves understanding the company’s positioning and strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis. The case would also help business management and entrepreneurship students to get a preliminary idea about the change management process. Finally, the case can be used to familiarize students with using Microsoft Excel to build financial analysis worksheets.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

This study examines how informal business networks achieve marketing goals in socially uncertain contexts. Drawing from multiple historical sources, Shangbangs, a type of business network that thrived in pre-1949 China, are analyzed.

The Critical Historical Research Method (CHRM) undergirds a study of Shangbangs’ historicity (i.e. their socio-historically embedded multiplicity, including organizational forms, activities and connotations.

As informal regional, professional, project-based, special-product-based or mixed marketing networks, Shangbangs relied on “flexible specialization” and coupled multiple business needs to market goods and services, business organizations, specific social values and, when necessary, to debrand business rivals.

This analysis extends theories about marketing networks by probing their subtypes, diverse marketing activities, multipronged channels and relationship building with social entities (including underground societies, business associations and guilds) in response to pre-1949 China’s market uncertainties. Substantiating an alternative approach to “flexible specialization” and marketing innovations within the pre-1949 Chinese economy shows how a parallel theoretical framework can complement western-based marketing theories.

This first comprehensive analysis of Shangbangs, an innovative historical Chinese marketing network outside the conventional market-corporate dichotomy, can inform theory building for marketing strategy-making and management conditioned by social contexts.

The best possible way for brick-and-mortar retailers to maximise engagement with personalised shoppers is capitalising on intelligent insights. The retailer operates differently with diversified items and services, but influencing retail atmospheric on personalised shoppers, the perception remains the same across industries. Retail atmospherics stimuli such as design, smell and others create behavioural modifications. The purpose of this study is to explore the atmospheric effects on brick-and-mortar store performance and personalised shopper's behaviour using cognitive computing based in-store analytics in the context of emerging market.

The data are collected from 35 shoppers of a brick-and-mortar retailer through questionnaire survey and analysed using quantitative method.

The result of the analysis reveals month-on-month growth in footfall count (46%), conversation rate (21%), units per transaction (27%), average order value (23%), dwell time (11%), purchase intention (29%), emotional experience (40%) and a month-on-month decline in remorse (20%). The retailers need to focus on three control gates of shopper behaviour: entry, browsing and exit. Attention should be paid to the cognitive computing solution to judge the influence of retail atmospherics on store performance and behaviour of personalised shoppers. Retail atmospherics create the right experience for individual shoppers and forceful use of it has an adverse impact.

The paper focuses on strategic decisions of retailers, the tactical value of personalised shoppers and empirically identifies the retail atmospherics effect on brick-and-mortar store performance and personalised shopper behaviour.

This study aims to provide an overview of the usage of stored collections in museums located worldwide. To achieve this purpose, some results gathered across five continents through a survey conducted between December 2020 and January 2021 are set out.

Museums hold collections so that people can benefit from them. Items need to be preserved as well. To achieve this purpose, a considerable portion of museum collections is kept in storage. Consequently, museums that can show a significant part of their whole collections are few and far between. This scenario implies collections, the “very heart” of museums, are not accessible to the general public. In addition, the lack of space and the poor documentation exacerbate the scenario in terms of accessibility. This study aims to provide an overview of the usage of stored collections in museums located worldwide. In order to achieve this purpose, some results gathered across five continents through a survey conducted between December 2020 and January 2021 are set out. The research figures show that only 5% of museum stored collections are accessible to the general public. To enhance the accessibility of stored collections, museums have been adopting some strategies. Amongst them, some museums have opened up visible storage, lent or exchanged their items. Despite their contribution to overcoming the burning issue related to the accessibility of stored collections, these strategies imply a physical presence of visitors so as to enjoy collections. Digitization of collections is one alternative strategy adopted by a plethora of museums to increase the accessibility of collections. This solution boasts many advantages inasmuch as it overcomes many of the typical disadvantages of the other strategies, such as geographical constraints. Moreover, people can enjoy collections, and museums can ensure the adequate preservation of them. Thus, the digitization of items is the epitome of accessibility since, potentially, all collections can be made accessible, and museums can take care of them simultaneously. The study highlights the benefits of digital access and compares it with physical access. In addition, the research sheds light on how documentation supports collection management and increases accessibility.

The research figures show that only 5% of museum stored collections are accessible to the general public. To enhance the accessibility of stored collections, museums have been adopting some strategies. Amongst them, some museums have opened up visible storage, lent or exchanged their items. Despite their contribution to overcoming the burning issue related to the accessibility of stored collections, these strategies imply a physical presence of visitors so to enjoy collections.

The findings of this study are based on quantitative analysis. Therefore, this study might be integrated with interviews' with visitors. It would be interesting to shed light on people's opinions concerning what museums are doing in the digital realm, such as the digital content in terms of the number of items, quality of images and ease of searching.

This study might provide practical implications for museums and people. One important contribution is the awareness of how the appropriateness of collections management plays a crucial role in preserving collections and making them accessible to the public. Another possible implication is that museums can enlarge their visibility through digital content, both because they have not digitized and due to the dimension of their digital content. This goal might be achieved by sharing the staff with specific expertise with other institutions or recruiting volunteers and involving local communities in common tasks (so that professionals could dedicate themselves to more skilled undertakings). An alternative might be to network with local universities so as to benefit from practitioners in the digital field. Last but not least, these findings could raise the awareness that museums are facing the problem of making stored collections accessible, thereby increasing the trust in museums from the general public.

Digitization of collections is one alternative strategy adopted by a plethora of museums so to increase the accessibility of collections. This solution boasts many advantages inasmuch as it overcomes many of the typical disadvantages of the other strategies, such as geographical constraints. Moreover, people can enjoy collections and museums can ensure the adequate preservation of them. Thus, the digitization of items is the epitome of accessibility since, potentially, all collections can be made accessible, and museums can take care of them simultaneously.

The study highlights the benefits of digital access and compares it with physical access. In addition, the research sheds light on how documentation supports collection management and increases accessibility.

The purpose of this paper is to revisit the potential of the New Deal as a research context in management and organization studies and, in doing so, forward the role one of its chief architects, Harry Hopkins, played in managing the economic crisis. The exploration takes us to multiple layers that work together to form context around Hopkins including the Great Depression, the Roosevelt Administration, and ultimately, the New Deal. By raising Harry Hopkins as an exemplar of historical-narrative exclusion, the authors can advance the understanding of his role in the New Deal and how his actions produced early insights about management (e.g. modern crisis management).

The paper experiments with the methodological assemblage of ANTi-History and microhistorical analysis that the authors call “ANTi-Microhistory” to examine the life narrative of Harry Hopkins, his early association with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and later, the New Deal. To accomplish this, the authors undertake a programme of archival research (e.g. the digital repository of The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum) and assess various materials (e.g. speeches, biographies and memoirs) from across multiple spaces.

The findings suggest Harry Hopkins to be a much more powerful actor in mobilizing New Deal policies and their effect on early management thought than what was previously accepted. In the process, the authors found that because of durable associations with Roosevelt, key policy architects of the same ilk as Harry Hopkins (e.g. Frances Perkins, Henry Wallace, Lewis Douglas, and others) and their contributions have been marginalized. This finding illustrates the significant potential of little-known historical figures and how they might shed new insight on the development of the field and management practice.

The aim is to demonstrate the potential of engaging historical research in management with the individual – Harry Hopkins – as a unit of analysis. By engaging historical research on the individual – be it well-known or obscure figures of the past – the authors are considering how they contribute to the understanding of phenomena (e.g. New Deal, Progressivism or Keynesian economics). The authors build on research that brings to focus forgotten people, communities and ideas in management studies but go further in advocating for space in the research to consider the scholarly potential of the individual.

Generation Z will be the leading consumer group in the future. Using convenience stores, the study provides an in-depth analysis on Gen Z’s current experience and future expectations from retail stores. The study further highlights the differences between Gen Z’s perception of convenience stores across three different regions – the USA, South Korea and Japan.

This study conducted a series of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 36 Gen Z participants from the USA (12), South Korea (11) and Japan (13). All interviews were first coded based on a preselected list of themes and were further coded with new themes that emerged from exploratory coding.

Each regional cohort varied in terms of how they experienced and what they expected from convenience stores. US participants showed negative or utilitarian attitudes toward convenience stores, whereas South Korean participants had a positive, personal attachment to them. In comparison, Japanese participants had a relatively neutral attitude. However, all three groups showed a common preference for smart technology and health concerns surrounding convenience store foods.

Convenience store chains should consider the cultural nuances when designing future services. The chains should further strive to remove the health concerns about the foods provided at the stores and design smart technologies that enhance user experience.

The present study broadens the knowledge in this budding consumer segment where current research is limited. It further sheds light on the variance among Gen Zers across different cultural contexts.