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This paper aims to present two updated typologies of service failures and recoveries in the omni-channel context. These typologies are based on customer complaints and recoveries collected from the corporate Facebook pages of four omni-channel department stores, two operating in Australia and two in the UK.

A document review is used of 400 customer complaints and recoveries. Content analysis is used to condense the Facebook data into categories of failures and recoveries.

Customer complaints on Facebook were triggered by a multitude of varying failures in the omni-channel context, given that it is the service brand that customers are experiencing, not just retail channels. The most prevalent failures were “bricks and mortar” shopping, delivery, marketing activities including communications and pricing, quality of goods and customer service. For service recoveries on Facebook, the four-dimensional justice framework appears valid.

Study limitations include potentially missing details about the nature of the service failures and recoveries, including customer satisfaction with service recovery.

The typologies offer guidance to omni-channel retailers by showing the range of online and offline situations, including those unrelated to actual transactions that trigger customer complaints on Facebook and the tactics of recovering.

The authors contribute to the service domain by updating failure and recovery typologies to reflect the emerging omni-channel context, jointly exploring failures and recoveries on Facebook and applying a four-dimensional justice framework for recoveries on Facebook.

Focuses on the difficulties faced by department stores in Singapore. Losing their prominence as a favourite shopping concept this retail format will need to adapt quickly or further ground will be lost to foreign competitors and new retailing formats. Creative strategies include tighter cost control, more recreational value, better customer service programmes, market expansion and niche marketing.

Retail trade, an essential component in any industrialised marketing system, has received relatively little attention on a macro level. Rather, the formal study of retail trade has been directed at helping retail managers improve the effectiveness of their decisions. Although such analysis is helpful to retail managers, it is of less use to government policy makers in formulating policy and to marketing academicians in their attempts to understand retailing on a broader level. If the retailing sector of the economy is to be better understood some major analytical questions which revolve around the productivity of retail trade must be answered. Importantly, the productivity of retail trade is not only of interest to government policy makers but also should be of interest to marketers because (1) the productivity of retailing is a significant component in influencing the cost of marketing goods, (2) as marketers we know almost nothing about the economic efficiency of retailing, and (3) it will give marketers the tools to help compare productivity in the retailing/marketing sectors of the economy to productivity in other sectors of the economy. The purpose of this paper is the estimation of a production function for department stores in the United States for the year 1972. During 1972, department store sales totalled $51·08 billion[l], comprising 11·1% of all retail sales. Only automobile dealerships, eating and drinking places, and food stores were a greater component of retail sales and only the latter employed more people. An understanding of one of the more important components of the US economy, retail trade, cannot occur in the absence of a thorough comprehension of its department store component (SIC 531).

This paper examines the Scotch whisky market in Thai department stores over a two‐year period and shows their importance to Thai retailing. The paper then finds that the category behaves as both a fast moving consumer goods market and as a luxury market. Product movement is rapid when compared to other luxury good categories and there is some evidence of discounting. The data, derived from a sample of weekly sales through 25 department stores over two years, show differences in distribution, merchandising, and pricing strategy across different chains. The paper concludes by looking at the potential causes of profit differences across these chains.

Reveals that the People′s Republic of China is a market in transition. The Chinese Government wants to modernize the retail industry as part of the movement from a planned economy to a market economy. Reports that a series of interviews with managers of government‐owned department stores and co‐operatives, free market retailers and members of the municipal and federal commercial planning committees began in 1992. One year later, when a second series of interviews was conducted, the retail industry was vastly different. Joint ventures increased and store managers were given the right to choose their own form of operation. Consumers have experienced self‐service food stores and foreign department stores opened in Beijing and Shanghai. A third set of interviews conducted in March 1995 showed that many reforms had been rescinded because of high domestic inflation. Several new retail ventures aimed at the nouveaux riches in China have had to position downwards. Concludes that the People′s Republic of China′s change from a planned to a market economy is a lesson in social and market change.

The Korean government has played an important role in the development of the domestic retailing industry. Korean manufacturers were nurtured until they were able to compete with manufacturers throughout the world. Korean retailers are now caught in the domestic market between the powerful Korean manufacturers and foreign retail competitors who have themselves learned to be competitive by going head to head with world‐class retailers. Manufacturers, rather than retailers, have dominated the Korean distribution industry. Korean retailing is characterized by large department stores owned by the chaebols, and small, inefficient family‐centered operations. In contrast to the department store’s decline in sales, the growth of discount stores is the strongest trend in Korean retailing. The government has chosen the manufacturing sector for aggressive development. The result has been a world competitive, export intensive manufacturing sector and a weak, inefficient retail sector. We use state as strategist in retailing (SSR) model to explain how dimensions and stages of government involvement affect retailing.

Analyses the rapid and considerable changes occurring in retailing in West Germany, highlighting its differences with the UK. Focuses on the problems faced by West German department store groups which are struggling against competition from the newer retail stores.

Reports on the difficulties currently faced by department stores. Argues that a return to a true service orientation is needed. Discusses consumer attitudes towards the service offered in such stores via the results of a focus group interview, ranking and perceptual mapping of store services. Offers managerial guidelines for implementing a successful service strategy.

We review the Japanese distribution system, its positives and negatives, its cultural heritage, and discuss the implications for the future for it.

The purpose of this paper is to enhance students’ ability to use theory to assess facts logically and creatively. To achieve this end, the author explicates the evolution of retailing from its pre-industrial genesis to its Internet descendants in a historically based retail strategy class that investigates the determinants of new retail formats (major retail innovations – MRIs) over a > 200 year span. MRIs entail a major reconfiguration of the retail mix (i.e. price, product, place, promotion and personnel) , take significant business from existing formats that sell the same goods, generate greater benefits to customers than do rival formats and are widely imitated.

The author chronologically presents how the industrial revolution generated major environmental changes that facilitated a creative and highly effective re-organization of the retail mix.

Changes in environmental factors (e.g. mass production, transportation, location of population and communication) made possible retail formats that could not have existed earlier.

The course is based on two theories that are linked by the retail mix; one theory relates to consumer store choice, while the other relates to the minimum market size required for a retail format to be viable. To illustrate, more personnel raises service, drawing customers from rivals while raising costs; higher costs raise the needed market size.

All six MRIs are derived from the two aforementioned theories. Experience indicates these theories are valid for assessing retailing at all stages of economic development. The course is based on the authors own material.