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The food sector is currently undergoing a process of transition as a result of the increased level of consumers' awareness towards issues related to sustainability. This work aims at analyzing the existence of links between technological innovation and sustainability and its consequences on variables of paramount importance in the retail sector such as store image and loyalty towards the establishment. Moreover, we examine if the strength of these relations differs across store formats.

To achieve the objective of this work, a theoretical model based on the literature is proposed, contrasted through an empirical study carried out in a sample of 510 customers from three food retail formats: hypermarkets, supermarkets and discount stores.

The results indicate that technological innovation strengthens sustainability. In addition, sustainability is postulated as a dynamic element of the store's image and loyalty. The intensity of these relationships may vary depending on the commercial format.

The implementation of innovative and sustainable practices such as reducing energy consumption, the use of recycled materials to manufacture products, and the participation of retail companies in collective social actions is considered to be of primary importance.

The study sheds light on the knowledge of the relations between customers' perceptions of technological innovation and sustainability in retailing, confirming their influence on store image and customer loyalty. Moreover, the findings reveal the importance of sustainability and innovation for the main types of retail food store format, although with some peculiarities that allow to draw relevant managerial implications for practitioners.

Discount grocery stores (DGSs) are attractive food supply chain (FSC) channels because many cost-conscious Indians use them for monthly needs. Despite capacity, DGSs must address customer concerns about store crowd densities and improve their COVID-19 preparedness. The purpose of this study is to learn how retail operations strategies can improve customer experience and how stores can benefit.

The study looked at a case study where retail operations are run more efficiently, and the customer experience is enhanced by standardizing and customizing customer transactions. The potential benefits that customers and retailers might anticipate are then statistically verified. Next, the potential benefits were examined to determine which ones from customers’ and retailers’ views should be prioritized to increase satisfaction.

The case situation analysis in the study demonstrates how DGSs can improve their retail operations to reduce customer wait times and provide greater convenience. The study also provides practitioners with potential benefits to pursue from the perspectives of retailers, customers and both retailers and customers.

This study requires many past transactions and can be considered an extension of the current study, so it does not capture floor space and capacity improvements.

This research can help FSC retailers compete with upstream supply chain partners and customers in omnichannel retailing. By improving DGS retailer capacity and customer experience, this study can benefit all FSC stakeholders.

Although there are numerous potential benefits that practitioners can pursue, the current study suggests that practitioners focus on those that can improve retailer and customer satisfaction.

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 case is based on primary and secondary sources of information. These sources include interviews with senior executives as well as documents provided by Mondragon and Eroski. The interviews were conducted on-site. In addition, the authors researched the literature on both organizations.

Eroski is the largest of Mondragon Corporation’s coops. Since its founding, Eroski has faced numerous challenges. It has responded to each challenge with out-of-the-box thinking. In response to the pandemic, Eroski become an e-commerce supermarket as well as selectively continuing bricks and mortar stores. As the pandemic is winding down, Eroski is considering how to respond to the “new normal,” which is largely undefined. The question posited at the end of the case is, “Will Eroski be able to hold to its social principles, maintain its unusual governance model and other unusual practices, and survive this latest challenge?”

Eroski of Mondragon is a complex and unusual organization. To appreciate the challenges and how they were overcome by its unique business model, a student must have a minimum background in management, corporate finance and marketing. Thus, this case would fit well into a senior or graduate class on strategic human resource management. It is also recommended for the strategy capstone course usually offered during the last year of a business bachelor’s degree (senior level) to ensure that students are introduced to what Paul Adler refers to as an alternative business model. It can also be targeted for an advanced management course or a strategy course at the MBA and executive levels.

In the light of the case study and the accompanying case study questions, the incumbent would be able to gain a comprehensive understanding on the theoretical underpinnings of retail store expansion, identify the challenges for expanding a brand into emerging markets such as India and apply various marketing strategies aimed at in-depth analysis retail expansion. Learners can further comprehend the importance of brand communication incorporated by the brand to attract its customer subset.

It was in December 2022, when Mason Chatterjee, the Indian brand head of Armani Exchange (A|X), was confronted with the managerial dilemma whether launching the second store in the city of Ahmedabad would be a right decision. Another issue that was troubling him was how to go about launching a second store in a city which was not a home to other luxury sublabels. The case study illustrates the decisional aspect of retail expansion adopted by Chatterjee, considering the distinct managerial perspectives. Chatterjee found potential in the city of Ahmedabad, owing to an increased number of high-net-worth individuals and other macro factors. The case study is primarily an outcome of research carried out at A|X store at Ahmedabad One mall, Ahmedabad, for over a fortnight in the month of February 2023. The expansion decision of Chatterjee proved to be a success in the city of Ahmedabad reaching a sales figure of INR 1 crore (US$130,344.11) in the very first month of its launch. However, he was confronted with the managerial dilemma of further expansion, just six months after the launch of the latest expansion.

The case study is intended for advanced undergraduates or postgraduate programs in management or electives such as marketing, retail management and strategic management. It has not only been specifically designed for teaching the concept of retail expansion but can also be used to integrate contexts on brand’s merchandise mix, retail positioning, visual merchandising and brand communication. The case study has an overview of each of these elements. The instructor may choose them into the context for a wider encompassing detailed lesson or particularly on the main aspect of the case.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS8: Marketing

This study aims to use the extended model of goal-directed behavior (EMGB) to examine the interaction between wine purchasing motivations and prior knowledge and their impact on consumers’ wine purchase intentions and decisions.

The survey was conducted in large discount retail stores in South Korea, and structural equation modeling analysis reveals EMGB’s strong predictive ability to understand wine buying behavior.

Notably, the findings reveal that social life and enjoyment motivations play a significant role in shaping consumers' attitudes. In addition, positive emotions, attitudes, prior knowledge, subjective norms and negative anticipated emotions all have a positive effect on desire, while desire, prior knowledge and frequency of past behavior have a significant impact on behavioral intention. Contrary to previous studies, celebration motivation has no significant effect on attitude and perceived behavioral control has no significant effect on desire and behavioral intention.

The findings provide practical insights for marketers to conduct targeted wine marketing campaigns and increase consumers' intention to purchase wine.

This study furthers the understanding of the complex mechanisms involved in shaping the intention to purchase wine using the EMGB framework.

Design is an important construct in the retail environment literature. Yet, the measures used for design have not followed appropriate scale development procedures. The purpose of this study is to provide a conceptual definition and then develop a scale for retail environment design (RED).

Interviews with both consumers and marketing researchers are used to generate a potential list of items. Using four different studies, these items are refined, and the RED scale is offered.

This study develops and validates the four-dimensional RED scale to measure the design of retail environments. The dimensions are functional, aesthetic, lighting and signage.

The newly developed RED scale will allow retailing researchers to measure lighting and signage qualities as part of retail design, measure design of retail environments more accurately and allow different studies to be compared.

The newly developed RED scale will allow retailers to better understand customers’ perceptions of the four dimensions of design. Retailers spend significant time and money designing and redesigning retail environments. The RED scale will enable managers to ensure these significant investments create competitive advantages and an appropriate return on investment.

A scale to measure retail environment design is developed. The scale includes two dimensions (lighting and signage) that are not typically investigated.

This study aims to investigate customers' personal innovativeness (PI) as an influencing factor of omni-channel customer experience throughout pre-purchase, purchase and post–purchase stages of the customer journey, and their subsequent influences on customers' reuse intention.

Data were collected from customers who had experience with omni-channel shopping in South Korea through a questionnaire made with Naver Forms, both online and offline from 15 June to 15 July 2022. Out of the received responses, only valid and consistent questionnaires were considered for statistical analysis. In total, 272 valid samples were utilised for the final analysis. Analyses included reliability, validity, path, structural equation modelling and mediation effects, using SPSS and AMOS software.

The results revealed a significant influence of personal innovativeness on the omni-channel customer experience across all purchase stages. Personal innovativeness was found to influence the customer experience in the pre- and post–purchase stages, thus affecting reuse intention. However, it did not have the same effect in the purchase stage. The omni-channel experience customer experience also played an indirect mediating role in the relationship between personal innovativeness and reuse intention.

First, personal innovativeness in the IT domain may be very prominent in studies examining innovative behaviours related to computing technology. Second, this study provides further understanding of customers' intentions to reuse omni-channel shopping. Third, the path analysis showed that personal innovativeness significantly affects customer experience at all pre-purchase, purchase and post–purchase stages of the customer journey. However, except for the purchase experience, both pre- and post–purchase experiences significantly impact customers' intention to reuse omni-channels and play a mediating role.

First, omni-channel retailers should launch new products, innovative promotional activities and explore new channels or new service modes to stimulate the need recognition of customers with high personal innovativeness. Second, omni-channel retailers should pay attention to the users' reviews of each channel because they play a key role in potential customers' purchase decisions. Third, offering customers a seamless shopping experience is essential as a marketing strategy for omni-channel retailing.

This study elucidates the causal relationship between personal characteristics and behaviour by dividing the omni-channel customer journey. In particular, personal innovativeness is identified as an important predictor of the intention to reuse omni-channels during the pre- and post–purchase stages. This suggests that omni-channel retailers need to strategically manage these stages to boost customers' reuse intention.

This study aims to discover clothing consumption shifts and explore the effect of consumer resilience in changing clothing consumption patterns or establishing new clothing consumption routines after experiencing disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

A two-phase multi-method approach was employed. The first phase of qualitative inquiry was conducted to identify clothing consumption shifts using a content mining approach on a text data sample of 17,195 tweets posted from 1 January to 30 September 2020. The second phase of the quantitative study was conducted to explore consumer resilience's effect on clothing consumption shifts based on a collected national sample of 418 respondents through an online survey.

This study identified clothing consumption changes including value shifts, style shifts and spending shifts. It was also found that resilient consumers care about a company's ethical practices and value the quality instead of the number of items in their wardrobe. Consumers spend more time wearing comfortable clothing and are used to the working-from-home lifestyle.

This study explored approaches to making use of social media data for a better understanding of consumers' clothing behaviour. Also, this study attempted to explore and understand clothing consumption practices during and post the Covid-19 global pandemic, focusing on identifying shifts that might last longer for fashion businesses to explore growth opportunities.

Incumbent retail organisations need to develop new capabilities to adapt with the increasingly competitive retail landscape. Despite the growing relevance of innovation in retail practice, the strategic management of innovation in retailing is still vastly under-researched. This explorative study thus aims to investigate how incumbent retail firms can organise for innovation from an organisational ambidexterity perspective.

A single-case study of an established Swedish retail firm was conducted from December 2016 to July 2018 and followed up in June 2021. The authors followed the process of implementation of organisational changes aimed to increase innovation in the company, particularly the introduction of a digital marketing initiative and a corporate innovation hub. Data collection was based on nine semi-structured interviews and participant observations and unstructured interviews from 13 meetings and workshops. An abductive approach to data analysis was followed, iteratively comparing theoretical concepts and empirical data using open, axial and selective coding to distil findings into aggregated themes.

Given the inherently limited formalisation of innovation processes in most retail organisations, structural ambidexterity appears to be necessary when the aim is radical, strategic retail innovation. Structural mechanisms are able to safeguard the space and resources to focus on long-term research and projects with higher risk and uncertainty; however, integration of innovation activities to the mainstream organisation is critical. Pursuing contextual ambidexterity, wherein instead of structural solutions, employees are empowered to divide employees' time between innovation-related and efficiency-related tasks, is more likely related to retail innovations that are incremental and operational.

The paper contributes to the emerging topic of strategic management of innovation in retailing, by explicating how incumbent retailers can organise for innovation depending on the type of innovation that is aimed for, using organisational ambidexterity as a novel perspective.