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Unethically behaving customers deviating from morally acceptable norms have posed an additional challenge to retailers, frontline employees (FLEs) and other customers in recent crisis-dominant environments. While research concerning customer behaviour ethicality focusses on purchasing modes and consumption behaviour, unethicality in all its facets receives limited attention, leaving dimensions of unethical customer behaviour (UCB) and effective managerial strategies unexplored. The purpose of this paper is to describe dimensions of UCB, investigate its causes, explore its consequences for customers and FLEs and infer practical implications for retail management by collecting customers' and FLEs' views in collaboration of each other.

Due to the explorative nature of this research, qualitative semi-structured interviews with 45 customers and 51 FLEs were conducted, following a content analytical approach and the establishment of inter-rater reliability coefficients.

The findings reveal multiple UCB dimensions operating on situational and individual behavioural levels, targeting mainly employees, followed by customers. The reasons for UCB arising correspond to customers' attitudes, social influences and egoistic motives. UCB imposes risks of financial losses for retailers, due to the wasting of resources as a consequence of employees' stress and emotional exhaustion, demanding managerial boundary-spanning activities. Further, it negatively impacts customers' shopping behaviours, provoking online shopping and shopping avoidance.

The study fills the research gap regarding perceived unethicality of customer behaviour by describing and explaining differing forms of UCB, considering customers' and FLEs' views in retail stores. It develops a UCB framework, identifies UCB dimensions beyond current academic research and derives specific practical implications to make the phenomenon manageable for retailers. The originality of this paper lies in the synthesis of the three UCB dimensions, consisting of antecedents, forms of UCB and consequences for customers and FLEs.

Different age groups display different shopping patterns in terms of how and where consumers buy products. During times of crisis, such behavioural differences become even more striking yet remain under-researched with respect to elderly consumers. This paper investigates the impact of age on retail-related behavioural changes and behavioural stability of elderly shoppers (in comparison to younger consumers) during a crisis.

The authors surveyed 643 Austrian consumers to assess the impact of perceived threat on behavioural change and the moderating effect of age groups. Based on findings from this survey, they subsequently conducted 51 semi-structured interviews to understand the causes of behavioural change and behavioural stability during a crisis.

Elderly shoppers display more stable shopping behaviour during a crisis compared to younger consumers, which is influenced by perceived threat related to the crisis. Such findings indicate that elderly shoppers reinforce their learnt and embedded shopping patterns. The causes of change and stability in behaviour include environmental and inter-personal factors.

Through the lens of social cognitive theory, protection motivation theory and dual process theory, this research contributes to an improved understanding of changes in shopping behaviour of elderly consumers, its antecedents and consequences during a time of crisis. The authors reveal reasons that lead to behavioural stability, hence the absence of change, in terms of shopping during a crisis. They further outline implications for retailers that might wish to better respond to shopping behaviours of the elderly.