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This empirical study aims to examine luxury fashion retailers' localised multiple channel distribution strategies in China.

Through case studies of 15 participating retailers, qualitative data were collected from 33 semi-structured interviews.

Strong impacts of internationalisation strategies, distribution strategies and channel length towards multiple channel retailing are revealed. Multi-channel retailing is widely employed by firms who have entered China and further developed their businesses through local partnerships and adopted a selective distribution strategy via relatively longer channels. Omni-channel retailing is only suitable for the few retailers using an exclusive distribution strategy through direct marketing and wholly owned customer relationship management. As a dynamic transformation from multi- to omni-channel retailing, cross-channel retailing is adopted by those who are withdrawing from local partnerships and shifting to wholly owned expansions and operations in host markets.

The results are potentially challenged by relatively small sample size.

Practitioners are suggested to adapt multiple channel retailing to their international expansion strategies, distribution strategies and channel length in the host markets.

This paper contributes to the literature in both multiple channel retailing and international retailing by offering insights into the motives, development patterns and suitability of multiple channel retailing in the international retail marketing context.

Fashion retail has faced immense changes in the rapid development of e-commerce, creating significant uncertainty about physical stores’ future. To improve the consumer shopping experience and increase sales revenue for fashion retailers, this paper investigates how Augmented Reality (AR) can be implemented within high-street fashion retail by exploring leading UK retailers’ reactions to pragmatic future scenarios.

This study conducted qualitative research through 13 interviews – eight retail staff from high-street and high-end markets and five AR/UX designers regarding their insights into how AR can enhance consumer engagement at each market level.

The results showed that the fashion retail market is ill-prepared to use AR. AR could help high-street brands offer a seamless shopping experience for consumers by prioritising the functional purpose but exciting AR animation. This would offer consumers an efficient and enjoyable shopping experience. While implementing AR, high-end stores should tell stories through hedonic engagement, letting consumers efficiently engage with brand messages, since building an AR ecosystem is cheaper than creating the story flow physically.

The study devises 16 retailer-supported guidelines for designing AR for Fashion Retail levels to guide innovators and retailers.

This paper aims to synthesize the existing literature on virtual reality (VR) in the luxury fashion industry, discuss the current practical applications of VR technologies and review previous research undertaken in the luxury fashion field.

This paper conducts a systematic review and thematic analysis of existing literature to evaluate current research concerning VR and the luxury fashion industry. This search initially returned a total of 1,131 sources. After establishing and applying criteria of exclusion and inclusion, a total of 46 articles were selected for the thematic analysis.

Five major themes were identified, including virtual luxury fashion consumption, VR in marketing communication, virtual try-on, VR retail (including virtual fashion retail spaces) and virtual worlds (including customers’ virtual representation as avatars). The importance of these themes for the study of VR in luxury fashion is supported by relevant studies in the literature.

Whilst research into VR use within luxury fashion has increased recently, it remains fragmented. Given the absence of a comprehensive review addressing this topic within the literature, this paper will help scholars and fashion brands better understand the effects of VR on the luxury fashion industry. By integrating current practice and existing research, this paper contributes to a better understanding of how and where VR is used in luxury fashion contexts.

Businesses embark on cause-related marketing (CRM) initiatives as a marketing strategy to fortify consumers' behavioural intentions. Prior research indicates that human values could be tapped to understand the consumers' responses to perceived organizational motives behind undertaking social cause initiatives. This research employs Schwartz's theory of human values to examine consumers' patronage intentions towards CRM-linked fashion products. Moreover, fashion leaders play a crucial role in the diffusion of the latest fashion and fashion trends. This research investigates by integrating human values and fashion leadership, offering insights into CRM-linked fashion consumption motives.

The overarching goal was to investigate the complex interplay between human values and female fashion leadership to predict CRM patronage intention (CPI). Hence, a large-scale research study on 2,050 samples was undertaken by adopting threefold partial least squares–multigroup analysis–artificial neural network (PLS-MGA-ANN) to establish and empirically test a comprehensive model.

This study is unique as it establishes and validates the relative or normalized importance placed on human values by fashion leaders, thereby predicting CPIs. The results revealed that women with high-fashion leadership and specific value types (benevolence, universalism, self-direction) are more likely to patronize CRM-linked fashion retailers. In addition, the findings validated that women with low-fashion leadership and specific value types (tradition, security, conformity) are more likely to patronize CRM-linked fashion stores.

The findings provide a valuable rationale to non-profit marketers, fashion marketing experts and practitioners to design customer value-based profiling and manage crucial CRM decisions.

Fashion retailers have increasingly adopted consumer-facing in-store technology (CFIT) to enhance the customer experience/service provision. This paper aims to explore managerial experiences and sociotechnical implications of introducing these technologies into organizational working processes.

This study draws on interpretive analysis of semi-structured interviews with 74 senior fashion retail industry practitioners, technology providers and consultants to understand managerial perspectives on technological innovation issues.

Endogenous and exogenous factors act as drivers or barriers to CFIT adoption and are influenced by strategic and tactical motives. Key issues that retail managers encounter include challenges in aligning technology implementation with retailer brand image to manage risk and reputation, with additional complexity arising from different internal and/or external actors involved, as well as required levels of change in organizational structure.

This study contributes an empirically derived framework identifying reasons for – and the drivers/barriers influencing – fashion retailers' CFIT adoption, classifying three broad approaches to CFIT adoption: embedded, transformative and opportunistic.

This study aims to reveal how the organizational structure (vertical integration vs. franchising) of 308 stores in a Spanish fashion retail franchise chain affects their performance measured through two key performance indicators commonly used in this industry, namely, labor productivity and service quality ratings. We also appraise the moderating role played by the servant leadership of franchisees and managers of company-owned outlets to explore its influence on the relationship between organizational structure and store performance.

We have used multivariate analyses to study the research questions, with a panel dataset of quarterly store-level data for the period January–December 2022.

Vertically-integrated stores record lower labor productivity than franchised ones. This impact is lower in stores run by individuals high in servant leadership than in those run by individuals low in it. Franchised outlets also record lower ratings in service quality than vertically-integrated stores, and this negative impact is weaker in stores run by individuals high in servant leadership.

Nothing has thus far been published on the moderating effect of servant leadership in the relationship between the organizational structure of different stores and their outcomes in franchise systems.

This study aims to examine the research trends in fashion industry during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Besides, it also provides an overview on the new marketing and operational strategies, and reveals the corresponding business challenges of a footwear enterprise in Hong Kong during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A comprehensive literature review is first conducted to identify the research trends in fashion industry during the COVID-19 pandemic. A qualitative exploratory case study is then used to illustrate how a footwear enterprise has coped with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The case study has showed that omni-channel retailing, collaboration with e-tailers, quick response system and mixed production strategy are adopted in the targeted case during the COVID-19 pandemic. Besides, the targeted case has also faced the challenges in the areas of sales, customer relationship management, and demand forecasting and inventory planning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study provides managerial insights on the real practices used to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and proposes various academic future research directions in fashion industry based on the real-world observations.

This study examines consumer online purchase behaviour in the Nigerian fashion industry.

A cross-sectional study was conducted with a total useable sample size of 241 respondents contacted through on-site visitation. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to test the influence of customer value on online purchase behaviour in the fashion industry.

Consumer values are categorised into terminal (happiness, love and satisfaction) and instrumental (time-saving, price-saving discount, service convenience and merchandise assortment) values. The findings show that both values have significant influence on online consumer purchase behaviour, while fashion consciousness moderates the relationship between consumer values and online purchase behaviour.

Online fashion retailers should focus on increasing the terminal and instrumental values of their products and making available goods that meet the needs of different generational cohorts in society.

Studies have examined various factors, for example, consumer values that are determinants of consumer online purchase in the fashion industry; however, there has been limited focus on the nature of fashion and online purchasing in emerging markets, particularly those in Sub-Saharan Africa.

This study systematically explores the literature on global niche market strategies within the fashion industry to allow the mapping of niche practices and examine the benefits, success factors and characteristics of a niche strategy. Additionally, it identifies data gaps and necessitates a detailed examination to uncover areas with inadequate information.

This study utilized the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA 2020) method for systematic review and included 70 studies to analyze their findings.

This systematic literature review pinpoints niche strategies shaping the future of the fashion industry while developing sectors of the textile and apparel industry, fashion technology, fashion retail business, fashion media and communication, luxury fashion, sustainable fashion, adaptive clothing and transgender fashion within the fashion supply chain. A niche market strategy utilizes both pull and push marketing in the fashion industry. Scholarly literature commonly underscores the understanding of the consumer as a pivotal factor in the success of fashion niche market strategy.

This review offers a comprehensive overview of fashion niche strategy practices, aiming to inspire fashion industry professionals. It also serves as a guide for fashion industry professionals, summarizing best practices across various fashion industry sectors to help develop effective niche strategy competencies for firms.

This review thoroughly analyzes niche strategy implementation in the fashion industry, presenting an important resource for individuals new to this sector. It highlights the significance of niche strategies in improving the comprehension of emerging participants in the fashion business.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused irrefutable devastation globally. Yet, academic and trade commentators have claimed that this disruption could have had a silver lining by presenting the fashion industry with the opportunity to reassess and rebuild in a slower, more considered way. Part of this reassessment, some have argued, may have been allowing the industry's pre-COVID sustainability buzz to come to fruition by nudging the fashion industry to go circular. This paper explores if, and how, the COVID-19 pandemic was (not) nudging the industry towards circularity using the case study of circular textiles.

Serial, semi-structured, qualitative interviews were conducted with three buyers and sourcers working for three UK-based fashion retailers. Each participant was involved in three interviews in June 2020 following the UK's first national lockdown.

The research findings suggest that, at the time this research was undertaken, these retailers were focussed on regaining profit, protecting their supply chains and producing “safe” designs whilst cutting back and becoming more risk averse. These actors suggested that, in contrast to the suppositions made by academic and media commentators, the COVID-19 pandemic was acting as a hindrance to circularity, not a helping hand, as retailers were less willing to invest in circular textiles at that time than they were pre-pandemic.

This paper offers valuable insight into the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on circular innovation within fashion retail whilst contributing to broader understandings of the principles of the circular economy within textiles and design.