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The purpose of this paper is to investigate which dimension of salespersons' service quality is of most importance for customer loyalty in a fashion chain stores setting. It also aims to assess the effects of two retail environmental factors (price level and customers' demographic variables) on the customer loyalty of salespersons service quality.

The study uses the SERVQUAL service quality instrument with modification in measuring the salespersons' service quality in the Hong Kong fashion retail environment. In order to measure customer loyalty in fashion chain stores, multi‐item measures were used to collect data on repatronage intentions, word‐of‐mouth intentions, and satisfaction. A total of 232 surveys were administrated to shoppers who were leaving a fashion chain store in Hong Kong.

The results showed that the empathy dimension of salesperson service quality is the most important for customer loyalty in Hong Kong's fashion chain stores but the empathy dimension of salespersons' service quality in fashion retail stores could not be affected by these two retail environmental factors. Furthermore, the salespersons' service quality in the reliability dimension is significantly impacted by the customers' demographic characteristics, but not by price level set by fashion chain stores.

The study was carried out in four popular retail districts of Hong Kong and the results obtained may not be generalized to the country as a whole. The findings that are relevant in a fashion retail setting may not applicable in other retail environments.

The findings can direct fashion retailers to improve the specific service dimensions and work to provide customers with more value through services which will consequently improve internal and external standards of quality and performances in fashion retail settings, thus bringing about repeat customers and increased profitability.

China represents around 20% of the world's population, and her economy is still performing well under economic crisis. Historical events have shaped different parts of China with different economic developments and cultural encounters. The most prominent difference is between Hong Kong and the Mainland. This chapter would like to examine the development and issues of fashion retailing in China. For better understanding, this chapter starts with a brief discussion on apparel industry development and fashion culture in Hong Kong and the Mainland, follows by historical development and then presents systems of fashion retailing in both Hong Kong and the Mainland. Desktop research and exploratory research techniques were employed. Stores of international fashion luxury brands in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing were visited. Comparison of branding issues, particularly for luxury market in Hong Kong and the Mainland are discussed, so are future directions of fashion retailing in these places.

Decision-makers must be well-informed to successfully impact the future of the business. The purpose of this study was to explore experiences of US fashion retail executives when making business decisions to understand what resources and strategies are utilized within the decision-making process. Additionally, the role of academic research within executive decision-making process was explored.

This study utilized a phenomenological approach to understand the experiences of fashion retail executives when engaging in business decision-making. Fifteen US fashion retail executives participated in the study. Data were collected through in-depth individual interviews and thematically coded to gain a holistic perspective of the decision-making process within the fashion retail industry.

As the result of the data analysis and interpretation, three topical areas emerged:: “Incredible Amounts of Information,” “Industry Specific Academic Research” and “Have a Clear Road Map.” The findings suggested that while the facts gleaned from internal and external data are of great importance to fashion professionals, insights gathered from social media are equally influential within the decision-making process. The authors identified five major strategies utilized consistently by fashion retail executives regardless of the type of business they represented: collaboration, adaptability, speed, gut instinct and creativity.

The results are important to fashion retail companies for improving internal decision-making processes. The identified resources and strategies of the decision-making process can be incorporated into fashion program curricula and considered as learning outcomes when preparing future industry professionals.

Limited studies have explored the decision-making process specific to the fashion retail environment, an uncertain and ever-changing industry. Further, the study shed light on the opportunity for academic research use in fashion retail decision-making and contributes to the literature by developing a fashion retail decision-making model.

The purpose of this paper is to further theorize the concept of the “sustainable temporary store” and explore benefits and challenges for slow fashion retailers using temporary stores to promote a new value proposition and develop a business model.

The theoretical part combines the findings from marketing and human geography literature to theorize pop-up retailing from the slow fashion SME perspective. The empirical part uses a critical case study and a qualitative method approach (primary sources, half standardized interviews, ethnographic observation).

The study provides theoretical insights into five success criteria for the “sustainable temporary store” across geographies. Empirical findings allow for further conclusions about challenges in regards to spatial requirements and business modeling for slow fashion retail entrepreneurs in the Netherlands.

Limitations of the study are the geographical scope of exiting literature on the global north and the restricted sample size. However, by selecting a critical case, careful geographically restricted generalizations can be made.

The study provides useful information for slow fashion entrepreneurs who want to use cheap temporary space to develop their retail business model.

The results show that there is placemaking value (social value creation) in temporary slow fashion retailing.

The study provides a relevant contribution to the theory of pop-up retailing and more precisely to the concept of the “sustainable temporary store.” It also delivers a replicable empirical research design for other geographies.

The Chinese fashion market is becoming increasingly important in terms of consumption volume and value. A critical aspect of the Chinese fashion market is the role of the fashion retail buyer; however, there exists little literature on their role and their decision-making process. This paper, therefore, explores the role of Chinese fashion retail buyers, their decision-making process as well as the key factors that influence the retail buyer's decision-making process.

Informed by the inductive approach within Sheth's (1981) framework, in-depth interviews with a number of retail buyers in nine leading fashion companies in China were carried out to explore fashion retail buyers' decision-making processes.

The results show that management mentality, type of merchandise and type of decision context were the most influencing factors regarding merchandise requirements (MRs). Fashion retail buyers in China are substantially restricted by the management style of the firm, which also influences the product mix choice. To evaluate merchandise, fashion buyers take into account consumer demand, company position, geographical differences and fashion trends. In regards to supplier selection, production stability coupled with quality and cost factors become paramount. The study also demonstrates that country of origin (COO) is a less significant factor in the fashion buyer's decision-making process.

This is the first study that explores the fashion retail buyer's decision-making processes in the Chinese market. The results show Chinese fashion buyers' decision-making processes differ significantly from other markets. This paper offers guidelines for an efficient and effective fashion retail buying process in China. The findings offer important avenues for further research and provide insights for fashion professionals in the Chinese and other emerging markets contexts.

This empirical research, adopting an international retailing perspective, aims to examine the parenting advantages offered by emerging market multinationals (EMNCs) in luxury fashion retail sector.

The researchers adopted a qualitative case study, and the qualitative data were collected through ten semi-structured interviews with senior managers.

It is a win–win situation for the EMNCs as parent groups of Western luxury fashion brands, as the EMNCs can access critical assets including advanced brand management expertise, retailing know-how, and the services skills needed for higher income consumers. Meanwhile, the subsidiary brands benefit from a high degree of autonomy, intra-group resource utilisation, a competitive brand portfolio and most importantly economies of scales in the value chain, particularly in production. The perceived risks of EMNCs ownership include potentially restricted autonomy and the uncertainty over corporate development activities in the future, as well as the risks of diluting brand image caused by the inconsistency between country of origin and country of ownership.

Very few EMNCs have moved into luxury fashion retailing to date, which means that the sampling frame was small. The findings were generated from China, which is perceived to be of considerable psychic distance in terms of culture and policies compared to other emerging markets that have been heavily influenced by colonialism.

This paper suggests that practitioners, particularly EMNCs, support their subsidiary luxury fashion brands through parenting advantages and develop their own high-end fashion brands through internationalisation.

This empirical study contributes to the current international retailing literature by offering in depth insights of parenting advantages offered by EMNCs in luxury fashion retailing. It also enriches the EMNC literature, which has mainly adopted an international business scope, by extending this understanding into luxury fashion retailing.

The literature holds few contributions regarding the sensory environment of small, privately‐owned retail stores. Hence, this paper seeks to explore the sensory experience of patrons of a small boutique.

The study uses photo‐elicitation to examine the experience of the sensory retail environment of patrons of a small fashion boutique in the North West of England. Participants were asked to “show me how it feels to shop here” by taking photographs to depict their sensory in‐store experiences. Follow up interviews were carried out to explore the participants’ sensory experiences and then qualitative content analysis was used to identify the typical “likes” and “dislikes” regarding aspects of the sensory environment.

The findings reveal that it is not just tangible things that can affect a shopper's experience, but store traits such as smell, lighting and presence of owner‐manager can also influence a consumer's experience.

By providing an illustration case study, this paper provides a visual method for researching shopping experience from a sensory perspective. This research concerned small fashion boutiques. Other research as well as this study indicates that studies of sensory environments in other kinds of boutiques could produce different findings.

The paper is intended not only to equip small fashion retailers with an understanding of why some customers dwell and return to browse, but also to help them discern what it is that shoppers want to experience while shopping. Managerial implications are offered with the aim of converting patronage into sales to support survival of small fashion retailers.

This paper contributes to the literature on small to medium‐sized enterprise fashion retailing and the sensory experience of fashion shopping. The identification of sensory touch points in small fashion boutiques helps owner‐managers to understand female shoppers and provides a handrail for thinking up new ways of improving shopping experiences.

Fashion subscription service is a newly emerged retailing model that provides an innovative way of shopping to meet consumers’ fashion needs. From the perspective of innovation adoption, the purpose of this paper is to provide an insight of consumers’ perceptions as well as adoption intention of this innovative retailing format.

This research is qualitative in nature, utilizing focus group study approach. In this paper, content analysis was applied to analyze the data.

While possessing varying degrees of knowledge about fashion subscription retailing, the participants shared the following perceptions of relative advantages, including convenience, personalization, consumer excitement, opportunities to try new styles, and opportunity to better manage their apparel budget. Concerns mainly focused on missing social shopping experiences and the hassle in the cancellation process. The overall adoption intention was high.

Due to the nature of this research, the sample size was limited and results may not be generalized. This research paid less attention to individual differences, in terms of demographic and psychographic characteristics.

Future marketing could focus more on educating consumers about the attributes of the services they provide. Retailers can strategically leverage the positively perceived advantages in their marketing communications to enhance consumers’ adoption intention of their services.

The paper fills a gap in the literature on consumer behavior toward fashion subscription retailing and sheds light for companies in their endeavors to excel in this new retailing venue.

This paper aims to develop supply chain strategies for the fashion retail supply chain (FRSC), likely to be disrupted by the current pandemic (COVID-19) under physical and online retail stores. The resilient retail supply chain design is proposed under budget allocation and merchandise capacity constraints.

This paper utilises the theory of constraint (ToC) and goal programming (GP) to address the COVID-19 impact on FRSC. The budgetary and capacity constraints are formulated with a constraint optimisation model and tested with six different priorities to deal with the physical and online stores. Next, all priorities are developed under different FRSC business scenarios. The ToC-GP-based optimisation model is validated with one of the Indian fashion retail supply chains.

The proposed optimisation model presents the optimal retailing strategies for selling fashion goods over physical and online platforms. The multiple scenarios are presented for developing trade-offs among different strategies to maximise the retailer's merchandise performance. This paper also highlighted the strategic movement from high merchandise density stores to low merchandise density stores. This implies a reduction of sales targets and aspiration levels of both online and physical fashion stores.

The proposed model is validated with one of the fashion retailers in India. Other nations or multiple fashion retailers might be considered for more generalisation of findings in the future.

This research helps fashion retail supply chain managers deal with consumer demand uncertainty over physical and online stores in pandemic times. Limitation: Other nations or multiple fashion retailers might be considered for more generalisation of findings in the future.

This is the first study that considered the impact of COVID-19 on the retail fashion supply chain. The effect of physical and online platforms is mainly discussed from consumer marketing perspectives, but an inventory and resilience perspective is missing in earlier studies. The role of merchandise planning is highlighted in this study.

Customer's experiential value is influenced by external as well as internal factors. This study was an effort to explore the impacts of two relevant internal factors (lifestyle and involvement) and one important external factor (atmospherics) on experiential value. Further, it investigates the influence of experiential value on two pertinent outcomes (customer satisfaction and positive word of mouth).

A survey-based questionnaire was used to collect the data (n = 354) from fashion retail shoppers in NCR region in India and was analysed using structural equation modelling.

The results revealed that positive influence of atmospherics, involvement and lifestyle on experiential value dimensions. Subsequently, the study showed experiential value influences customer satisfaction, which further leads to positive word of mouth.

The study was carried out in fashion retail stores in National Capital Region in India. Therefore, further investigation is required for generalising the results. Theoretical and managerial contributions of the study are further discussed in the paper.

Arguably, this paper is an initial attempt to explore the antecedents and consequences of experiential value in the context of fashion retailing.