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This study aims to detect the dimensions of the in-store customer shopping experience from the sports retailer perspective and to investigate how the role of sports equipment stores is changing.

This exploratory study performs semi-structured interviews with retail managers of sports equipment stores.

This research reveals the importance of the dimensions of immersive design, sensorial ambient elements, social relationships, trialability and real experience sharing in designing a memorable in-store shopping experience in sports stores, and it highlights that the store's role in the sports context is transitioning from sales space to an interactive, immersive, engaging and convivial place. It proposes a model to design the in-store customer shopping experience effectively.

Sports equipment managers can make their physical stores as experiential as possible by investing in expert, passionate personnel and technology in order to create a real in-store experience of the product and the sports practice.

While sports equipment retailers acknowledge the importance of providing customers with a memorable shopping experience by creating an evocative environment and placing multiple touchpoints in stores, management scholars have paid limited attention to sports stores. This study explores the ways in which sports retail managers can design their stores effectively in experiential terms.

Access to food through retail supply chain distribution can vary significantly among the urban poor and leads to household food insecurity. The paper explores this sustainable supply chain phenomenon through a field study among South Africa's urban poor.

Urban metabolic flows is the theoretical basis in the context of supply chain management (SCM). The field study comprised 59 semi-structured interviews in one South African township. Data were recorded, transcribed and translated, and coded using NVivo 12 to provide an inventory of eight themes categorized and patterned from the analysis.

Findings indicate societal factors play a significant role affecting food distribution, access and security from a spatial perspective of retail outlet locations and a nutritional standpoint regarding quality and quantity of food.

The study is exploratory in one township, and while rigorously conducted, the generalizability of findings is limited to this context.

The study practically contributes by providing guidance for food retailers and policymakers to include nutritional guidelines in their distribution planning, as well as the dynamics of diverse neighbourhoods that exist in modern urban contexts.

New forms of retail food distribution can provide better security and access to food for the urban poor, contributing to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2 Zero Hunger and 11 Liveable Cities.

The study is interdisciplinary and contributes by linking UN SDGs and SCM through urban metabolic flows from development studies as an overarching framework to enable analysis of relationships between physical, social and economic factors in the urban environment.

Amidst burgeoning attention for global value chains (GVCs) in international business (IB), this paper aims to identify a clear “missing link” in this literature and discusses implications for research and corporate social responsibility (CSR) policy-making and implementation.

The paper combines an overview of relevant literature from different (sub)disciplinary fields, with insights from practitioner and expert interviews and secondary data.

Because IB GVC research stems from a focus on lead firms and their producing suppliers, it lacks attention for intermediary actors that may significantly impact the organization of production in general, and firms’ CSR commitments in particular. Import intermediaries are often “hidden” in GVCs. This paper indicates the emergence of GVC parallelism with “frontstage” chains managed by lead firms and increasingly exposed to public scrutiny following calls for transparency and CSR, and “backstage” ones in which buyers and intermediaries operate more opaquely.

This study points at salient yet little known practices and actors that influence the organization of production and the implementation of CSR policies in various ways, and therefore offers ground for reflection on the design of proper supply chain and CSR policies.

This study exposes a hitherto neglected category of actors in GVCs and broader IB research and discusses implications, relevance and areas for further investigation. An illustrative example explicates the importance of carefully considering this “missing link”. The study emphasizes the need for further study into ways in which both lead firms and intermediaries deal with contradicting demands of implementing CSR policies and offering competitive prices with short lead times.

Taking into account retailers' critical position in the value chain, their sector's economic significance and environmental externalities, in addition to the institutional agenda, this paper aims to explore the drivers influencing retailers to shift to more sustainable business models.

The paper utilises the institutional competing logic, including in-depth interviews with major supermarket retail chains and one expert group discussion. The data gathered in Germany and Lithuania were complemented by desk research analysis, including corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports and management reports.

The paper provides empirical insights into how multiple drivers through institutional competing logic are brought about influencing the shift to more sustainable business models. The results show that retail chains in both countries implement their sustainability based on triple environmental-legal-financial drivers. However, different types of retail chains–namely premium retailers, typical retailers and discounters–implement their sustainability discourse differently.

Because of the chosen research approach, the results may lack generalisability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further.

Interestingly, retailers “shift” their responsibility to the consumers rather than encourage themselves to make more sustainable choices. The authors observe a more passive and responsive role of retailing chains because of the inherent trade-off between revenue growth and sustainable consumption.

The original contribution lies in exploring how retail chains adapt institutional competing logic and are influenced by multiple drivers when implementing their sustainability activities. In addition, the authors propose a conceptual model for retailers' sustainability management, as well as formulate three research propositions.

This paper aims to shed light on features of successful innovation and on the role played by downstream open innovation (OI) dynamics in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) industry. It also explores the reasons for the decline in the number of disruptive innovations in this industry in the European Union (EU).

The authors interpret the data in a Kantar consumer panel dataset on disruptive innovations in Spain through an exploratory research including in-depth interviews with 19 managers in the industry.

Results show that downstream open innovation in this industry is mostly limited to the executional stage in the process and highlight the crucial role played by the point of purchase in the success of innovations. The authors build up a virtuous circle of innovation based on features such as the use of OI processes, company focus and marketing support, transparency and collaboration with retailers, as well as the product's uniqueness and its potential to become viral.

The paper focuses on Spain and, thus, results cannot be generalised. Further research in other countries would be interesting.

The study describes the features of disruptive innovators and develops an extensive list of success factors.

The development of disruptive innovation is a source of competitive advantages and one of the most relevant activities of managers today. Nevertheless, the number of disruptive innovations is in decline, and only a few succeed, negatively affecting consumer welfare.

Through this study, the authors provide insights on the features of successful innovators in FMCGs and describe the factors affecting the decreasing trend in the number of breakthrough innovations. Further, this paper fulfils an identified need to study OI in low-tech industries.

The COVID-19 pandemic interrupts the supply chain of products around the world. The supply chains of beauty and personal care products in Bangladesh are also heavily interrupted during this pandemic. While these products are perceived as essential by mass people, retailers are struggling to get the supply of the products and maintain a smooth delivery to the people. Considering such facts, the purposes of the study are to identify how the supply of retailers of these products is interrupted and how they can overcome the interruptions to ensure supply resilience.

A case study method has been used in this study. The data has been collected through interviews from 16 retailers of beauty and personal care products.

The results show that the supply of retailers of beauty and personal care products is interrupted in several ways. These include product shortage, limited delivery service, interruption of supplier payment, limited credit facility and irregularity in product delivery. To minimize the impacts of the interruptions and enhance supply resilience, retailers can undertake several strategies including intensive interactions and developing cooperation with the distributors and manufacturers, ordering bulk quantity, formulating an adjusted credit ratio and focusing on product availability over brand preference.

The context of this study is limited to the beauty and personal care products of Bangladesh. Further study can be conducted in other countries and also supply chains of other products to enhance the generalizability of the findings of this study.

Supply interruptions are identified, and strategies are suggested to ensure the supply resilience of retailers of beauty and personal care products. If proposed strategies are implemented by retailers of these products, supply interruptions can be minimized.

The study contributes to the knowledge of the retail supply chain during a pandemic. It also contributes to the supply management and resilience of retailers. As the context is a developing country, the study also contributes to the literature on developing countries.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how market factors (pertaining to institutions, competition and resources) shape the international strategies of an online retailer.

A single qualitative case study research design is employed to conduct in-depth analyses of a Swedish internationalising small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) in the retail business.

The findings show that online retailers can use partnerships to tackle industry dynamics and break into foreign markets. This type of “piggy-back internationalisation” can be an effective strategy of handling foreign market dynamics in the entry phase: that is to say, the short term. Reliance upon relationships, however, may paradoxically inhibit retailers’ abilities to stay competitive in the post-entry phase (i.e. the long term) since they become cut-off from the first-hand market learning.

The authors provide propositions based upon the findings to support further research in the international marketing and international retailing literature.

The findings enhance the understanding of how electronic commerce affects SME internationalisation. They also generate new insights into the use of possible international expansion strategies for managers in retail SMEs.

This study introduces a new theoretical perspective to build upon international retail research and contributes to the international retail literature with relevant insights into both advantages and disadvantages of using partnerships to overcome challenges related to international online retailing.

To meet customers' expectations on shorter lead times, high product availability, flexibility, and variation in delivery and return options, retailers have turned their attention to warehousing and are making big investments in technology. Currently, technology providers are pushing for smart warehousing, a new and under-researched phenomenon. This study aims to conceptualize the term and examine pathways toward implementing smart warehousing.

An exploratory survey was administered to 50 leading Swedish retailers in varying segments. A two-tailed t-test for equality of means was used to detect significant differences between current and future states.

The study found that future smart warehouses will be automated, autonomous, digital, and connected, but that retailers will follow different paths along this journey, driven by contextual trends, e.g. sales growth, wider product assortment, shorter lead-time offerings, and integration of brick-and-mortar and online stores. Interestingly, the study revealed that many of the retailers that aim to create smart warehouses in five years are not the retailers with the most developed technology today.

The paper operationalizes smart warehousing in two dimensions: degree of automation and degree of digitalization and connectivity of information platforms. Based on the findings, 16 theoretical propositions are put forth that, based on contextual factors, explain different pathways for retailers to implement smart warehousing.

The empirical insights and theoretical discussions provide practically useful guidance, including outlined trends, for selecting and benchmarking automation and complementary technologies in warehouse operations.

This paper conceptualizes and operationalizes smart warehousing – an original approach. It is also one of the first to investigate the technological transformation in retail warehousing empirically, explaining how and why retailers choose different pathways toward smart warehousing.