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Digitalization and multi-channel strategy have appeared as recurrent themes in retailing for years, yet some major international as well as domestic mass retailers have chosen to retain a single, physical channel focus for customer transactions. These retailers, despite the digital mindset preoccupying the retailing sector, have chosen to rely fully, or predominantly, on their stores to generate revenues. A number of questions arise from this approach. This paper aims to understand the rationale for marketing and strategic practices which appear to go against the dominant, strongly digitally oriented, discourses and practices in the field of retailing. Why do some retailers choose not to add a digital transactional channel? Are there defensible reasons for this choice? Can such a strategy successfully create value?

This research is based on a qualitative, multiple case study of the strategies adopted by Primark (fashion) and Aldi (food), two major retailers that retain a largely single-channel transaction focus, in France and the UK.

This research suggests that some retailers may still be able to succeed by maintaining a single-transactional physical channel to avoid a cost trap which extensive moves towards digitalization of transactions might mean for them. In such circumstances, refusing to adopt a digital value proposition may be a means of preserving the success of their original business model.

Despite the weight of academic and practitioner discourses on the urge to undertake digital transformation, this work provides a comprehensive illustration of the rationale for sticking to a single physical channel to preserve the profitability of a traditional store-based business model.

This study aims to analyze the ways in which chief executive officers (CEOs) communicate via Twitter and help develop guidelines for effective tweeting strategies that can leverage Twitter in leadership communication.

The authors conduct a large-scale content analysis of more than 65,000 tweets by 338 CEOs.

The authors propose a model that categorizes differences in CEO tweets along six independent dimensions: content professionalism, language professionalism, emotional valence, emotion activation, interactional efforts and information cues. The authors also develop coding schemes and measurement scales for each dimension.

This study provides a multi-dimensional paradigm as well as useful tools for future research on corporate leadership communication on social media.

Whilst the events of 2000 and 2001 would appear to have reduced significantly the attractiveness of e‐commerce as a viable source of revenue growth for retailers, writing off electronic distribution channels may be premature. Growth in online transactions in, for example, the USA and the UK – whilst slower than commentators had predicted – is nevertheless encouraging. Retailing appears to be polarizing between those willing to embrace e‐commerce for longer‐term benefit and those for whom e‐commerce is not seen as a desirable route to growth. The indirect, informational effect of the Internet on the consumer buying process and the perception of retail brands is a further consideration for those contemplating multi‐channel futures. Finally, the article illustrates that the integrative challenges of multi‐channel retailing are capable of being resolved in more than one way.

Offers a preliminary assessment of electronic commerce. Rarely has the retail and consumer services sector been faced with a strategic challenge of such significant complexity and uncertainty that is growing so rapidly. Suggests that the academic world is lagging behind the world of practice in terms of supplying rigorous analysis of the topic. Deals with four discrete areas of the new economy as it affects retailers. Explores the extent to which the emergence of new electronic channels to market has led to distinctive means of business differentiation, with particular reference to branding and pricing. Secondly, looks at how business‐to‐business companies can use electronic channels to improve supply chain and productivity requirements. Thirdly, assesses how far we understand some of the organisational change issues. Finally considers the future of eCommerce.

To introduce a commemorative collection of articles by colleagues and former students of the late Professor Ross Davies, a leading UK academic in the field of retail management.

Outlines the development of Ross Davies' career and enumerates his particular contributions to the development of academic studies of retailing. Summarises the objectives of each paper in the collection.

The paper identifies the link between the authors of papers and Professor Davies' work.

Demonstrates the ways in which an academic was able to relate sound scholarship to the practical needs of retailers, service companies and public sector agencies.

Neither retail formats nor business models are static entities. Retailers develop new formats, manage existing formats and discard formats over time, as a consequence of many contributory factors in the retail environment. The paper provides a brief summary of our existing understanding of the retail innovation process and of the longer term retail format lifecycle, before placing this alongside recent UK research into the contemporary practice of format innovation. It explores four features of recent format change in the UK that provide the basis for distinctive business models.

Analysis is derived from interviews with retail practitioners and supported by quantitative evidence from government statistical sources.

The paper concludes that whilst existing models of retail format change can risk oversimplifying and formalising what are often experimental, incremental and often accidental processes, they can complement our understanding of longer term trends in UK retail formats.

The evolution of retail formats, together with the retail business models of which they are an expression, has been a continuing source of interest amongst stakeholders ranging from consumers, developers and investors. Findings demonstrate that innovation is seen as providing an important source of diversity and renewal for urban and suburban spaces.

The paper is of interest to practitioners and students of retail management.

Considers how and to what extent common features in shopping centre development have become apparent across Europe, drawing on new and comparable statistics on such development within selected European countries. Sets out a tentative framework within which apparently widely diverse experiences may be placed and suggests some further consequences which may arise from the greater co‐ordination of planning and environmental policies at the European Community level which may affect the operational and institutional environments within which such centres seek to trade.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the online preference structures of consumers.

Novel choice‐based conjoint experiments are used and are administered online. A select group of high net worth online grocery shoppers are examined. Both qualitative and quantitative procedures are used to determine the most frequently cited attributes affecting online patronage.

Whilst there is no single attribute on which a retailer could develop a competitive edge, a significant market advantage can be gained by being simultaneously “best in class” on the top four attributes.

This research approach has significant practical application to a wide range of strategic marketing questions.

These findings give focus to the management task facing marketing executives in the UK multichannel grocery market. How these findings might be used within a marketing plan is illustrated.

The purposes of this paper are to develop a more complete understanding both of the characteristics of innovation within retail firms and of the ways in which retailers perceive innovation and measure its effectiveness. Whilst there is a broad consensus that innovation is an application of new ideas that stimulate economic performance, the term attracts a wide range of interpretations that are largely contingent upon the context within which innovation occurs.

These aims are achieved through analysis at the level of the firm by means of qualitative research in the form of a series of in-depth interviews with more than 50 senior retail executives and other industry experts internationally.

The research results show that whilst retailers clearly recognise the important role of innovation for successful business performance, innovation in retailing nevertheless possesses a range of sector-specific meanings and measurement approaches that are distinct from more generic understandings of the phenomenon.

Whilst the paper summarises relevant literatures and presents the results of the primary research it also sets out a number of novel conceptual frameworks, which seek better to categorise the perceived meanings of retail innovation and the measurement tools most frequently employed to determine innovation effectiveness in retail firms. The proposed frameworks facilitate future scholarly exploration but are also of use to practitioners as a means of better understanding the nature of innovation within their businesses.

Shopping from home appears an intuitively more attractive proposition in the North American environment than perhaps anywhere else in the world. This article reviews the rather mixed experience of operators in the US in practice and considers in particular the prospects for growth of some of the more advanced interactive schemes. At the end of 1988 J.C. Penney′s “Telaction” service and the IBM/Sears Roebuck “Prodigy Interactive Personal Service” were operating. The failure of the J.C. Penney service in April 1989 has had an unsettling effect on operators, advertisers and suppliers alike. The implications of this failure for teleservice prospects in the US in the years ahead are considered.