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Outlines how analysing the way that children think ‐ and shop ‐ will help brand managers and marketers. Focuses on the Strottman Kid Engineers, a US project which gave children from ages 6 to 9 headbands containing video cameras, and assigned them to grocery stores, where they would choose the 20 items they most wanted. Discusses the results: promotions were important, and visual rather than verbal promotional communication was popular; children expect and appreciate innovation in the grocery store; favoured hot‐spots were the cereal, snacks and dairy aisles, plus lunchables; children were influenced by in‐store signage; and the draw of licensed properties is stronger than ever.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on mothers as key influencers in luxury retailing contexts.

Using a semiotic interpretation of mothers’ discourses, the authors underline the identity motivations for purchasing luxury apparel for their pre-adolescent children.

The paper shows that when shopping for luxury brands for their pre-adolescent children, mothers manage discrepancies between their “real” and “idealised” selves as well as the pushes and pulls of being a mother and a woman.

The findings point to possible future research on this topic, particularly with regard to investigating how luxury stores and retailers can adapt so as to satisfy mothers’ identity quest.

Managers of luxury brand retail spaces looking at the future of retailing could analyse their store environment in the light of these mothers’ identity-related motivations. As well as focussing on how children look, store layout and merchandising should provide different spaces for mothers’ identity expression, using new in-store digital technologies.

This study is one of the first to analyse luxury shopping for children taking the point of view of mothers. The paper underlines how young mothers build their new maternal identity and their projected relationship with their child through purchases of children’s luxury goods in specific retail environments.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether children’s online play and participation in massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs) is leading to the development of virtual retail shopping motivations and behaviours. This exploratory study also examines the influence of age-related differences in children’s social and consumer development vs adults and gender on this.

The study was conducted using two focus groups and ten in-depth interviews with 20 French children between the ages of eight and 12 years.

Results show that children’s online play and participation in MMORPG communities is leading to the development of virtual retail shopping motivations and behaviour through the purchase of virtual tools and accessories by all children using virtual in-game money. But these motivations are very gender specific due to the overarching importance of gender-specific motivations for achievement. Boys engage in virtual retail shopping because they need in-game progress and power gains, while girls engage in virtual retail shopping because they need social status enhancement.

Research should be conducted on children in different age groups. All aspects of the process and consequences of children’s participation in online gaming communities should be examined more comprehensively. Quantitative research is required. Results may also vary with country and cultural context.

First, children between eight and 12 years of age are active consumers (influencers and buyers) for all companies. MMORPGs provide the perfect setting for better understanding of children’s motivations and behaviour regarding virtual retail shopping because they provide virtual in-game money for different achievements that children use to engage in such behaviour. Second, MMORPG companies can benefit by taking into account gender differences in children’s motivations and the importance of the games’ social dimensions and interactions when designing the games.

First, the risks of playing computer games for children in terms of playing violent games and leading a virtual life must be considered and studied carefully by public policy officials. Second, public policy officials that look into online gaming should take into account gender differences in children’s motivations and the importance of the games’ social dimensions and interactions when monitoring online games. These are issues that are not only developing children’s abilities as social actors but may well be promoting excessive materialism aided by the formation of online peer groups.

This is the first study on children’s online play and participation in MMORPGs in the consumer context and will help us to understand children’s mind-set and motivations for retail activities in this unique retail setting. The study results show that children’s online play and participation in MMORPGs is leading to the development of virtual retail shopping motivations and behaviour that are very gender specific unlike adults.

This study aims to embark on a bibliometric journey through the International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management (IJR&DM) to delve into its rich repository of applied retailing research.

626 publications in IJR&DM between 2015 and 2023 have been retrieved from Scopus for performance analysis of the journal’s publication (productivity) and citation (impact) trends as well as a science mapping of the journal’s collaborators (contributors) and major themes (contributions).

The performance analysis highlights the growth in the productivity and impact of IJR&DM alongside its most cited publications, most prolific contributors, most relied-on journals, as well as the authors, institutions, countries, and journals that the journal has impacted the most. The co-authorship analysis reveals the collaboration (i.e., international with a high concentration in Europe and North America along with an emerging presence in Asia) of IJR&DM. Keyword co-occurrence analysis and bibliographic coupling reveal eight themes. Our exploration revealed close interconnections among various domains including retailing and adaptive strategies, channel strategies, customer experience, market innovations, operations management, relationship marketing, shopping motivation, and sustainability.

Although this study delivers a state-of-the-art overview of the retail industry through the scientific contributions from IJR&DM, it remains limited to the insights from a single authoritative source of knowledge on retailing.

No review, to date, has been conducted for IJR&DM. This study provides the inaugural retrospective of the scientific contributions of IJR&DM, outlining publication and citation trends alongside the intellectual structure of its body of knowledge on retailing. Theoretically, this retrospective is pivotal in charting the intellectual growth and thematic nuances inherent in retail research. Practically, this study serves as a guide for practitioners, enabling them to make strategically informed decisions and craft forward-looking strategies in sync with current realities.

The purpose of this study is to investigate patterns in the social construction of occupational jurisdiction and related professional career identity. It examines the agency associated with framing messages that influence perceptions about the professional nature and value of retail management careers. The aim is to identify sources which produce influential messages about perceptions about retail management careers and the content of these messages.

This study utilises a qualitative research methodology (focus-group interviews) to explore the observations of people involved with the monitoring and management of career messages. Two focus groups were conducted with a) nine Canadian retail practitioners and b) seven post-secondary educators from retail management education programmes.

The focus groups identify five sources of influential messages including (1) part-time retail work experience, (2) educational institutions, (3) parents, (4) retail industry/practitioners and (5) media. They also identify three content themes presented by these sources including (1) the importance of educational requirements, (2) the nature of occupational roles and (3) the value of the career.

The significance and generalisability of the results are limited by the size and nature of the sample.

This study makes a practical contribution by identifying potential career awareness strategies.

This research makes a theoretical contribution by expanding understanding of the role of communication with career perceptions and with the related constitution of career professionalisation.