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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the food and beverage automatic retail environment by analysing the impact of planograms, conceived as a visual merchandising practice and shopping time – the time spent making a purchase – as part of food consumer purchasing behaviour to further enrich the debate on the ability of companies to absorb customer knowledge.

A real-world experiment was conducted using a sample of 27,230 valid observations of consumer purchasing decision-making processes at automatic vending machines (AVMs). Data were collected by a shopper behaviour analytics system that allows for a better understanding of the AVM users' behaviour. Two sets of regressions were run to test the two hypotheses.

The experimental results demonstrated that planograms – the planned, systematic organisation of products in an AVM – positively impact food purchases. A planogram acts as a mediator in the relationship between shopping time and purchase, resulting in shorter shopping times and more purchases.

This work adds to the customer knowledge literature by focussing on customer behaviour in the food and beverage automated shopping environment. The shopper analytics technology adopted to collect real-time data leads to a better understanding of the purchasing behaviour of AVMs' users and provides new marketing and retail insights into AVMs' performance that retailers can use to improve their marketing strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine shelf management practices of grocery retail chains and their category captains (CCs) in the marketing of consumer packaged goods.

This is a qualitative, exploratory study that is set in a duopoly retail environment in the Asia-Pacific region. The study employed 18 in-depth interviews with executives and managers of two umbrella retail organisations and their suppliers/manufacturers. The method of data analysis employed was content analysis.

Despite CC input in merchandising decisions, it is the retail chains that have the final say on shelf matters. There is no risk of strategic loss of power in employing CCs to manage store product categories on behalf of, or in partnership with retailers provided the retail chains closely monitor the activities and decisions/recommendations of the captains.

The paper is developed from data obtained from the grocery retail industry of one economy. Future research would need to extend this study to other economies with similar as well as different conditions.

The research offers reassurance to grocery retail practitioners who may be contemplating lessening the burden of managing all their store categories by themselves and switching to CC arrangements. The reassurance is that the reported risk associated with loss of power is manageable.

The paper has created a typology termed the “category captain arrangement/grocery retail concentration matrix” and specific directions for further research.

This paper aims to test the similarity of the results of on-screen eye tracking compared to mobile eye tracking in the context of first fixation location on stimuli.

Three studies were conducted altogether with 117 participants, where the authors compared both methods: stationary eye tracking (Tobii Pro X2-60) and mobile eye tracking (Tobii Pro Glasses 2).

The studies revealed that the reported average first fixation locations from stationary and mobile eye tracking are different. Stationary eye tracking is more affected by a centre fixation bias. Based on the research, it can be concluded that stationary eye tracking is not always suitable for studying consumer perception and behaviour because of the centre viewing bias.

When interpreting the results, researchers should take into account that stationary eye tracking results are affected by a centre fixation bias. Previous stationary eye tracking research should be interpreted with the centre fixation bias in mind. Some of this previous work should be retested using mobile eye tracking. If possible small-scale pilot studies should be included in papers to show that the more appropriate method, less affected by attention biases, was chosen.

Managers should trust research where the ability of package design to attract attention on a shelf is tested using mobile eye tracking. The authors suggest using mobile eye tracking to optimise store shelf planograms, point-of-purchase materials, and shelf layouts. In package design, interpretations of research using stationary eye tracking should consider its centre fixation bias. Managers should also be cautious when interpreting previous stationary eye tracking research (both applied and scientific), knowing that stationary eye tracking is more prone to a centre fixation bias.

While eye tracking research has become more and more popular as a marketing research method, the limitations of the method have not been fully understood by the field. This paper shows that the chosen eye tracking method can influence the results. No such comparative paper about mobile and stationary eye tracking research has been done in the marketing field.

This paper seeks to examine key factors within the control of store managers to optimizing inventory and store results.

This research integrates principles of action research and traditional research in a big box retail environment.

While this study confirms theories that link inventory to sales, merchandise selection, and technology, it emphasizes the role of people. Furthermore, it proves that different stores within same companies and different departments within same stores deliver different results due, mainly, to human factors – specifically, critical thinking, functional knowledge, and leadership.

This study does not address inventory assortment, space allocation, automatic replenishment, planograms design, technology, logistics, and other factors that may impact inventory but mostly outside the control of big box store managers.

This study proposes practical tools and ideas to optimizing inventory and business results in big‐box stores. It also serves as an example of extracting and verifying retail management theory from practice. As such, it benefits both practitioners and academics.

This paper aims to illustrate the rapidly growing use of robots in the retail sector by considering a range of products and applications.

Following a short introduction, this paper discusses robotic products and deployments in the following applications: inventory management, the provision of customer assistance, cleaning and hazard detection and product delivery. It concludes with a brief discussion.

Robots are rapidly making inroads in the retail sector. They have been shown to reduce manpower requirements, improve efficiency, reduce costs and speed-up deliveries. As applications grow and the technologies mature, retail is expected to become a major robot user and will offer significant business opportunities.

This study provides a detailed insight into the emerging and rapidly developing retail robotics business.

The purpose of this study is to present an attempt to evaluate Italian olive oil brand competition thought the analysis of consumers’ visual perspective.

Through the implementation of a new information technology system called “Visual Marketing REL”, which furnishes eye-tracking measures, the authors were able to produce important information relative to the layout organization of to the Italian olive oil shelf, a strategic product of the agro-food chain. The research uses the “in situ” testing of the software developed.

The research, following up the thesis of sensorial marketing affecting choices, intends to identify an IT tool to facilitate the design of the shelf by increasing the efficiency of the retail mix. Results highlight that specific positioning could impact the differentiation effect and orientate consumers’ choices, thus increasing the efficiency of the retail mix.

To generalize the results would require many repetitions of different product categories. In this case, it would be possible to quantify the levels of correlation between visual information and sales.

This work opens important considerations in terms of strategic management of modern distribution, leaders and minor brands competitive relationship, as well as opportunities for producers of high-quality products, which could address their strategies to differentiation and niche market in cooperation with retailers.

The research aims to encourage the process of consumer choice and reduce information asymmetries.

The most important result is the connection among choices, visualization, differentiation strategy and positioning/ordering on the shelf. The layout management, in fact, could be used as a joint strategy of retailers as well as producers to emphasize quality and price differentiation, thereby increasing sales. Moreover, the study provides for the first time the outcomes of a brand new software “Visual Marketing REL”, highlighting its limits and positive elements.

Acme Inc, a large retailer, explores the use of Data warehouse for addressing their decision support infrastructure Challenges. Acme plans for a pilot study to assess the feasibility and evaluate the business benefits of using Data warehouse. The focus of this case is to ascertain the steps involved in design, development and implementation of a Data warehouse.

States that inventory is the most significant financial asset of women’s clothing retailers, showing that the majority look at inventory management as a tool to improve customer satisfaction. Suggests that satisfying customer needs results in increased revenues, greater liquidity, lower inventory levels and improved returns on investment. Considers the keys to successful inventory management using case studies as examples and concludes that many retailers are moving in the direction of continuous assessment of inventories rather than point in time assessments.

The purpose of this paper is to explore tactical planning in grocery retailing and propose how process and integration mechanisms from sales and operations planning (S&OP) can enhance retail tactical planning.

This work follows an explorative design with case studies from the grocery retailing industry in Finland, Norway, and the UK.

The tactical planning process focuses on demand management and securing product availability from suppliers in order to reach sales targets. Less attention is directed toward balancing supply and demand or toward providing a single plan to guide company operations. Planning appeared to be functionally oriented with limited coordination between functional plans, but it did include external integration that improved forecast accuracy.

The study involves grocery retailer cases with variable levels of S&OP maturity. The propositions need to be investigated further through action research or additional case studies to confirm their validity.

The study proposes a design of an S&OP process in retailing and propositions for improving tactical planning integration.

The study complements research on retail tactical planning by taking planning process and integration viewpoints. The research suggests that retailers would benefit from a formal and company-wide S&OP process to unify different market-oriented plans to a single set of numbers, thus better balancing supply and demand without sacrificing the emphasis on demand planning.

Psychological factors, such as body image dissatisfaction and the negative feelings associated with it may be related to the adoption of unhealthy eating behaviours. Also, body image dissatisfaction may lower the likelihood of engaging in long-term healthy eating habits and in the level of attention paid to the quality of the food consumed. As a result, body image may be related to consumers’ choice to purchase and consume health-enhancing food products. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A pilot study of a small sample of Italian yogurt consumers was employed to explore if there is a relationship between respondents’ level of body image dissatisfaction and the number of health-enhancing yogurt choices. The data were collected by means of a virtual-shelf technique and were analysed using a negative binomial regression.

Results indicate that body image dissatisfaction is inversely related to the number of yogurt packages with health-enhancing features chosen from the virtual shelf. Also, respondents who read the nutrition label and those with more knowledge regarding leading functional yogurt brands, selected a higher number of functional yogurts from the virtual shelf compared, especially among women.

The results indicate that body image dissatisfaction is inversely related to the number of yogurt packages with health-enhancing features chosen from the virtual shelf. Also, respondents who read the nutrition label and those with more knowledge regarding leading health-enhancing yogurt brands selected a higher number of health-enhancing yogurts options from the virtual shelf compared to others, especially among women.

The relationship between body image dissatisfaction and health-enhancing food choices has not been investigated in the consumer science and marketing literature. Additionally, this is one of the few papers that use a virtual shelf as a data-collection method.