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Design is an important construct in the retail environment literature. Yet, the measures used for design have not followed appropriate scale development procedures. The purpose of this study is to provide a conceptual definition and then develop a scale for retail environment design (RED).

Interviews with both consumers and marketing researchers are used to generate a potential list of items. Using four different studies, these items are refined, and the RED scale is offered.

This study develops and validates the four-dimensional RED scale to measure the design of retail environments. The dimensions are functional, aesthetic, lighting and signage.

The newly developed RED scale will allow retailing researchers to measure lighting and signage qualities as part of retail design, measure design of retail environments more accurately and allow different studies to be compared.

The newly developed RED scale will allow retailers to better understand customers’ perceptions of the four dimensions of design. Retailers spend significant time and money designing and redesigning retail environments. The RED scale will enable managers to ensure these significant investments create competitive advantages and an appropriate return on investment.

A scale to measure retail environment design is developed. The scale includes two dimensions (lighting and signage) that are not typically investigated.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of physical environment design (PED) and its antecedents on consumers’ emotional well-being (EWB). Drawing on place identity and emotional theories, the study aims to provide a new perspective to retail store experiences.

A survey of 800 respondents was conducted in London, out of which 764 responses were constructively used. The data was collected from international retail outlets, and structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data.

The empirical results show that PED has a positive effect on consumers’ EWB. Among the antecedents, visual identity does not have any significant effect on PED and EWB. In contrast, communication had a significant effect on PED but did not have any effect on EWB, and further, cultural heritage had a positive effect on both PED and EWB. Further, moderator analysis identifies the boundary conditions under which specific theories hold.

The value of this paper lies in its potential to be used for creating the perfect design planning in retail stores. Significant implications for managers and researchers are highlighted.

This paper presents an innovative approach to develop the principles of retail store’s PED to support the EWB of consumers.

Fashion retail has faced immense changes in the rapid development of e-commerce, creating significant uncertainty about physical stores’ future. To improve the consumer shopping experience and increase sales revenue for fashion retailers, this paper investigates how Augmented Reality (AR) can be implemented within high-street fashion retail by exploring leading UK retailers’ reactions to pragmatic future scenarios.

This study conducted qualitative research through 13 interviews – eight retail staff from high-street and high-end markets and five AR/UX designers regarding their insights into how AR can enhance consumer engagement at each market level.

The results showed that the fashion retail market is ill-prepared to use AR. AR could help high-street brands offer a seamless shopping experience for consumers by prioritising the functional purpose but exciting AR animation. This would offer consumers an efficient and enjoyable shopping experience. While implementing AR, high-end stores should tell stories through hedonic engagement, letting consumers efficiently engage with brand messages, since building an AR ecosystem is cheaper than creating the story flow physically.

The study devises 16 retailer-supported guidelines for designing AR for Fashion Retail levels to guide innovators and retailers.

Small retail stores in the luxury market face significant challenges due to fluctuations in market demand. This task turns challenging as it requires effectively coordinating and translating customer needs into specific requirements that align with retail goals and available resources. However, limited empirical research exists investigating how managers can address service value and quality attributes in small retail stores. This article aims to bridge this gap by investigating the role of quality function deployment (QFD) in improving market and quality requirements management in small retail stores.

Based on the case study, a customer survey was initially conducted to gather information on critical characteristics valued in the luxury retail segment. QFD was used to assist the company in identifying and prioritizing key quality attributes to meet customer requirements effectively.

The findings demonstrate that implementing QFD in small luxury retail stores empowers managers to identify previously neglected product and service quality aspects. The article shows that QFD informs organizational adaptations that align with the demands of the retail market, leading to an improved ability to meet customer expectations and enhance customer value through the development of enhanced products and services. The study showcases the efficacy of the tested methodology in effectively capturing and prioritizing both tangible and intangible customer needs in retail.

Findings offer valuable insights to retail managers of small luxury stores, providing actionable market-oriented strategies. By implementing the recommended practices, managers can improve the store’s competitiveness and better cater to the customer base.

This study contributes to bridging persistent knowledge gaps by addressing the unique context of small luxury retail stores and introducing the application of QFD in this setting. The insights gained from this research are relevant to both retailing and quality management literature. Considering the growing prevalence of transformations in the retail industry, the study provides practical implications for retail managers in effectively navigating these changes.

This chapter first reviews the current stages of retail CBDC development before examining some of the common characteristics of retail CBDC projects being proposed in various jurisdictions. This chapter then examines the possible future of retail CBDC going forward.

This empirical study aims to examine luxury fashion retailers' localised multiple channel distribution strategies in China.

Through case studies of 15 participating retailers, qualitative data were collected from 33 semi-structured interviews.

Strong impacts of internationalisation strategies, distribution strategies and channel length towards multiple channel retailing are revealed. Multi-channel retailing is widely employed by firms who have entered China and further developed their businesses through local partnerships and adopted a selective distribution strategy via relatively longer channels. Omni-channel retailing is only suitable for the few retailers using an exclusive distribution strategy through direct marketing and wholly owned customer relationship management. As a dynamic transformation from multi- to omni-channel retailing, cross-channel retailing is adopted by those who are withdrawing from local partnerships and shifting to wholly owned expansions and operations in host markets.

The results are potentially challenged by relatively small sample size.

Practitioners are suggested to adapt multiple channel retailing to their international expansion strategies, distribution strategies and channel length in the host markets.

This paper contributes to the literature in both multiple channel retailing and international retailing by offering insights into the motives, development patterns and suitability of multiple channel retailing in the international retail marketing context.

The New Zealand city of Christchurch provides a leading example of post-disaster rebuilding in a Central Business District (CBD) area. In its rebuilding programme, the city has given emphasis to the greening of hospitality and traditional retail space through a combination of development of shared pedestrian spaces (with traffic exclusion and calming) and the integration of greening within the streetscape design. This paper aims to assess whether the development of greened pedestrian areas leads to higher retail spending and, thus, retail rental rates.

This study uses pedestrian movement data collected from several CBD locations, as well as spending data on retail and hospitality, to assess relationships between pedestrian movements and spending. This study explores retail spending in greened pedestrian shared spaces, and explores how this differs from retail spending in traditional street areas within the Christchurch CBD.

Spending patterns are location-related, depending on the characteristics of pedestrian space in the selected area. Greened shared pedestrian areas have the highest spending per measured pedestrian for retail and hospitality, whereas traditional street areas have lower spending for retail and hospitality per measured pedestrian, demonstrating the benefits in redeveloped central city areas.

The scope of smart data continues to develop as a research area within urban studies to develop an open and connected city. This research demonstrates the use of innovative technologies for data collection, use and sharing. The results support commercial benefits of greening and pedestrianisation of retail and hospitality areas for CBDs and providing an example for other cities to follow.

Front-of-packaging (FOP) is a critical branding tool that uses “cues” to communicate product attributes and establish distinct brand images. This paper aims to understand how food brands utilize cues and their relative proportions to hierarchically communicate brand image and belonging to particular subcategories.

A content analysis is used for analysing 543 food FOPs sold in Australia (breakfast cereals, chips, snack bars). Samples are collected and classified into product sub-categories defined by ingredients, consumer-audience and retail placement. A novel 10 × 10 coding grid is applied to each FOP to objectively analyse cue proportion, with statistical comparison undertaken between sub-categories.

Results reveal intrinsic cues are favoured over extrinsic cues, except for those in the eatertainment sub-category. Hierarchies are evidenced that treat product and branding cues as primary, with health cues secondary. Statistically significant differences in cue proportions are consistently evident across breakfast cereals, chips and snack-bar FOPs. Clear differentiation is evidenced through cue proportions on FOP for health/nutrition focused sub-categories and eatertainment foods.

“Cue utilization theory” research is extended to an evaluation of brand encoding (not consumer decoding). Design conventions reveal how cue proportions establish a dialogue of communicating brand/product image hierarchically, the trade-offs that occur, a “meso-level” to Gestalt theory, and achieving categorization through FOP cue proportions. Deeper understanding of packaging design techniques provides inter-disciplinary insights that extend consumer behaviour, retailing and design scholarship.

Acknowledging previous scholarly focus on functional attributes in understanding technology acceptance behaviour, the current study aims to offer a novel perspective by integrating eight different dimensions of utilitarian and hedonic attributes to examine their influence in delivering a holistic web-based retail shopping experience.

The research model was tested and validated through data collected from 370 online shoppers across both hedonic and utilitarian product ranges. Hypotheses were tested using covariance-based structural equation modelling with multi-group analysis to examine the moderation effect.

The findings strongly support the model confirming eight new utilitarian and hedonic dimensions that influence web-based retail shopping behaviour. The findings also confirm that hedonic attributes remain important even for utilitarian product purchasing.

The key managerial implication is the demonstrated need to balance utilitarian and hedonic attributes in web-based retail platforms, where previously, there has been an overemphasis on functional features. Web-based retailers should consider the optimal blend of utilitarian (e.g. information quality) and hedonic (e.g. aesthetic) attributes in the design of a retail shopping site, irrespective of the product category.

This study integrates multiple dimensions of utilitarian and hedonic attributes into a single model and highlights the interplay of these attributes, thus extending the technology acceptance model. This paper also advances scholarship through its identification of attribute impact across different product categories.

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive framework on how and when musical elements such as keys, complexity, tempo and volume influence consumers’ mood, attention, information recall, product evaluation and purchase decisions in the context of retail therapy.

This paper builds on a critical literature review to develop a conceptual framework and formulate relevant propositions, leveraging self-regulation and self-control theories.

Through our analysis of these studies, we found that in musical retail therapy, minor keys paired with high complexity can intensify negative moods and negative product evaluation. Conversely, major keys combined with low complexity can moderate negative and positive moods, leading to positive product evaluations. We argue that high tempo and high volume can invoke high arousal and low impulse control, leading to low attention and low recall. This subsequently moderates the negative mood, resulting in weak negative product evaluation. Low tempo and low volume, however, invoke low arousal and high impulse control, leading to high attention and high recall, which moderates negative mood and negative product evaluation.

Reflecting on the limitations of the existing studies, this conceptual work proposes a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding the significance of musical elements in retail therapy that can enhance consumers moods and experiences. Further, the current paper is different from the existing literature in that it helps academic researchers and marketers understand different ways to use musical elements that can positively affect consumer behavior in a complex situation like retail therapy.