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The ease and convenience of online shopping are shifting the customers to e-tailers. This has prompted offline retailers to re-examine behavioural patterns along with a reconfiguration for a responsive retail model. The paper investigates the influence of responsiveness on customer satisfaction, cross-buying behaviour, revisit intention and referral behaviour.

Data were collected via a survey answered by 793 fashion customers from India, and for data analysis, partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was employed. Path analysis was used to determine the interrelationships amongst the constructs used in the study.

The standardized path coefficients depict competitive responsiveness as the highest contributor of retailers' responsiveness followed by service responsiveness, employee responsiveness and customer responsiveness. The findings suggest that customer satisfaction acts as the biggest contributor to referral behaviour followed by cross-buying behaviour and revisit intentions.

This study has made a substantial contribution to fashion apparel retailing. The findings revealed that responsive retailing influences the customers' post-purchase behaviour as they engage in more cross-buying, revisiting and referral behaviour. The retailers are encouraged to carefully monitor their preparedness to deliver a combination of sensory, emotional, cognitive and social experience to their customers.

The purpose of this paper is to review existing research on retail supply chain responsiveness, develop categories to be included in a retail-specific responsiveness framework, and identify future research areas within the scope of retail supply chain responsiveness.

This paper presents an inductive systematic literature review of 46 academic, peer-reviewed articles. Based around the two major review questions on retailers’ role in the creation of supply chain responsiveness and future research areas, an inductive, qualitative, content analysis was conducted. Further analysis was conducted by using the software NVivo 11.

Existing research are grouped into a framework of four categories that together span the existing research. The categories are labelled supply chain orchestration, market orientation, supply chain operations and supply management. Two to three subthemes in each category are presented. Thereafter, promising future research areas are outlined, covering methodological issues, theoretical underpinnings, inclusion of context variables and outcomes of retail supply chain responsiveness.

The conducted systematic literature review has been limited to academic, peer-reviewed articles.

The findings of the paper constitute a promising initial step towards a retail-specific framework on retail supply chain responsiveness.

The paper questions the comprehensiveness of established models in responsiveness, and argues that existing “general” literature on supply chain responsiveness gives little guidance and structure to retailers’ specific role and involvement in supply chain responsiveness. In particular, the paper focusses on the retailers’ role for creation of supply chain responsiveness, which has not previously been addressed in research.

This paper aims to epistemologically extend and explore the present theories from prior research conducted in the area of responsiveness. Furthermore, it determines to benchmark the prominent theories, characteristics, context and methodologies (TCCM) used in the domain since its inception to advance the science and practice of marketing and logistics discipline.

A seven-step methodology (SSM) has been introduced to create a comprehensive dataset. Based upon the selection criteria of high-ranked journals and language, the research studies have been retrieved from Scopus, Web of Science, Business Source Complete and journal homepage to avoid the error of exclusion. Moreover, the dataset has been compiled using manual and electronic searches without any limitation of time.

The search for a suitable dataset retrieved 642 documents by identifying “1969” as the beginning year of research in the subject domain. The analysis found that responsiveness has been prominently studied in the manufacturing industry. The results also advocate responsiveness as the vital antecedent to performance and satisfaction. Frameworks have been proposed with significant propositions for future empirical testing and theory inventiveness by researchers.

The study pioneers its utility for retailers to recognize the firms' inherent abilities and strengths, which can be promoted to create responsiveness more than ever. The analysis results can act as the compelling force to understand the driving power of various factors influencing responsiveness.

Extant research suggests that salespeople can significantly impact consumers’ outcome perceptions. Examines the importance of initial contact with salespeople on consumers’ perceptions of value and the impact of salesperson service failure on perceptions of value among non‐purchasers. An exit survey of shoppers was conducted to realistically study these issues. Results show that outcome perceptions were significantly lower when either there was no contact with salespeople, or the consumer had to initiate the contact. The retailer that had the highest percentage of salesperson initiated contact, earned the highest perception ratings and also had the highest ratio of buyers to browsers. Furthermore, non‐purchasers that experienced service failures (slow service or offended by a salesperson) discounted not just the perception of that retail visit, but also overall value compared to other retailers. These results suggest that retailers must encourage their sales staff to initiate consumer contact.

Existing market orientation frameworks are based mostly on studies of manufacturers. Therefore, there is a need of a modified approach that acknowledges the special conditions for retailers. A framework is presented that includes both internal and relational aspects. Inter‐firm market orientation is presented as especially relevant for retailers. Antecedents to market orientation on a relationship level are also considered. Kohli and Jaworski’s three basic components are used, but the paper then discusses indicators that are especially useful in order to capture market orientation in a retail context. The suggested framework is further developed using a case study of a major British food retailer.

The delivery of high-quality service is critical for the success, or otherwise, of many retailers. However, despite calls to examine the efficacy of the dimensions of quality in different service contexts, it is still largely unknown how dimensions such as empathy and responsiveness interact to determine consumers’ perceptions of service quality. Recent research also suggests that loyalty strategies may not be equally effective across all services contexts. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to contribute to the service quality literature by providing a better understanding of how marketing strategy is effectively operationalised into improved services and consumer loyalty in physical stores.

Consumers from ten stores of one pharmacy retailer were surveyed. The retailer provides high-service levels at present and is examining ways of how to deliver a better quality service to its prescription and non-prescription account holding consumers. By examining consumer loyalties in high-services contexts in pharmacy retailing, the authors also propose how retailers in other sectors can learn to operationalise services quality into increased loyalties.

The findings of this research demonstrate that empathy, rather than responsiveness, is more important in a high service delivery context such as pharmacy retailing. Non-prescription account holding and non-store loyal consumers also do not perceive that high service responsiveness is compromised by offering of a highly empathetic (and possibly more time consuming) service by the retailer.

These findings present specific implications for retailers in the development of consumer loyalty in a high-service context. Moreover, the findings of this research also illustrate how retailers can more effectively target their investments in service design to enhance service quality and consumer loyalty.

Addresses two critical issues for the small retailer faced with competition from large national one‐stop chains: do customers perceive environmental and induced emotional influences the same for these different retailers and do these influences have differential effects on a customer’s willingness‐to‐buy (WTB)? Two studies were performed within a small town in the mid‐western USA. It was found that the small downtown retailers primarily use empathy to influence WTB. It was also found that the large national one‐stop chains in this small town primarily use assurance to influence WTB. It was further found that small retailers manage empathy through responsiveness, where the large national chains balance tangibility, reliability and responsiveness to jointly influence assurance.

This study investigates the impacts of return channel type on the relationships between return service quality (RSQ) and customer loyalty (CL) in an omnichannel retailing environment.

Data comes from Chinese customers having a return experience in omnichannel retailing that uses the channel type of both buy-online-return-in-store (BORIS) and buy-in-store-return-to-online warehouses (BSROW). The authors use the structural equation modeling to test the hypotheses and the bootstrapping method to test the mediation and moderation effect.

For BORIS channel, satisfaction of customer returns (CRS) partially mediates the relationship between convenience and CL, and fully mediates that between CL and responsiveness, transparency and competence, respectively. For BSROW channel, CRS partially mediates the relationship between responsiveness and CL, and fully mediates that between CL and convenience, transparency and competence, respectively. The mediation effects indicate that omnichannel customers may feel more satisfied due to higher omnichannel fulfillment (responsiveness and convenience) and omnichannel trust (transparency and competence) provided by retailers. Return channel type moderates the relationship between RSQ-convenience and CL. The results show the different expectations between BORIS and BSROW customers in the return process.

This paper serves as a pioneering study to apply cognition-affect-behavior paradigm into the field of return management in omnichannel retailing.

The findings suggest retailers develop their strategies on customer returns and post-sales service quality improvement in the omnichannel. Also, retailers should develop an integrated return system across channels to provide convenient service to BORIS customers and quick response to BSROW customers.

Studying return service management in the omnichannel from customer's cognition appraisal, this study contributes to the literature of the reverse service management by bringing in the effect of omnichannel type to explore the relationship between RSQ and CL.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the use of retail customer service as a value added component and potential success strategy for rural tourism retailers. More specifically, service quality expectations and perceptions as a means for segmenting tourism markets are to be examined.

Data were collected using a case study methodology in an established rural tourism community. Local customers, tourist customers, and retailers participated in the study. A canvassing approach was employed for administering a hand‐delivered, self‐report survey that examined parallel sets of service quality expectations and perceptions among the three groups, along with service satisfaction outcomes (i.e. retailer loyalty and purchase intentions). Descriptive analysis, factor analysis, t‐tests, and regression analysis were conducted.

Local and tourist customers' prior expectations for retail service quality were similar; however, local and tourist customers' post‐experience service quality perceptions differed significantly. A modified version of the SERVQUAL scale represented two service quality perception constructs important to local customers and retailers and one service quality perception construct for tourist customers.

Generalizability of findings may be limited as the in‐depth study was conducted within a single rural tourism community in Iowa.

The study sheds light on service quality perception dimensions that are salient to local customers, tourist customers, and retailers. Results aid in the development of customer relationship management strategies for both local and tourist customers and enhanced competitive options for rural tourism retailers.

Findings provide baseline information regarding customer relationship management strategies aimed at establishing rural tourism retailer sustainability by simultaneously meeting service expectations and enhancing service perceptions for local and tourist customers.

This study sets out to focus on the textiles and fashion clothing supply chain with the objective of identifying factors that constrain company activities and inhibit competitiveness.

The methodology for this research involves multiple case studies involving UK companies. Supply chain management theory and ecological concepts have been used to interpret the data and to identify significant blocks affecting dynamic performance of the participating companies.

The research has identified seven significant blocks to responsiveness that were apparent in the observed supply chains: timing of fabric trade shows, lack of control of availability of fabric, forecasting, late stage product changes, geographical proximity to market, decision making decoupled from fashion trends, stock‐outs and slow selling products.

The paper draws conclusions about the strategic directions of fashion supply chains and suggests the need to develop strong personal and organisational relationships in order to produce a culture characterised by common goals, trust and mutual interest.

The observations and analyses of responsiveness barriers establish a framework for strategic thinking regarding the supply chain responsiveness, with academic and commercial implications.