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This study develops the idea of smart retailing, exemplified in innovative, technology-enriched retail services as part of service-oriented strategies. In particular, the purpose of this paper is to provide a new integrated framework to understand the emerging retail scenario based on the smart usage of technologies to improve retail service and develop innovation management strategies. This framework will provide a comprehensive understanding the basic forms of smart retailing as the current competitive scenario.

As a viewpoint, this paper employs an interdisciplinary approach, drawing upon the actual challenges in retailing, to propose a new perspective, the smart retailing one, to describe the new competitive scenario and formulates an emerging research agenda.

The present paper contributes to research on innovation and technology management for retailing by examining the key dimensions of smart retailing, which aims to enhancing retail service quality and retailers’ performance.

The paper clearly explains how current retailing is moving to a smart perspective, and how retail management should be adapted to successfully perform in the current service-dominant logic scenario, as consequence of the increasing consumer involvement in service co-production and the rapid growth of digital technologies.

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.

Using the literature on innovation research, this paper proposes to establish and empirically test a prediction model which consists of four major factors in the adoption of online retailing by organisations, namely relative advantage, competitive pressure, channel conflict and technical resource competence.

Data collected from 140 different companies indicate strong empirical support for the model. Relevant hypotheses were derived and tested by logistic regression analysis.

The results revealed that relative advantage, competitive pressure and technical resource competence have positive effects on the adoption of online retailing.

The research was conducted in Hong Kong, which may limit the generalisability of the findings.

While many studies contribute to an understanding of behaviours of the online market from a consumer perspective, there are few concrete investigations of the organisational viewpoint. With data obtained from practitioners in 140 companies, the major factors of online retailing adoption are addressed, providing strategic directions for managers to evaluate its adoption.

Although many conceptual papers and case studies have identified different potential factors affecting the adoption of online retailing, there are few empirical studies which establish prediction models for its adoption. In fact, during the past decade, in spite of growing interest in B2C transactions, organisations have not necessarily rushed towards adopting online sales. It is critical to have more empirical evidence of the factors affecting the adoption of online sales to help managers further access the benefits of its continuous and potential development. This study attempts to fill the research gap.

Continuous change has long been recognized as a core characteristic of retailing, its recent acceleration unprecedented, yet innovation in retailing remains under-researched, especially within fashion retailing. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to generate a deeper understanding of if, and to what extent, fashion retailers across different market segments are innovating in terms of in-store technology diffusion over time by taking a long-term perspective over five years.

Drawing on retail change and innovation diffusion theory, the study takes a qualitative approach, using direct observation of 71 fashion stores in London (UK) in 2014 and 2019. In total, 142 stores were tabulated in Excel and qualitatively analysed manually and with NVivo.

The findings identify the innovation adoption strategies implemented, the types of in-store technologies adopted over time and the fashion retail innovation adopters.

The research offers new knowledge in terms of retail innovation and retail change, specifically on retail diffusion of innovation and the importance of in-store technology integration. Several practical implications for improving technology innovation management are also identified.

Despite the importance of innovation in business performance, investigation into innovation in services is scanty and lacking consensus. In retailing, it is a topic that has been awakening considerable academic and business interest in recent years. In this study context, this work aims to analyse innovation in retail experiences from two aspects – marketing innovation and technological innovation – to understand the role it exercises in satisfaction and subsequent recommendation.

The authors’ objective is to investigate the direct and indirect influence of marketing and technological innovation on satisfaction and word-of-mouth (WOM) through three core constructs: store image, consumer value and store brand equity. SEM methodology is applied on a sample of 820 retail customers of grocery, clothing, furniture an electronics store.

The results show that technological innovation is more important than marketing innovation in shaping image, value and satisfaction. At the same time, store image is the variable that most influences customer satisfaction and that satisfaction is a very significant antecedent of WOM behaviour. Practical implications for retail managers and further research are presented.

The main value of this work has been to go deeper into the study of retail innovation, both in marketing and technologies, and its direct and indirect effects on satisfaction and subsequent recommendation through store image, consumer value and store brand equity. It is a new line of study, which is still fragmented and with little empirical evidence.

This exploratory study identifies key pillars on which innovative business models rely in the Latin American retail landscape. First, using qualitative research methods, we delve into the minds of Latin America's emerging consumers to uncover their needs and paradigms. In a region where retail innovation has traditionally been targeted at high-income consumers, we find a new breed of retailers that cater to the large mass of emerging consumers. Second, we explore the avenues of innovation retailers have followed to serve this impoverished segment and find that retailers' efforts to innovate have resulted in at least three original retail formats: one centered on providing access to durable goods, another centered on offering a wide assortment of goods and a convenient location, and the last one centered on incorporating design and quality. Based on the wheel of retailing theory, we show how these new formats are changing the structure of the retail industry in the region.

Explains the Wheel of Retailing as an attempt to explain the dynamics of change and evolution at the social level. Suggests that the theory of new retail institutions beginning with low levels of prices and services and then upgrading is not always proved to be so. Concludes that retailing is a social process with the development of institutions determined by the society in which they exist and not by a deterministic pattern of development.

Three basic approaches to retail institutional change can be discerned in the last 30 years. The first contends that institutional evolution is a function of developments in the socio‐economic environment. The second argues that change occurs in a cyclical fashion. The third considers inter‐institutional conflict to be the mainspring of retail change. None of those approaches is found to be entirely satisfactory, and a series of combination theories has been posited. It is argued that regional institutional change is the result of environmental forces and a cycle‐like sequence of inter‐institutional conflict.

This paper aims to understand the factors affecting the evolution of retailing in India since the mid-nineteenth century.

This paper compares the trajectories of four distinct retail stores in India – Spencer’s pan-Indian retailing empire since 1863, Akbarallys’ department store chain in Mumbai since 1897, Apna Bazar’s consumer cooperative chain in Mumbai since 1948 and the Future Group’s pan-Indian retailing chain since the 1980s. Historical sources include firm biographies and newspaper archives.

This paper proposes a systems theory linking environmental influences and service innovation, to explain the evolution of retailing in India since the mid-nineteenth century. The key environmental influence on retailing has been state patronage – colonialism and high-end department stores until the 1940s, socialism and cooperative stores until the 1980s and liberalisation with restricted foreign direct investment in retailing until 2015 associated with indigenous corporate large retail format stores. Service innovation in terms of home delivery and recreation of the bazaar atmosphere due to norms on gender and community have also interacted to shape individual success in modern retailing and the dominance of small shop retailing over the long run.

This paper questions standard accounts of retailing history in India that began with the late-twentieth century by showing the scale of a pan-Indian retailing chain in the early-twentieth century. It also provides an account of retailers that is missing in the current literature on the history of consumption in India.

Findings of this study will be useful to marketing professionals and teachers who wish to learn more about the history of retailing in India. It also shows how retailers navigated changes in the regulatory and business environment.

Through a comparative study, this paper outlines the environmental influences on retail formats and service innovation strategies that are required to serve the Indian market. It also brings to fore the significance of retailing chains in colonial India.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the historical contributions of complex innovations (both creative and tactical components) in a formative period in a major Australian department store, David Jones Ltd.

The study uses a context-specific lens to examine complex retail innovation. The study adopts a longitudinal design with the focus on a single firm, which met the inclusion criteria. Data collection was predominately from company archival materials and publicly available documents, including newspapers.

An in-depth analysis of two complex innovations demonstrates the retailer’s successful management of both marketing exploration (innovation) and marketing exploitation of that innovation. Effective marketing requires operational, tactical marketing exploitation to dovetail marketing exploration.

The study is limited to one successful department store. Notwithstanding, there are expectations that the lessons extend to many other retailing organizations.

The practical relevance is clear, with the emphasis on retail innovation (and especially complex innovation) as a basis for both surviving and thriving in an ever-changing marketing environment.

The use of a complex innovation approach is a novel way of examining marketing history. The study concludes that both marketing exploration and marketing exploitation are essential for retail longevity.