Search results

The paper seeks to review dynamic forms of rural retailing, by location, that have innovated through a mixture of actions leading to growth, adaptation, diversification and differentiation.

Reviews relevant academic literature and draws upon contemporary policy‐related material that details recent innovation within the sector. A rural retail typology by location is presented: retailing within market towns, village shops and stand‐alone retailing forms (farm shops and speciality rural retail outlets).

Since, the nature together with form of what characterises dynamic and innovative rural retailing differs by location, the typology is based on the above schema. First, market towns have used growth and differentiation opportunities as strategic foci. Second, innovative village shops have applied strategies that seek to counter their structural weaknesses, harness the community and yield new revenue streams. Third, the manner in which stand‐alone retailing forms, such as farm shops together with speciality rural retail outlets, have grown and developed is reviewed.

Reviewing dynamic forms of rural retailing allows for a greater understanding of the operational needs for success. A lack of relevant research is cited together with examples.

Stereotyping rural retailing is erroneous since marginalised enterprises are juxtaposed against more innovative forms. Contrary to perceptions of rural decline, the sector is multi‐faceted with prospering sub‐sectors. The paper focuses on these more dynamic and innovative forms of rural retailing. Much of the previous focus in this sector has been on negative issues and decline. A synthesis of the key contributory phenomena is presented.

The issue of retailing in rural areas has received relatively little attention in recent years. This article considers retail businesses in a remote, rural area, the Uist chain in the Western Isles of Scotland. Drawing on the marketing and retail strategy literatures, a “funnical” model of rural retail strategies is developed, and examples of independent retail businesses that have adopted both market‐led and product‐led strategies are posited. These have ranged from a situation of “strategic stasis” within some retail organisations, where more “extensive” methods of running retail outlets have been adopted, through to various new development strategies. Overall, it is evident that retailers may mix strategic directions for their business within the specific geographic context that they are located. This appears to contrast with Jussila et.al. (1992: 192), who imply that their strategic alternatives are mutually exclusive and that the individual strategies are “spatially bound”. In the light of these findings, the article considers the implications presented for retailers in other rural areas of the UK.

The study seeks to understand the influences on the prevalence of rural retailing institution of periodic markets. It examines the influence of access to and population of the location on the performance of periodic markets and their effect on the competition between periodic markets and local rural retail stores.

Simultaneous cross-sectional study on census data is used to understand changes in performance of periodic markets in the context of growth in retail stores.

The superior performance of local retail shop compared to outshopping in periodic markets is contrary to observation in literature developed in the context of urban outshopping.

Retail chains need to develop a separate program for location of outlets that serve rural areas as access influences retail performance. In rural areas marketers can use traditional periodic markets in addition to conventional retail store given the limited inter-format retail competition.

This is one of the few studies to explicitly examine periodic markets as a retail format. Outshopping is studied in the context of growth in local retail stores unlike earlier studies in the urban context where the local stores exhibit reduced sales.

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.

The purpose of this study is to determine factors influencing rural consumers' inshopping behaviours and to examine rural retailers' perceptions of the current rural retailing environment.

This study was comprised of two phases. In Phase 1, consumer surveys were conducted in three rural US communities. In Phase 2, in‐depth interviews with retailers selected from the same communities were conducted.

The findings of the consumer surveys supported all hypothesised relationships, except the direct effect of community attachment on inshopping intention. The findings of the retailer interviews provided useful insights as to the challenges rural retailers are currently facing.

The findings have implications for both retailers and community leaders in rural places who wish to improve their understanding of the challenges and opportunities rural retailers face and subsequently develop strategies to promote inshopping behaviours.

This study examined both consumers and retailers in the context of rural retailing. Thus, the findings provide a more complete picture of the current retail industry in rural communities.

Considers the topic of food retailing in rural areas, a subject that has been barely researched of late. This is achieved through a case study of the Uist chain in the southern Western Isles of Scotland. Although there has been previous work on food retailing in this area, this has largely been from a consumer‐led perspective. The research presented here takes a provider‐oriented approach, involving a census of retail businesses on the Uists and interviews with owner‐managers of food retail outlets. Specifically, the role of the customer base, logistics and supply, and legislative and economic issues are discussed. In conclusion, it is suggested that future research should concentrate on combining consumer‐ and provider‐led perspectives, investigate the role of effective management in small rural retail businesses, and assess whether such findings are generalisable to other rural areas.

This study aims to focus on the unique challenges of retail service delivery in rural tourism markets. This paper specifically seeks to address: factors attracting individuals to a rural tourism community; factors motivating resident and tourist customers to engage in tourism shopping; satisfaction of resident and tourist customers with local retailers; and strategies to assist retailers in successful service delivery.

Using Dillman's survey techniques, data were collected from two different groups: resident customers and tourist customers in a rural Iowa tourism community. Given the study's exploratory focus, a case study methodology was selected.

Shopping experiences were much less satisfying for resident customers than for tourist customers in this study. Tourism retailers may not be effectively differentiating their customer service and providing adequate attention during the shopping experience, particularly to resident customers.

One limitation is that the study represents an initial test of self‐designed and/or modified scales to capture the variables of interest in a single rural tourism community in Iowa. Therefore findings may only be generalizable to the unique nature of an established tourist population in Midwestern regions of the USA.

An important implication from this study is rural tourism retailers need to develop a comprehensive customer relationship management strategy to encourage repeat shopping and sustained patronage behavior.

This study provides valuable strategic implications for rural tourism entrepreneurs, business consultants and economic development professionals in rural tourism communities, and fills a void in the tourism and patronage literature.

Owning to the influence small retailers have on the customer’s final choice, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that dominate small retailer’s assortment planning decisions. Drivers of product adoption by small retailers are the focus of study. Earlier research works have primarily focused on the profit oriented factors of retailing. It is a multidimensional approach of understanding the decision making of small retailers.

The study is an exploratory in nature, using a mixed method approach that involves both qualitative and quantitative methodology. In the first stage of the study, grounded theory has been adopted that helps in building a conceptual model, which is further validated using SEM. Rural areas of Jammu and Punjab have been targeted to collect data.

The study provides a conceptual model of product assortment planning for small retailers. The results indicate retail margin, which is the most important criterion toward product selection. Small retailers understand the customer profile and their catchment before selecting a product for their store. Store design is an important variable which impacts the number of categories kept in the store as the shelf space is limited. While determining the assortment planning for the store the retailers need to think in advance about buyer, supplier, environmental and the surplus oriented factors while determining the assortment planning for the store.

In developing economies like India, major population (customers) lie in the rural areas of the country and prefer small retailers to shop their daily necessities. The study proposed that the manufacturers need to maintain good and healthy relationship with the associates of the channel and the retailers that are in connected with the end consumer. Marketing managers of firms with target audience as small retailers can draw many inferences from the present study. They may devise rural strategies keeping attributes like localization of supplier, doorstep delivery, supply frequency, etc., on the basis of product demand and attribute.

This paper fulfills an identified need to explore the assortment planning criteria of BOP retailers in India. Also the mixed methodology is attractive and new in the retail domain.

Traditional competition across apparel store types reflects the dynamics of market positioning in practice. Previous research found that apparel related purchases accounted for over half of the money rural consumers spent out of town. Research on apparel shopping intentions according to store types helps identify to what extent different retail formats compete with each other for customers and enables rural retailers to improve their positioning strategies. Results describe apparel shopping behaviour, in rural population, relative to store type and variables influencing consumers’ shopping intentions. Factors influencing consumers’ shopping choices among different apparel retail formats are identified. Descriptive statistics indicated most apparel shoppers frequented independently owned stores and cross‐shop among retail formats. When store categories were created, data revealed that the retail format category department, discount, and chain stores attracted more customers than the other retail format categories.

The research purpose was to identify whether changes occurred between 2000 and 2003 in the retail channel use of rural consumers for searching product information and for purchasing food and fiber products and to investigate whether differences existed between channel use groups (i.e. store only shoppers, store and catalog shoppers, and multi‐channel shoppers) concerning perceived time property, satisfaction with local offerings, community attachment, shopping criteria, and financial security.

Survey methodology was used. Questionnaires were mailed to participants living in non‐metropolitan statistical areas of the USA with populations less than 12,500. In 2000, 2,198 participants returned the questionnaire. Follow‐up questionnaires were mailed to the same participants during 2003 and returned by 847 participants. The analysis is based on the responses of the 847 participants.

To search for information on apparel, food, or home furnishing products, internet use increased slightly as did use of the internet to purchase apparel and home furnishings. Multi‐channel shoppers rated themselves as time‐pressed, dissatisfied with local offerings, unattached to their community, and unconcerned with financial security while shopping.

Rural consumers are slowly increasing their use of internet even as they report their satisfaction with shopping with local brick and mortar stores increased during the time period studied. The time is right for rural retailers to enhance both personal and professional relationships with their customers. Rural retailers can capitalize on consumer satisfaction and provide outstanding value and service to keep local customers in local markets.

The paper provides information on new and different retailing practices that satisfy rural consumers in the USA.