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The purpose of this paper is to explore the qualities of a small town centre and how such centres can enhance their attractiveness.

A convenience sampling procedure was used to administer a web survey to visitors of a small Swedish town. Importance-performance analysis and statistical methods were used to analyse quality attributes and quality dimensions. Correlation analysis was run to measure the relationship between centre attractiveness and shopping loyalty.

The variety of retail outlets is what is most valued by visitors to a small town centre, followed by the provision of events and non-commercial activities and the design and maintenance of the physical environment in the centre. Surprisingly, the interpersonal behaviour has less impact on the perceived attractiveness than the aforementioned quality dimensions. Visitors’ shopping loyalty is significantly related to the perceived attractiveness.

The study is a one-off study based upon a small Swedish town, but it is indicative of global shopping trends.

Implications for town centre management to enhance the attractiveness of the business district of a small town.

Traditional town centres have been props for the surrounding societies, providing anscillary services beside retailing. When retail moves to out-of-town retail locations, this could lead to the erosion of interpersonal communications and central services for citizens.

Pioneering research on small Swedish town shopping.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on co-creative approaches for place innovation in an Arctic town, based on the relocation of Kiruna’s city center in northern Sweden. Three cases of co-creative innovation processes in Kiruna are investigated and compared: an R&D project about local perceptions and visions of attractive urban environments; an R&D project about norm-creative design principles for inclusive and attractive urban design; and an R&D project about cross-industrial synergies for city center attractiveness.

The study’s research design encompasses a comparative and participatory approach. The comparative approach implies investigation and comparison of three cases of co-creative innovation processes in Kiruna. The participatory approach implies joint development of new knowledge by researchers and local actors. The data consists of participatory observations of workshops and qualitative interviews with local actors.

The study reveals that the studied processes have harnessed the city center relocation as an opportunity to make Kiruna more attractive to residents and visitors, by using the co-creative approaches of Living Lab, Now-Wow-How and Norm-creative design. These approaches have enabled experts and local actors to jointly identify excluding patterns and norms in the relocation process and to envision inclusive and attractive (re-)configurations and (re-)conceptualizations of the future Kiruna.

The results add to the academic strand of inclusive urban transformation, by providing insights into co-creative approaches for re-imagining an Arctic town in times of industrial and social change. New insights are provided regarding how the geographical, industrial and cultural identity of an Arctic town can be harnessed to envision new configuration, content and communication that is attractive and accessible for a diversity of residents and visitors.

The results highlight the potential to harness Arctic and rural characteristics in the promotion of urban attractiveness and public well-being, especially when combined with co-creative identification and transformation of excluding norms and patterns.

The results provide new insights into how co-creative approaches may facilitate innovative and inclusive renewal of towns and cities in the Arctic and beyond.

This paper aims to investigate place-based loyalty schemes and place marketing. It focuses on the practical issues of implementation and use as perceived by place managers and businesses.

The investigation incorporated a three-stage procedure: focus group, quantitative data analysis and semi-structured interviews with place managers and business managers.

The study showed wide interest and potential for place based loyalty schemes, acknowledged by all stakeholder groups. The major concerns were practical issues such as complexity, security of data and costs of implementation (equally time/effort and money). The key finding is the need for simplicity to avoid competing desires and priorities.

Place marketing is claimed to be a priority for town and city managers. There is less agreement however on how to achieve effective place marketing. The authors show how different stakeholders have different views and how these need to be considered to obtain the benefits all agree are possible.

The purpose of this paper is to show the relevance of the interest in sharing the common purpose and in searching for a common survival of emerging eco-system (ES) as an entity that “is not” but emerges by the viable actors interaction.

This conceptual paper contributes to the research by defining the ES building on the contributions of SD logic and viable systems approach (VSA), with a particular focus on the VSA perspective.

An ES emerges as a viable “system of systems” by an observer’s interpretation of the simultaneous interactions between different viable actors/systems that are sharing a common purpose (the survival of the ES), exchanging resources following a viable value co-creation model. Each actor/system could represent a level of quality of belonging to the ES looking for the opportunity to be resonant with the ES.

The ES features and the role of each actor inside could be deepened through different theoretical perspectives and the same VSA to the ES could be reached with empirical explorations.

Understanding the nature of the ES, the practitioners are able to explain better their position in relation to partners and competitors. It is possible to be a part of several emerging ESs looking for the will to contribute to the ES’ survival and to the sharing of the purpose of the interactive systems/actors. In a medium and long run, the measure of the resonance is useful to understand the quality in interaction.

The work provides a definition of the ES and the actors inside focusing on the perspective of VSA, by integrating the concept of viable value co-creation and solidarity-based logic; in particular, the concept of Centro Commerciale Naturale is used to show the emergence of the ES in a relational context generated by the interaction between city, service and retailers in a city center.

The purpose of this paper is to identify those attributes of created and evolved retail agglomeration formats that have a substantial impact on overall attractiveness from the consumers' point of view. From an agglomeration management perspective primary areas of concern are identified and suggestions to increase the competitiveness of diverse agglomeration formats are presented.

Through synthesizing pertinent literatures, the paper produces a conceptual framework that proposes significant impacts between ten generic agglomeration attributes and different dimensions of attractiveness. The paper then tests the hypotheses using a survey of more than 1,000 consumers of three competing agglomeration formats (a town center, a strip center, and a regional shopping mall) in a particular locality.

Retail‐related factors and the atmosphere influence attractiveness most significantly in each of the three settings. All other factors – in particular convenience related ones – show only format specific relevance or are of no direct importance on the consumers' evaluation of attractiveness.

The findings can only be transferred to similar retail settings and do not consider supra‐regional agglomerations.

The results suggest that management of all three agglomerations is quite limited in directly influencing attractiveness. They should instead focus on the optimum selection of retail tenants and support or compliment the marketing endeavors of their tenants.

The focus is on regional retail agglomerations and considers the interdependencies between different formats in one geographical area. The in vivo survey approach takes into account the moderating effect of the shopping situation when consumers' evaluate the attractiveness of competing shopping venues.

To counter the proliferation of out-of-town shopping centres, a spontaneous or planned coalition loyalty programme (CLP), one involving most retailers in an urban network, may positively affect a town centre's capacity to entice customers and may enhance its competitiveness. The purpose of this paper is to assess the effectiveness of CLP implementation in town-centre management (TCM) as a tool for enhancing urban commercial-system attractiveness.

The theoretical framework used in this study is supported by the evaluation methodologies of an empirical case study: the Savigliano Card project. CLP performance analysis uses a dynamic network-competitiveness index, an approach based on Laspeyres-type decomposition. The effects on each retailer's profitability are then tested by matching network and regression analyses.

The results suggest that CLPs implementation in a TCM scheme can produce benefits and positive externalities for customers, retailers and urban areas. CLPs can influence a town centre's revitalisation process, improve the attractiveness of the urban commercial network and increase the profitability of private retailers by enhancing cross-selling dynamics.

The paper provides a CLP performance-evaluation methodology and presents the benefits concerning CLP implementation in TCM strategies.

This type of CLP is weakly exploited in marketing theory and practice; therefore, the paper provides theoretical and empirical explanations for the measurement of CLP effectiveness in TCM. In addition, it has significant implications for both practitioners and academics.

Globalisation as a competitive marketing strategy can only offer a limited explanation for the behaviour of organisations. This is particularly applicable in the case of business and marketing strategies for small and medium‐sized organisations in the retail sector. Terms such as “localisation” have been coined by researchers but the concept is yet to receive a valid interpretation as a marketing strategy from the perspective of the small retailer. This paper seeks first, to understand how “localisation” impacts on the business practices and marketing strategy of small retailers in Spain and Scotland. Second, the results should help lessen the gap between the concepts of globalisation and the localisation.

This explorative, comparative qualitative paper explores business practices and marketing strategies by small retail business owners in Seville (Spain) and Perth (UK) and the role of localisation, using three key themes – place, people and promotion.

This paper suggests that place attractiveness, word‐of‐mouth customer‐to‐customer marketing, customer service beyond simple product advice, community embeddedness and informal but meaningful interpersonal relations between shop owner and customers are some of the key pillars of the “localisation” strategic marketing approach pursued by small retailers in Perth and Seville. This indicates a counterbalance to globalisation.

The pursuit of a deliberate localisation approach by small retailers may be key to their sustainable competitiveness in the knowledge that these elements would not be easily replicated by larger or global retailers.

Retailing in Scotland has shown dynamism in the last decade. Assesses the factors which have influenced change and how Scotland differs from the rest of the UK in terms of market concentration, corporate decision making and inter‐format competition.

With the development of small towns in China, the country pays more and more attention to the protection of landscape resources. It is an urgent problem that is how to protect landscape resources and ecological environment while developing economic industry in small towns. Establishing an ecotourism evaluation model can provide valuable reference for ecotourism planning, development protection and sustainable development of small towns.

This paper uses the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to construct the ecotourism evaluation system that accords with the characteristics of small towns. A judgment matrix is constructed to determine specific indicators and factor values based on expert survey results. Based on the AHP theory and considering 4 aspects, construction conditions of featured small towns, ecological and environmental conditions, ecotourism resources endowment and development conditions and tourism capacity. In addition, 16 factor evaluations were selected, evaluation model of ecotourism resources were built and each evaluation index value was confirmed by adopting expert's advice.

Ecological environment, socioeconomic, uniqueness, esthetic ornamental value, small-scale industry scale, type and development level, type and scale, tourism talent level, therapeutic and leisure value were the indispensable components of evaluation of ecotourism resources in featured small towns.

The ideas of ecological environment development are rooted in the hearts of the people with the development of times. The model in this research is pertinent, typical and universal to some extent. Thus it is worth popularizing and applying.

Presents the results of an interview survey carried out in an out‐of‐town store, compares these with the impact of the store as predicted by the Lakschmanan‐Harsen real potential model. Suggests that the model is an effective way of assessing the impact of out‐of‐town stores.