Search results

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.

Previous studies have considered customers' psychological responses to intelligent retail technology adoption, but have not considered how technology integration systems could promote the relationship between retailers and consumers. Based on the Stimulus–Organism–Response framework, this paper proposes a customer engagement model in a fully intelligent retail environment. The concept of the quality of intelligent experience is constructed from the perspective of customer experience, and the effect of the mechanism of smart retail on the customer engagement relationship is discussed.

Using two surveys, this study analyzes 201 (in study 1) and 321 (in study 2) questionnaires by using structural equation model in partial least square software.

The analysis shows that the human–machine interaction, intelligent systems and the product content of the quality intelligent experience significantly impact customer engagement on smart retail.

This research was designed for general retail products, without distinguishing between different product types. Thus, it did not consider the moderating effect of product types.

The findings enrich the intelligent retail technology field and provide operable guidance to help smart retailers improve customer relations.

This paper proposes a customer engagement model to describe how technology integration systems promote the relationship between retailers and consumers.

The retail landscape is dramatically changing due to a series of socio-economic and technological challenges, which can be faced through the adoption of smart technologies. Accordingly, a significant number of publications in this field have been produced, albeit with fragmented results. Therefore, this paper aims at both providing a clear and organised overview of the main smart technologies for physical retailing, in terms of application fields and expected impact, while identifying the major shortcomings and future research avenues.

The research conducts a systematic review of the literature concerning the assimilation of smart technologies within physical retail environments, resulting in the analysis of 103 papers published from 2005 to 2023. The review highlights (1) the main smart technologies employed in retail stores, (2) their application area and (3) the beneficiaries of their adoption. Accordingly, these three aspects are initially assessed independently and then examined in combination.

The analysis presents a comprehensive list of 16 key technologies (what) that can support a wide range of processes, spanning from back-end functions to front-end activities, also enabling the connection with online channels (where), catering several and different benefits (why) to both customers and retailers (who). Besides, the research points out many uncovered topics that could be addressed by the academic community.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the review is the first one in the literature offering a thorough and organised overview of the different available technologies for in-store application and their impact on physical retail processes.

This study aims to identify the antecedent factors influencing consumer attitudes and patronage intentions toward an intelligent unmanned convenience store (IUCVS) in Taiwan. The IUCVS is a new smart service that offers customers a novel shopping experience, given that it avoids queues and physical contacts with cashiers. However, studies discussing IUCVS remain scant owing to its brief history.

This research develops a synergistic model combining original unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) constructs with perceived risk and value to test differences between unexperienced and experienced customers’ attitudes and patronage intentions toward IUCVSs. Data collected from 268 experienced and 156 unexperienced consumers were tested against the proposed research model using partial least squares (PLS) structural equation modeling and multi-group analysis (PLS-MGA).

In line with expectations, three UTAUT variables (i.e. performance, effort expectancy and social influence) and perceived value significantly and positively influence consumer attitudes toward IUCVSs. This research confirms the significant and negative direct effect of perceived risk on consumers’ patronage intentions toward IUCVSs. Furthermore, the PLS-MGA results unveil that a significant difference exist in the effects of perceived convenience value on attitudes toward IUCVS between consumers who had experience of using self-service machines and those who have not.

This research successfully fills the research gap by offering a synergistic model for evaluating consumers’ attitudes and patronage intentions toward a new smart service. Several important theoretical and practical implications are provided to help retail managers develop service strategies.

Recently, smart retail technology has emerged as an innovative technology that can improve consumer motivation and behavior in smart stores. Although prior studies have investigated factors influencing the adoption of smart retail technology, to the authors’ knowledge, no previous work has investigated the determinants of purchase intentions. The ultimate goal for retailers should be shopping, not technology adoption. However, traditional brick-and-mortar stores and theories focus on investing in utilitarian factors to attract customers. This study proposes that hedonic motivation should also play an important role, as new technologies may arouse customer curiosity and increase pleasant experiences. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore utilitarian and hedonic motivations that promote customers' purchase; intentions in smart stores. Specifically, the authors address the research questions: (1) What are the constituents of utilitarian motivation? (2) What are the constituents of hedonic motivation? (3) What are the factors that influence customers' purchase intentions? By answering the questions, the findings help retailers understand how to motivate customers to make purchases in smart stores.

To investigate consumer motivation and purchase intentions, the customers who made purchases in smart stores were invited to participate in the questionnaire survey. This study collected 307 data in smart retail settings. Partial least squares (PLS) software was used to assess the reliability, validity and the paths and significance of all hypotheses.

The results show that perceived ease of use directly and indirectly influences purchase intentions through utilitarian and hedonic motivations. Utilitarian motivation is a formative second-order construct comprised of merchandise price, merchandise quality, location convenience, speed of shopping and product recommendation. Hedonic motivation is a reflective second-order construct composed of control, curiosity, joy, focused immersion and temporal dissociation. The findings provide insights into the successful implementation of smart retail technology and offer retailers to better understand consumer motivation and purchase intentions in smart stores.

This study is the first to examine how consumer motivation influences purchase intentions in smart stores. This study posits and verifies the extended hedonic system acceptance model (HSAM) to explain consumer motivation for shopping in smart retail settings. This study also models the original first-order utilitarian and hedonic constructs as second-order formative and reflective constructs, respectively. Utilitarian motivation regarding functional benefits is developed based on the 5Ps of marketing and situational factors, while hedonic motivation regarding pleasant experiences is proposed based on cognitive absorption.

In this digitalization age, smart technologies are on the cusp of changing all business sector including retailing. Today’s consumers desire to shop in a smart store where the physical products on display are connected to the internet world. This study aims to propose a model for investigating Generation Z (Gen-Z) consumers’ expectations towards the smart retail technology (SRT) in the Malaysian context through the application of the stimulus-organism-response framework.

By using a purposive sampling technique, a self-administered questionnaire was conducted. A total of 220 usable responses were collected from Gen-Z consumers who had experience in using SRT. The data were analysed using partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

This study underscores the role of perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment and perceived value on Gen-Z consumers’ attitude and word-of-mouth (WOM). Expectations on usefulness, enjoyment and value provide some ideas on Gen-Z consumers’ value who put a high emphasis on functional value, fun value and value for money when adopting the SRT. On the other hand, the result also demonstrates the mediating role of consumers’ attitude in connecting perceived value and perceived enjoyment on WOM towards SRT.

The findings of this study provide beneficial insights for a retailer who desire to pursue a smart-related acquisition strategy. Retailers are recommended to embrace on the following three key features: innovative solution (high usefulness), reliable benefits (high perceived value) and fun experience (high enjoyment) to provide Gen-Z consumers with compelling experiences. Additionally, retailers are suggested to acknowledge the importance of managing consumers’ attitude in driving positive WOM evaluations.

This paper responds to Ting et al.’s (2018) call in uncovering values and lifestyles of generation in details. In Malaysia, retailers ought to incorporate of the high level of usefulness, value and enjoyment when designing their SRT to constitute the Gen-Z consumers’ expectations. Moreover, similar to Ting’s conclusion, this cohort members are very much into technologies and they tend to embrace SRT in their lifestyles.

This chapter provides an overview of technology management to support retailing, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, it focuses on the technologies developed and in use before the pandemic, the ones further developed as response to the pandemic, while the final part of the chapter proposes a new technology implementation process (cycle) to support retailers in introducing new technology. In particular, the process in based on seven main activities: (1) Technology need recognition; (2) Technology screening; (3) Initial development and testing; (4) Business analysis; (5) Technology development; (6) Market acceptance testing; and (7) Technology adoption, while monitoring and learning actions should occur constantly throughout the process to evaluate the benefit of the technology at each stage (or to discard for further investment).

1. Innovative technologies, such as DS, can engage different human senses and play an important role in enhancing the store atmosphere.

2. The majority of DS networks feature content that is generic and is rarely tailored to the audience passing by the screens. As a result, digital displays are often ignored.

3. DS coupled with sensors and Artificial Intelligence allow for more relevant and personalized experiences.

4. Relevance through personalization can help retailers overcome display blindness, but challenges in terms of legal restrictions and ethical concerns exist to unlock its potential.

5. Nontouch interaction technologies, such as voice assistants, gesture controls, facial recognition, and augmented reality, present new ways of interacting with digital screens.

Innovative technologies, such as DS, can engage different human senses and play an important role in enhancing the store atmosphere.

The majority of DS networks feature content that is generic and is rarely tailored to the audience passing by the screens. As a result, digital displays are often ignored.

DS coupled with sensors and Artificial Intelligence allow for more relevant and personalized experiences.

Relevance through personalization can help retailers overcome display blindness, but challenges in terms of legal restrictions and ethical concerns exist to unlock its potential.

Nontouch interaction technologies, such as voice assistants, gesture controls, facial recognition, and augmented reality, present new ways of interacting with digital screens.

Identifying the patterns of retail institutional change has piqued the interest of retail academics for nearly a century. The Big Middle hypothesis is one of the most recent and hybridized versions of similar theories. According to it, retailers seeking a dominant position in retailing can migrate into the Big Middle, the largest market segment, by specializing in a large market with a broad product assortment or by focusing on a specific product category and simultaneously catering for multiple segments at the same time. This study provides empirical evidence for the latter proposition by employing fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) on the case of UNIQLO, a Japanese clothing specialist retailing giant.

The authors devised a survey to assess (1) consumers' perceptions of UNIQLO's store attributes and (2) their perceived distance between the UNIQLO and potential competitors. The authors used fsQCA procedures to identify multiple confluences of causal conditions that led to a high level of consumer patronage for UNIQLO from various market segments.

The findings show that UNIQLO's dominance in the Big Middle stems not only from capturing a sizable homogeneous market but from aggregating multiple heterogeneous market segments with disparities of various types. This finding explains how a specialty store retailer achieves its Big Middle position.

The findings gleaned from fsQCA are not statistically generalisable. It, therefore, is essential to ensure whether similar phenomena are observed under different spatiotemporal settings. Concerning the scope of the research, this study's finding is pertinent to only one part of the Big Middle hypothesis. Future studies are required to cover other dimensions of the Big Middle, including the generalist retailer's cases of the Big Middle.

The results of this study may present a valuable tool to deepen retailers' understandings on; (1) the multiple causal recipes of customer patronages to their retail offerings, (2) who the pure fans of their stores are, (3) who their principal rivals are in the mind space of the consumers, and (4) their overall market position upon aiming to realise the Big Middle. It will give retail managers an insight into how to design, implement, and churn an efficient and effective RBM.

The study's originality is in empirically scrutinizing and elaborating a part of the mechanism of retail change heralded by the Big Middle hypothesis.

The adoption of augmented reality (AR) settings represents an extraordinary opportunity to enrich the value of the omni-customer brand experience, especially in fashion retail. AR enhances the brand of extra-contents, both informational and sensorial, amplifies its significance toward consumers and inflects its commercial and emotional charm through new dimensions in the store. In this light, the purpose of this paper is to verify whether AR affects customer behavior toward brands in the retailing system.

By means of a qualitative approach, a preliminary research question linking technological settings of the store/brand and customer informational eagerness has been analyzed in a fashion retailing chain store. To frame the research question, the omni-customer segment perspective has been assumed, taking into consideration two main dimensions as follows: implementation of in-store AR settings; and affective/cognitive/functional structure of the experiential brand value.

Preliminary findings suggest that AR can create extra brand value by simplifying the decision-making process and engaging customers. In the sum four “realms” in terms of augmented brand experience can emerge and be managed by retailers.

Even though the contribution of AR is easily understood in selling activities from a marketing perspective, very few retail applied studies can be found to-date. The present analysis aims to narrow this gap. It also contributes to brand management, stimulating the integration of the AR dimension as an additional facet of a brand tool kit in the “project” for value co-creation.