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Offline retail stores have been working on improving their in-store customer experience; they have begun to realise the physical advantage they have over online channels. Especially sports products have a number of unique features, such as high emotional involvement or a sense of community; additionally, sports customers put emphasis on multisensory brand experience at the point of sale. This study examines the in-store customer experience (ISCX) in offline sports retail stores, taking into account the commercial uniqueness of sport.

A qualitative study (focus groups; n = 16) and quantitative survey (cross-sectional survey design; n = 238) were conducted to measure ISCX in sports retail stores.

The results suggest that the customers' in-store experience has a significant influence on customers' satisfaction with the sports retailer and their likeliness to recommend the store to friends, which, in turn, is significantly affected by customers' satisfaction with the retailer. Moreover, social responses to actors involved in the service encounter, for example, the interaction with employees, play a significant role for the customer in-store experience. Accordingly, sports customers strive not only for functional benefits inherent in the interaction with customers and employees but also for social benefits.

This study extends the knowledge by (1) replicating the ISCX scale, (2) analysing ISCX in a sports retail environment and (3) examining the influence of ISCX on the Net Promoter Score. Moreover, the findings support managers' know-how about in-store setting and help to maintain the customer relationship.

This study aims to detect the dimensions of the in-store customer shopping experience from the sports retailer perspective and to investigate how the role of sports equipment stores is changing.

This exploratory study performs semi-structured interviews with retail managers of sports equipment stores.

This research reveals the importance of the dimensions of immersive design, sensorial ambient elements, social relationships, trialability and real experience sharing in designing a memorable in-store shopping experience in sports stores, and it highlights that the store's role in the sports context is transitioning from sales space to an interactive, immersive, engaging and convivial place. It proposes a model to design the in-store customer shopping experience effectively.

Sports equipment managers can make their physical stores as experiential as possible by investing in expert, passionate personnel and technology in order to create a real in-store experience of the product and the sports practice.

While sports equipment retailers acknowledge the importance of providing customers with a memorable shopping experience by creating an evocative environment and placing multiple touchpoints in stores, management scholars have paid limited attention to sports stores. This study explores the ways in which sports retail managers can design their stores effectively in experiential terms.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships between the brand personality of a sports team and the related consumer outcomes of identification and retail spending.

A field study was conducted with games watched and retail spending as outcomes. Structural equation modeling was used to explore the relationships among constructs.

The two brand personality dimensions of wholesomeness and successfulness are mediated through prestige to predict the consumer's identification with the team. The two brand personality dimensions of imaginativeness and toughness positively influence identification with the team while successfulness has a negative influence on identification with the team. Once a consumer identifies with the team quasi‐brand, retail spending and viewership increase.

Sports teams can utilise information gleaned from this study to better promote an attractive image, thereby increasing the number of games watched and retail spending.

This paper presents an original twist on personality research by looking at the influence of the brand personality of an intangible sport brand on consumer identification and retail spending.

Sporting goods retailing is a significant sector within the sport industry with the total revenue of this sector reaching $52.2 billion in 2018. Beset with formidable competition, sporting goods stores are compelled to augment their merchandise with service and improve retail quality. The purpose of this study is to investigate retail quality of sporting goods stores (RQSGS).

Based on 27,793 online reviews of 1481 stores in the United States, this study used Leximancer 4.0, a text mining software, to identify critical retail quality dimensions associated with sporting goods stores, and further explored the most salient dimensions among different levels of ratings.

Customer service and store aspects are the two higher-order dimensions of RQSGS; holistic experience, manager and staff are three themes under customer service, and product, B&M store and online–offline integration are three themes under store aspects. Furthermore, extreme reviews focus more on customer service, whereas lukewarm reviews focus more on store aspects.

Knowledgeable staff, managers and online–offline integration are instrumental in creating superior retail quality. Sporting goods stores should enhance hedonic and social values for consumers in order to ward off online competitions.

This study explored retail quality dimensions that are pertinent to sporting goods retailing utilizing text mining methods. This study to certain extent cross-validated the existing retailing literature that is developed on alternative methods.

This study focuses on memorable customer shopping experience design in the sporting goods retail setting. It aims to identify the phygital customers' needs and expectations that are satisfied through in-store technologies and to detect the in-store strategies that use these technologies to make the store attractive and experiential.

This exploratory study adopted a qualitative research methodology, specifically a multiple-case study, by performing semi-structured interviews with sporting goods store managers.

Sporting goods retailers use various in-store technologies to create a phygital customer shopping experience, including devices, mobile apps, wireless communication technologies, in-store activations, support devices, intelligent stations, and sensors. To improve the phygital customer journey and the phygital shopping experience, retailers meet customers' needs for utilitarian, hedonic, social, and playfulness experiences. Purely physical or digital strategies, as well as phygital strategies, are identified. This research also proposes a model of in-store phygital customer shopping experience design for sporting goods retailers.

Sporting goods managers can invest in multiple technologies by designing a physical environment according to the customers' needs for utilitarian, hedonic, social, and playful experiences. In addition, they can improve the phygital customer shopping experience with specific push strategies that increase customer engagement and, in turn, brand and store loyalty.

This study highlights how the phygital customer experiential journey can be created through new technologies and improved with specific reference to the sporting goods stores.

In the era of the retail Apocalypse, the surge of e-commerce has transmuted the competitive landscape for many traditional retailers that heavily rely on brick-and-mortar stores. This study examines the relationship among retail quality, market environment and businesses' survival in the context of the sporting goods retail industry.

Based on a data set from yelp.com, the authors examine the survival of 1,360 stores within 306 zip codes in the United States using mixed effects logistic modeling.

(1) Retail quality is positively related to survival, but the relationship is nonlinear; (2) the author find a null relationship between market competition and survival, which is subject to several competing interpretations; (3) 10% of the individual variation in survival is due to systematic differences between zip codes and (4) chain stores and stores with more heterogenous reviews have a higher closure rate.

This study contributes to the literature by offering an empirical testing of the relationship between retail quality and business survival and examining the impact of trading area in the modern marketing milieu. The findings have practical implications for site selection and designing a service quality program.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the market demand of sport lottery in China from the following perspectives: available types and varieties of sport lottery, number of retail outlets, public welfare funds, promotion costs, per capita income, and population.

As the earliest province of issuing the sales of sport lottery and having one of the largest sales volumes in China, Guangdong Province was chosen for conducting the current study. Data were obtained from 14 sport lottery administration and distribution centers and statistics bureaus of 14 corresponding municipal cities. Multiple regression analysis was used.

Multiple regression analyses revealed that number of retail outlets, promotion cost, per capita income, and public welfare funds were positively (p<0.05) predictive of sport lottery sales; however, available types and varieties of sport lottery were not found to be significantly (p>0.05) related to total sport lottery sales. The findings are discussed in the context of theories and practices in the marketing and administration of sport lottery sales in China.

Similar studies are suggested to be conducted in provinces and regions beyond Guangdong Province.

This study combined socioeconomic characteristics of the population, lottery game characteristics and management factors for the first time.

The purpose of this study is to understand how narratives are generated in stores.

The study design is based on ethnographies documented in 10 sports stores in the Paris region. The ethnographic method enables a precise and in situ observation of how narratives are structured. Narrative structures develop from the accommodation of the narratives specific to retailers and narratives specific to the customer.

The findings of this study identified four main narratives in retail spaces (the serial, the tale, the epic, the legend), each of which is distinguished by the commercial/non-commercial orientation of the narratives and by a superficial/in-depth modification of the narratives produced outside the store. These four narratives are characterized by the vendors’ roles and by the distinct interactions between customers and retail stores.

The originality of this study is to propose a narrative framework for retail structures. It illustrates the fact that the narrative is not solely a product of experiential marketing, but that it may be found in any retail store. From a practical point of view, it highlights other less costly experiential narrative strategies.

From a practical point of view, it highlights other less costly experiential narrative strategies.

The original value of this study is to apply structural semiotics to analyse narratives in the store.

As sport gradually becomes a full‐scale business, a debate about the applicability and appropriateness of measures of performance has emerged. The purpose of this research is to analyse how the special features of sport businesses influence the performance management system of a sports merchandiser.

The research work examines a case study of a sports retailer that manages the merchandising and image rights of a major European football club. It was conducted using Otley's performance management framework.

It was found that organization objectives were clearly known by all managers at all levels, despite not articulated in explicit statements, but conveyed in less formal ways. The main finding is to explain how a performance management system can be structured to effectively respond to the sports setting in which the company operates: constant meetings, shared values, information exchange and fast response to events substituted planning and forecasting.

The nature of the case study research method limits the generalizability of findings. Research in performance measures must have a holistic approach.

Managers can use this comprehensive framework to analyse the consistency of their performance measurement systems and to identify opportunities for improvement. Also, understanding how this organization was successful in communicating objectives and values can be of help.

The paper analyses a performance management system within the special features of sport‐related businesses.