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Inner city centers not only provide opportunities for shopping, dining, and entertainment, but with their lively atmosphere and other vital attributes, also create attractive destinations for residents and tourists alike. However, inner city retailing, potentially the most important reason to visit an inner city, is facing serious competition from e-commerce and out-of-town shopping malls. Dying inner city centers have become a severe issue in recent years, worldwide. To counteract this devastating trend and ensure the vitality and viability of inner city centers, stakeholders from the public and private sectors regularly join their forces in initiatives to strengthen urban structures. However, academic insights into the contribution of retailing on perceived city attractiveness remain sparse. Relying on an extensive data set that combines survey and observational data, the authors are able to quantify a variety of inner city characteristics, ranging from its store and service provider portfolio to its ambience and accessibility, and measure their association with its perceived attractiveness. They show that a city's portfolio of retail stores is not only related to people's perceptions of the city's overall attractiveness but also perceptions of its ambience. However, not all retail categories contribute the same way; while the presence of clothing stores or booksellers is strongly associated with cities' ambience as well as attractiveness, other retail categories such as optometrists or electronics stores are negatively associated with consumers' inner city perceptions. Importantly, these relationships also depend on the size of the focal city. Based on their results, the authors provide important managerial and societal implications on how to leverage the local retailing environment to improve inner city attractiveness. For example, the results may inform (local) governments on which sectors to subsidize in order to attract those store and service provider categories that benefit inner city attractiveness.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a comprehensive set of grocery store attributes that can be standardized and used in empirical research aiming at increasing retailers’ understanding of determinants of grocery store choice, and assessing how the relative importance of the attributes is affected by consumer socio-demographic characteristics and shopping behaviour.

An internet survey of 1,575 Swedish consumers was conducted. A large set of attributes was rated by the participants on seven-point scales with respect to their importance for choice of grocery store. Principal component analysis (PCA) resulted in a reduced set of reliably measured aggregated attributes. This set included the attractiveness attributes price level, supply range, supply quality, service quality, storescape quality, facilities for childcare, and closeness to other stores, and the accessibility attributes easy access by car, easy access by other travel modes, and availability (closeness to store and opening hours).

The results showed that accessibility by car is the most important grocery store attribute, storescape quality and availability the next most important and facilities for childcare the least important. It was also found that socio-demographic factors and shopping behaviour have an impact on the importance of the store attributes.

A comprehensive set of attractiveness and accessibility attributes of grocery stores that can be standardized and used in empirical research is established. The results are valid for the Swedish-European conditions that differ from the conditions in North America where most previous research has been conducted. The results reveal the relative importance grocery-shopping consumers place on controllable attractiveness attributes compared to uncontrollable accessibility attributes as well as the relative importance of the attributes within each category.

The article seeks to enrich the body of research on store atmospherics by identifying how storefront window design impacts store entry decisions. An innovative multimodal design approach is presented, considering both visual and verbal constituents.

Study 1 draws on a corpus of high-end storefront windows to create a categorization regarding different levels of verbo-visual complexity. The survey in Study 2 (n = 234) serves two purposes: first, to confirm these levels of complexity and second, to investigate the relation between the complexity of window design and store entry decisions.

Study 2 confirms the order of complexity established in Study 1. The results reveal an inverted-U relationship between window complexity and store entry propensity. Windows of medium level of complexity produce shoppers' relatively highest store entry propensity.

The findings suggest that retailers would benefit from adopting verbo-visual window designs of medium complexity, as this combination optimizes the likeliness of consumers to enter stores.

Research on store atmospherics has until recently primarily focused on in-store cues. Studies on store windows remain vastly underrepresented in extant scholarship. The article not only fills this gap but also incorporates an original interdisciplinary angle on multimodality, which offers new methodological perspectives for research in retail and distribution scholarship.

Building on stimulus organism response theory, this study aims to examine the influence of Integrated store service quality (ISSQ) on omnichannel shoppers’ attachment to the integrated store with the mediating role of omnichannel customer engagement (CE) dimensions (absorptive attention, enthusiastic participation and social connection). This research demonstrates the effect of customers’ attachment to the integrated store on the willingness to pay more for omnichannel services and products of the retailer, their cross-buying behaviors in future purchases and loyal webrooming intentions. The moderating role of perceived relationship investment and alternative retailer attractiveness (ARA) in a few proposed relationships was also tested.

The research is descriptive, quantitative and cross-sectional investigation. A purposive sampling technique was used for selecting the study respondents. The data was collected from n = 589 Indian omnichannel shoppers who have experience shopping in the brick and mortar store of channel-integrated stores using a validated self-administered questionnaire. The proposed conceptual model was tested using PLS-SEM.

The results indicate that omnichannel CE dimensions (absorptive attention, enthusiastic participation and social connection) positively mediate the relationship between ISSQ and customer attachment to the store. Customer attachment to the store significantly impacts their willingness to pay more, cross-buying behaviors and loyal webrooming intentions. The moderating effect of the customer-perceived relationship investment and ARA revealed that it significantly impacted the relationship between ISSQ and willingness to pay more, cross-buying behaviors and loyal webrooming intentions. This research also demonstrated the direct impact of ISSQ on willingness to pay more, cross-buying behaviors, loyal webrooming intentions and the indirect impact through different CE dimensions and attachment with the store.

The study is conducted in the Indian population, where omnichannel retailing is still nascent.

This study addresses the need to investigate the impact of CE and their attachment to stores driven by the in-store service quality of integrated stores on the various postpurchase consumer behaviors. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to show that ISSQ might affect their willingness to pay more, cross-buying behaviors and loyal webrooming intentions through different CE dimensions and their attachment to the store. The moderating effect of customer-perceived ARA and their perception of retailers’ investment in a relationship on proposed hypotheses was also tested.

Twenty-first century online retailing has reshaped the retail landscape. Grocery shopping is emerging as the next fastest growing category in online retailing in the UK, having implications for the channels we use to purchase goods. Using Sainsbury’s data, the authors create a bespoke set of grocery click&collect catchments. The resultant catchments allow an investigation of performance within the emerging channel of grocery click&collect. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The spatial interaction method of “Huff gravity modeling” is applied in a semi-automated approach, used to calculate grocery click&collect catchments for 95 Sainsbury’s stores in England. The catchments allow investigation of the spatial variation and particularly rural-urban differences. Store and catchment characteristics are extracted and explored using ordinary least squares regression applied to investigate “demand per day” (a confidentiality transformed revenue value) as a function of competition, performance and geodemographic factors.

The findings show that rural stores exhibit a larger catchment extent for grocery click&collect when compared with urban stores. Linear regression finds store characteristics as having the greatest impact on demand per day, adhering to wider retail competition literature. Conclusions display a need for further investigation (e.g. quantifying loyalty).

New insights are contributed at a national level for grocery click&collect, as well as e-commerce, multichannel shopping and retail geography. Areas for further investigation are identified, particularly quantitatively capturing brand loyalty. The research has commercial impact as the catchments are being applied by Sainsbury’s to decide the next 100 stores and plan for the next five years of their grocery click&collect offering.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors affecting male fashion leadership behaviour. The study examined the effect of fashion consciousness, fashion knowledge, mood enhancement, decision-making confidence and brand switching as the psychological factors. It also included the influence of behavioural factors such as the information sources, attributes of purchasing fashion clothing and type of retailers on male fashion leadership.

The data were collected through a structured questionnaire distributed in the main shopping districts of Beirut, Lebanon, during March 2012.

The study uncovered that fashion consciousness, fashion knowledge, confidence in decision making and mood enhancement are to be the most important psychological factors influencing male fashion leadership behaviour. The study also found that frequency of reading fashion magazines is negatively and significantly affecting fashion leadership. Male fashion leaders use colleagues and friends as the main information sources for fashion. The effect of attractiveness, brand name, store image and quality of clothing is positive and significant whilst value for money negatively and significantly influences male fashion leadership. Male fashion leaders mainly shop from specialty shops, chain stores, department stores and the internet.

Although there are a handful of studies which examined female fashion leadership, the male fashion leadership concept has not been extensively addressed in the literature. In an attempt to at least partially address this, the study attempts to identify the factors affecting male fashion leadership behaviour in Lebanon.

Points out that, although blind tests have generally revealed that consumers can detect little difference between store brand and national brand products, private brands still only have a small market share (14.9 percent). Using an environmental psychology model as the study framework, which postulates a stimulus‐response process, examines the effects of store atmosphere on consumer evaluations of private brand grocery products. Analyzes the results which show that store aesthetics do influence consumer perceptions of store brand quality. Discusses the managerial implications of the findings and the limitations of the study, and makes suggestions for future research.

Digitalization is revolutionizing the retail sector as today's consumers prefer a seamlessly integrated, fluid and irritation-free shopping experience enhanced with artificial intelligence (AI)-powered technologies. Literature highlights gaps in the understanding of the shopping experience in an omnichannel context, involving aesthetic, cognitive and affective experience dimensions. This research highlights the direct effects and the mechanism triggered in the presence of such device.

A sample of 259 consumers was interviewed at the point of sale. Data have been collected after a shopping experience in two concept stores belonging to the same fashion brand: (1) not equipped with AI-powered technology and (2) equipped with these tools. The measurement scales were validated through ANCOVA analysis and causal relationship analysis with structural equation modeling.

The results show that the presence of an in-store AI-powered technologies in a connected store generates a higher aesthetic reaction when visiting the store, a higher absorption when shopping through the flow and a higher intent to purchase. The authors further investigate the underlying mechanism triggered by the presence of this technology, which enables the authors to outline their consequences regarding purchase intention.

The study, conducted within an actual connected store in France, explores the impact of AI technology in connected retail environments on consumer responses. It is an early research in this field, shedding light on a rarely explored area. The authors’ research addresses a significant gap, providing insights into AI-driven retail experiences.

Reviews the three sales forecasting models most commonly applied in retail site evaluation: multiple regression analysis; multiple discriminant analysis; gravity models. Discusses the important issues involved in the development and application of these methods – including their respective strengths and weaknesses. Key points are that there is no “black box” method and that in the real world of retailing the methods reduce, but do not remove, the need for practical, subjective analysis.