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Furniture is among the important personal consumption expenditures for durable goods in the USA. Retailers and manufacturers offer different communication channels to assist consumers all through the process of acquiring furniture. The objective of the present study is to evaluate US consumers' channel use at different steps of the residential furniture‐buying process.

A cross‐section study was conducted by taking advantage of the structured nature of quantitative methods using a questionnaire for data collection and a socio‐demographic representative sample of US citizens. Consumers' use of six communication channels through five buying decision steps was assessed.

Results showed that the furniture retail store is the most important communication channel at each of the five considered buying process stages. Overall score of that channel was higher for females than males, indicating that women care more about communication when buying furniture. The internet was not of significant importance when buying furniture. Advertising was perceived as a significant means to gather information.

The study will help to orient companies' marketing strategies by making proper use of communication channels. It also shows marketing students the present state of consumers' communication channel preferences.

This paper gives unique insights into consumers' buying behavior that will help to design communication channels properly.

Store names are perhaps the most visible aspect of the store entity, and are one of the main features used by consumers to specify and identify a store. Also, store names are often used as clues for consumers' store choice decisions. It is, therefore, not surprising that store names are a most frequently used item in store advertisements and that many stores regard achieving consumers' familiarity with their names as one of the most desired objectives of their store promotion programmes. Do consumers actually use store names as their main clue for the identification of stores ? The results of a study reported in this article indicate that the issue is not as simple as it seems. When consumers are asked to recall and identify the stores where, say, they have made their most recent furniture purchase, they do indeed recall many of these stores by their names. In a sizeable proportion of the cases, store names cannot, however, be remembered and stores are identified in “area” type terms‐the street or general area where they are located. The focus of the present article is the store recall issue. The magnitude of the phenomenon of stores recalled in “area” type terms is first studied, the importance of this phenomenon is demonstrated and some possible explanations for it are suggested. These explanations are then empirically tested and, finally, the implications of the analysis for store promotion strategy are discussed.

Compares and contrasts the effects of the resale price maintenance abolition of 1964 emerging in different products and markets, with particular emphasis on the furniture and footwear trades. Finds that the furniture trade has been more significantly affected, with a higher consciousness of consumer needs among its retailers.

Erick Wilson and Richard Hyche, managers of Hughes Family Furniture Store in Charlotte N.C. are exploring new ways to motivate their sales force to sell more of one of their most profitable items, a Furniture Protection Plan. They are considering a new compensation plan but are concerned about how this new change might affect their sales force.

Perceived value and customer loyalty have been studied jointly in most of services literature but mainly through SEM models. This paper aims to draw on the literature on the multidimensional richness of perceived value, to adopt a segmentation approach and explore segments of loyal consumers towards the service provider based on their value perceptions.

A survey was conducted among 460 Spanish consumers interviewed at the store exit of seven retail chains in two sectors (grocery and home furnishing). A CHAID analysis was performed on loyalty responses, through nine value dimensions (efficiency, service quality, product quality, emotional value, value for money, social value, aesthetic value, escapism and ethics).

Results show the existence of different groups of loyal customers based on the nine value types. Efficiency is prioritised by the most loyal customers in grocery but not for home furnishing. Emotional value and aesthetics, along with product quality determine the most loyal segments.

Retailers should focus on enhancing those value dimensions that better explain customer loyalty towards retail stores in their area of specialisation, combining not only tangible and intangible elements but also functional and emotional elements.

The paper adds to the prolific research on perceived value in services with a diachronic graphical review of value dimensions in retailing; furthermore, the range of value dimensions studied here is wider than most of previous works using dimensions of value in services.

Near sourcing is starting to be regarded as a valid alternative to global sourcing in order to leverage supply chain (SC) responsiveness and economic efficiency. The present work proposes a decision‐making approach developed in collaboration with a leading Italian retailer that was willing to turn the global store furniture procurement process into near sourcing.

Action research is employed. The limitations of the traditional SC organisation and purchasing process of the company are first identified. On such basis, an inventory management model is applied to run spreadsheet estimates where different purchasing and SC management strategies are adopted to determine the solution providing the lowest cost performance. Finally, a risk analysis of the selected best SC arrangement is conducted and results are discussed.

Switching from East Asian suppliers to continental vendors enables a SC reengineering that increases flexibility and responsiveness to demand uncertainty which, together with decreased transportation costs, assures economic viability, thus proving the benefits of near sourcing.

The decision‐making framework provides a methodological roadmap to address the comparison between near and global sourcing policies and to calculate the savings of the former against the latter. The approach could include additional organisational aspects and cost categories impacting on near sourcing and could be adapted to investigate different products, services, and business sectors.

The work provides SC researchers and practitioners with a structured approach for understanding what drives companies to adopt near sourcing and for quantitatively assessing its advantages.

Two stores offering furniture on a take‐away basis form the theme of this picture‐feature. They are the first Take‐Away Habitat, in Wythenshawe in Lancashire, and Home Interiors, an upmarket furniture store recently opened by Cambridge Co‐op.

Carl Woods, a management consultant, experiences a series of frustrating events when trying to replace the mesh sling to a patio chair. Eventually, he realizes that he could organize a coopetitive relationship among the various outdoor furniture companies, each of which provided only a portion of the service he needed. The case tracks Carl's recognition of the opportunity presented by a hole in the market and the consultant's role in the development of coopetition in the Florida outdoor furniture industry. Students are asked to assist Carl in performing the consulting role by developing solutions to the problems that have arisen within the coopetitive group.

This case has been field researched.

The case is suitable for undergraduate students in basic entrepreneurship, small business management, or organizational behavior.

This case gives students the opportunity to explore the concept of organizational status as a competitive asset. CEO Noura Abdullah of Saudi furniture retailer Aura founded her company as a middle-market furniture and home goods store offering affordable yet design-savvy products. By many accounts, both tangible and intangible, Aura had been a success. By late 2014, Aura had drawn considerable attention from several high-status Saudi wedding planners and media outlets, including Harper's Bazaar Interiors, Elle Decor, and Martha Stewart Weddings. This attention yielded unusually strong conversion rates (the percentage of visitors to the store who made a purchase). Foot traffic, on the other hand, remained unexpectedly low, leading Abdullah to wonder whether the high-status affiliations had unintentionally signaled to mid-market consumers that they would not be able to afford Aura's products, keeping such customers away. Students will decide, along with Abdullah, how to handle this unique “problem” as Aura enters a growth phase to other Saudi and Middle Eastern markets.

This case serves as an introduction to field sales management. A manager must address three sales representatives' ingrained behaviors in order to implement a major shift in marketing strategy. Students should recognize the nature of the "man-in-the-middle" squeeze: the manager caught between the pressure of implementing a new strategy from the top and the resistance to change from the bottom.