Search results

This research aims to measure the financial and operating impact for US retailers that adopted quick response (QR). It specifically looks at the impact of QR on profitability, cost efficiency, and inventory management.

The research analyzed data from the CRSP/Compustat data base of US publicly held corporations to compare adopters of QR with non‐adopters before and after adoption.

The results indicated that adopters of QR did not benefit as expected. Adopters, on average, did not improve their performance to a statistically significant degree with respect to profitability, cost efficiency, or inventory levels.

The main limitations of the research include the fairly small number of firms studied (11 adopters and 16 non‐adopters) and the lack of evidence identifying the reasons for the adopters poor performance. Another limitation is the fact that only the manufacturers perceptions have been considered. It would be beneficial in future research to consider the opinion of retailers about their own management of these brands.

The research uses objective actual financial results before and after adoption of QR and avoids the practice of using subjective management opinions of success. The research design includes before and after analysis with a control group – the strongest design possible given the inability to randomly assign firms to the adopter and non‐adopter categories.

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the phenomenon of “showrooming” in which shoppers use mobile devices in retail stores to check prices and other data on products that they then may buy online.

We conducted depth interviews with 50 consumers, 13 small retailers, and 6 large retailers.

We identified four distinct behavioral groups of customers and six strategies small retailers are currently using or could use to address the potential problems showrooming can create. We also identified a new type of reference pricing.

This research provides a guide researchers can use in further work on showrooming. The research consists of depth interviews. It is possible that other types of retailers may have developed other strategies not identified here or that a larger number of non-student participants would have identified other categories, though differences between students and non-students in our sample were not noteworthy.

This chapter provides a practical guide to small retailers as to how they can deal with the growing practice of showrooming, helping them to choose strategic responses based on the types of consumers they serve.

This is one of the first papers to be published in an academic journal on the value of showrooming. It provides a typology of consumers grouped by their behavior, that is, how and why they engage or don’t engage in showrooming. This can help academic researchers in future research as well as managers of small retail businesses. We also identified a new, third type of reference pricing.

One of the less observed results of transportation deregulation has been the explosive growth of transportation intermediaries or third‐party specialists such as brokers, shippers' agents and integrated leasing companies for use by industrial purchasers and marketing management. Such transportation intermediaries have the performance potential and apparent reasons for existence to suggest that they can both reduce delivered product costs and enhance service quality attributes to promote a company's competitive advantage. In a broader sense, intermediaries may be ideally positioned to assist in coordinating and processing information for the entire value‐added chain.

Economists usually try to avoid making moral judgements, at least in their professional capacity. Positive economics is seen as a way of analysing economic problems, in as scientific a manner as is possible in human sciences. Economists are often reluctant to be prescriptive, most seeing their task as presenting information on the various options, but leaving the final choice, to the political decision taker. The view of many economists is that politicians can be held responsible for the morality of their actions when making decisions on economic matters, unlike unelected economic advisors, and therefore the latter should limit their role.