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Positioned in the e-retailing field, this study aims to investigate the effect of the retail store’s atmosphere on consumer behavior in 3D online shopping environments, focusing on store layout as a critical influential factor.

The research uses a mixed research method approach that includes two complementary studies. First, a three-round Delphi study with domain experts is used to develop a store layout classification scheme (Study 1), resulting in five distinct types of store layout. Subsequently, 3D online retail stores that use the five layouts are designed and developed. These serve as treatments of a laboratory experimental design, which is used to assess layout impact on a number of attitudinal and behavioral variables (Study 2).

Five distinct types of store layout have been identified in Study 1, and their distinctive features are presented. The findings of Study 2 indicate that online shopping enjoyment, entertainment and ease of navigation are influenced by the store layout types of 3D online environments. Specifically, the “avant-garde” layout type facilitates the ease of navigation of customers in the store and provides a superior online customer experience. The “warehouse”’ adopts long aisles for the display of products, which simplifies the comparison of products, whereas the “boutique” layout was found to be the best in terms of shopping enjoyment and entertainment. The “department” layout shares many common characteristics with traditional department stores, providing an entertaining and enjoyable store, whereas the “pragmatic” layout emphasizes low system requirements.

The paper presents characteristics that make store layouts effective for different aspects of online customers’ experience and identifies opportunities that 3D online store designers and retailers can explore for the provision of enhanced, customized services to online customers.

This paper examines recent technological developments in store design and visual merchandising. It identifies five layout types of 3D online stores, which are different from those of brick–and–mortar and 2D online stores, and investigates their impact on consumer behavior. Further, the paper examines how each layout type influences online shopping enjoyment, entertainment, ease of navigation, online customer experience and, in turn, purchase and word-of-mouth intentions. Finally, the paper examines the moderating role of telepresence. Individuals with high sense of telepresence conceive 3D environments as “real” and are more concerned about the attributes that trigger the sense of enjoyment they experience while browsing.

This paper aims to consider the question of changes brought to consumers’ trust and security issues by the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in electronic commerce.

Online shopping policies in Poland and Ukraine are compared from the perspective of four factors as follows: application of terms of service and privacy policy, usage of online payment systems, presence in price comparison engines and grade of secure sockets layer security certificates. Comparison is conducted within the framework of three research questions (complemented by eight hypotheses) set to reveal whether: policies of personal data protection and server security for online stores in both countries are the same; all online stores in both countries obey the existing e-commerce rules; e-commerce policies in the two countries differ significantly. The sample for analysis contains 40 Polish and 40 Ukrainian online stores, representing four industries, namely, electronics, entertainment, fashion and goods for children.

The research allowed to reveal major differences in the privacy policy of the two countries, caused, mainly, by the absence of GDPR in Ukraine. It also disclosed much stronger cooperation of online stores and price comparison engines in Poland compared to Ukraine. At the same time, research results allow to state that server security in both countries is on the same rather high level and that online stores use transparent and safe methods of online payment.

This research opens a way to other, expanded observations which will include more countries and larger scopes of data. Its main limitation is that GDPR influence is only studied in two countries, not in all countries where it is implemented.

This research contributes from security and trust perspectives by analyzing the situation in two countries as follows: the EU member (Poland) and a non-EU country (Ukraine). The value of exploring the situation of Ukrainian e-commerce consists of understanding how online stores function without implementing the GDPR. Observation of shopbots application allows drawing an important conclusion of the necessity for online stores to cooperate with such services. It was also revealed that consumers’ trust in both countries depends a lot on the payment methods applied by an online store and on the ease of use of these methods.

This paper aims to develop supply chain strategies for the fashion retail supply chain (FRSC), likely to be disrupted by the current pandemic (COVID-19) under physical and online retail stores. The resilient retail supply chain design is proposed under budget allocation and merchandise capacity constraints.

This paper utilises the theory of constraint (ToC) and goal programming (GP) to address the COVID-19 impact on FRSC. The budgetary and capacity constraints are formulated with a constraint optimisation model and tested with six different priorities to deal with the physical and online stores. Next, all priorities are developed under different FRSC business scenarios. The ToC-GP-based optimisation model is validated with one of the Indian fashion retail supply chains.

The proposed optimisation model presents the optimal retailing strategies for selling fashion goods over physical and online platforms. The multiple scenarios are presented for developing trade-offs among different strategies to maximise the retailer's merchandise performance. This paper also highlighted the strategic movement from high merchandise density stores to low merchandise density stores. This implies a reduction of sales targets and aspiration levels of both online and physical fashion stores.

The proposed model is validated with one of the fashion retailers in India. Other nations or multiple fashion retailers might be considered for more generalisation of findings in the future.

This research helps fashion retail supply chain managers deal with consumer demand uncertainty over physical and online stores in pandemic times. Limitation: Other nations or multiple fashion retailers might be considered for more generalisation of findings in the future.

This is the first study that considered the impact of COVID-19 on the retail fashion supply chain. The effect of physical and online platforms is mainly discussed from consumer marketing perspectives, but an inventory and resilience perspective is missing in earlier studies. The role of merchandise planning is highlighted in this study.

Drawing on open systems theory, this study aims to investigate the direct and moderating effects of information collaboration in the pre-sale stage, transaction management collaboration in the transaction stage and customer service collaboration in the post-sale stage on the linkages of the online–offline store image and the market performance of small sellers.

Data were collected from multiple sources, including self-reported and online objective data from 148 small restaurants that simultaneously sell online and offline, for validating the developed research model. Partial least squares-based structural equation modeling was used for data analysis.

This study illustrates the direct effects of an online store’s image and online–offline collaborations on the market performance of small stores. This study further reveals the boom-bust moderating effects of different collaborations between online–offline images and market performance.

Small stores should be aware of the importance of information congruence and functional integration concerning online–offline collaboration. They should also recognize the paradoxical intervening effects of online–offline collaboration on different channels and arrange appropriate collaboration tactics.

This study presents a significant contribution to the open systems theory by revealing both constructive and destructive properties of the online–offline collaborative system with offline-to-online targeting. Vertically differentiated online–offline collaboration may strengthen one side of the store image but weaken the other side for promoting the market performance of small stores.

Online reviews have been indicated to play an important role in consumers’ decision-making process, as supported by numerous studies. However, none of them has considered the neighborhood effect of online reviews. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of neighbor store’s reviews on central store’s, along with the moderating effects of store density and product similarity.

Using data from dianping.com, this study conducts economic analysis accounting for endogeneity.

The results show that the neighbor store’s reviews exert a negative impact on that of central stores. Nevertheless, the relationship is moderated by store density and product similarity, such that the negative effect is stronger if there are a lot of stores around the central store, or if the neighbor store and central store provide similar products.

This study is the first to investigate the neighborhood effect of online reviews.

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.

Innovations in technology and evolution of internet elicited the usage of technology and internet during the shopping process of consumers. Changes in consumer shopping processes opened doors for shifts in consumer buying behavior. As a result of the variations in consumer buying behavior, retailers formed new channel structures to fulfill customer requirements. New channel structures created different retailing formats and enhanced the complexity of retailing processes. As the complexity of retailing processes increased, complexity of consumer shopping behavior increased as well. In this sense, multichannel retailing emerged and expanded all around the world and paved the way for omnichannel retailing. Transformation of multichannel retailing to omnichannel retailing created two different shopping forms as: Showrooming and Webrooming. In this chapter, showrooming and webrooming concepts will be studied and the complementarity dimensions of these concepts will be explained in detail.

To examine the effectiveness of a multichannel strategy, this study mainly investigates two issues: (1) whether customers' five value perceptions (i.e. product quality, service quality, innovation, price and store image) extend from e-stores to physical stores and (2) whether customers' five value perceptions derived from e-stores/physical stores facilitate purchase intention within and beyond the channel context.

This study develops a research model to elaborate on the relationships between the focal constructs and collects 177 useable responses via an online community and personal contacts survey. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) methods and mediation analyses are conducted to validate the proposed hypotheses.

The results show that the values perceived in e-stores/physical stores generally motivate online/offline purchase intention, respectively. Next, based on Tversky's belief/feature matching process, the five value perceptions correlate with their counterparts across online and offline channels. The results of the mediation analyses suggest that the advantages established in online channels may be contagious to offline channels at the belief level. Specifically, four of the five online value perceptions may have different effects on offline purchase intention: (1) product quality perceived in e-stores directly (negative) and indirectly (positive) results in offline purchase intention, demonstrating cannibalization effects and (2) service quality, innovation and store image perceived in e-stores indirectly and positively contribute to offline purchase intention, indicating synergetic effects.

The findings of this study provide several important theoretical and practical implications for multichannel and omnichannel retailing strategies.

This study aims to investigate the moderating effects of brick-and-mortar (BM) store characteristics and customer satisfaction on the relationship between ship-to-store (STS) retailing and BM store performance in an emerging economy. The purpose is to explore how BM store characteristics and customer satisfaction influence online buying behaviour when customers visit the stores to pick up their products.

This study collected secondary longitudinal data from 615 BM stores from one of Brazil's largest retailers and performed a panel-data regression analysis using the following moderating variables: customer satisfaction with BM stores, BM store's size, convenience and inventory transparency.

Customer satisfaction with BM stores moderates the effect of STS transactions on the revenue per store. Results also show that BM store's convenience, size and inventory transparency moderate STS online customers' impact on BM store cross-sales.

The STS strategy can increase online and BM store performance. Some BM store characteristics and customer satisfaction influence online customers to buy more products when they visit BM stores to pick up their products, providing a more complex model for the relationship between STS strategy and BM store performance.

Companies in emerging economies can use the BM store more strategically in combination with the STS strategy to increase overall retailer performance. By managing some BM store characteristics, managers can improve retail sales.

This study demonstrates how new moderating factors expand the understanding of the relationship between online and physical retailing in emerging economies. Also, the panel data regression results control for extraneous variables and provide more robust evidence of the relationships observed.

This study explores coopetition opportunities between e-tailers and brick-and-mortar (BM) retailers and provides a conceptual framework. These opportunities may be triggered by events such as social distancing causing crises (SDCC).

A grounded theory based approach was used wherein 119 news articles and 48 academic papers are the main sources of data to analyse the real-world responses. A typical qualitative methodology, including open and axial coding, was used. To further analyse the insights obtained, six in-depth interviews were conducted.

Non-customer-interfacing-based coopetition, such as small BM stores serving as e-marketplace sellers and customer-interfacing-based coopetition, such as large BM stores serving as showrooms, are some potential coopetition opportunities.

The majority of the available studies dwell more on offline retailers developing online channels. This study investigates the opposite situation and conceptualises a new understanding of how e-tailers and BM retailers can work together more harmoniously. This study can be used as a springboard by academicians for future research on a larger scale. Five research propositions are offered that can guide hypothesis generation. Development of case studies and consulting services for the industry are the other research opportunities.

Social distancing as a measure may vanish from the world with time; however, social distancing's implications are still pertinent given that new diseases, including new variants of pandemic potential, could continue to emerge. The study puts forward propositions based on theoretical dimensions and second-order themes derived from first-order categories. These propositions are about the drivers of coopetition and the opportunities with both large and small BM stores that e-tailers can leverage during a crisis, given that launching e-tailers' own BM stores demands large investments. This study has social and economic implications too.

This study investigates coopetition, an important trend but lacking adequate research. Whilst only few studies examine coopetition from a crises' perspective, this study investigates develops a new understanding of coopetition opportunities between e-tailers and BM retailers. This study adds to the scarce literature how such opportunities may be triggered by events such as SDCC.