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This chapter focuses on how retailers can do the right thing and be successful at the same time, particularly in the light of technological innovation. Service dominant logic (SDL), with the notion of operant and operand resources as a means to connect the retailer to the customer, provides a framework for the chapter. Normative decision making is presented as a necessary ethical and practical mindset to solve problems, and we illustrate the relationship between normative decision making and value. Value becomes the ultimate outcome to the customer that will allow for sustainable retailing into the future. Utilitarian value and hedonic value are presented and elaborated upon to show how companies and consumers come together to transform resources into value through service. Sections are included showing how value delivery will evolve into the future and what mix of value will be necessary so that retailing can see continued success.

Design is an important construct in the retail environment literature. Yet, the measures used for design have not followed appropriate scale development procedures. The purpose of this study is to provide a conceptual definition and then develop a scale for retail environment design (RED).

Interviews with both consumers and marketing researchers are used to generate a potential list of items. Using four different studies, these items are refined, and the RED scale is offered.

This study develops and validates the four-dimensional RED scale to measure the design of retail environments. The dimensions are functional, aesthetic, lighting and signage.

The newly developed RED scale will allow retailing researchers to measure lighting and signage qualities as part of retail design, measure design of retail environments more accurately and allow different studies to be compared.

The newly developed RED scale will allow retailers to better understand customers’ perceptions of the four dimensions of design. Retailers spend significant time and money designing and redesigning retail environments. The RED scale will enable managers to ensure these significant investments create competitive advantages and an appropriate return on investment.

A scale to measure retail environment design is developed. The scale includes two dimensions (lighting and signage) that are not typically investigated.

The purpose of this study is to address the following research questions: How do customer input and service provider (in this study, the terms firm and service provider are used interchangeably) input coproduce customer experience and response? Do different components of customer input influence customer experience differently?

Structural equation modeling (SEM) was adopted to conduct tests of the measurement model and the main hypotheses represented in Figure 1. LISREL 8.80 (Jöreskog and Sörbom, 1993) was applied for data analysis in the current study. A survey instrument was designed and used to gather data for use in this study. Data were collected using an online survey administration tool (www.qualtrics.com).

The results indicate that two dimensions of customer participation – information resource and codeveloper activities – demonstrate distinct impacts on customers’ responses. Specifically, customer participation (information resource) is negatively related to customer shopping values and satisfaction. However, another dimension of customer participation (codeveloper activities) is positively related to the same outcomes.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to integrate customer participation and customer orientation to understand the phenomenon of customer co-creation. The study applies for a two-dimensional customer input construct and empirically tests their impacts on customer experience. Both utilitarian value and hedonic value are included in the research framework to assess customer value experience.

This paper aims to propose a personality-based approach to measure Millennial consumers’ wine evaluations. Past personality-based measures (brand personality, country personality and product personality) each presents their own issues when it comes to measuring wine perceptions, especially those of neophyte wine consumers. This paper proposes a new, holistic and tailored measure to gauge the personality dimensions Millennials perceive in wine.

Multiple studies were conducted in France. Items from former personality scales were combined and condensed. An exploratory factor analysis (n = 318) followed by a confirmatory factor analysis (n = 236) across wines from different regions were conducted. Predictive validity tests relating the dimensions of wine personality to key consumer outcomes were also conducted. Finally, face validity tests with real wines were conducted (n = 190).

The results suggest two dimensions of wine personality for Millennial consumers: a social and a philosophical dimension. The nine-trait structure is stable across origins and each dimension can be related to quality and value perceptions, attitudes and purchase intent. The findings suggest a new way for managers to gauge the way their wine offering is received by Millennial wine consumers.

The initial personality structure, uncovered across the multiple studies, suggests a parsimonious way to understand how an important wine segment, Millennials, perceives wines. The measure includes brand, product and origin perceptions and thus proposes a holistic way of understanding young consumers’ perception of wine personality.

This paper aims to provide insight into the three most prevalent expert wine rater sources and how they separately affect retail prices post-release across a sample of French and US wines from the 2012 vintage.

Empirical research using regression models built on data scraped from Web sources provides the source for the substance of the paper.

The findings suggest that all rating sources affect release price (approximately $3-4 per point), but more indicative of market performance, only Wine Advocate ratings significantly influence price change in the market post-release. Other results suggest some, but far from complete, consistency among raters. Red wines and French wines typically fetch better scores from the raters, and they are less subject to price drops in the marketplace.

The nature of the data does not allow for consumers’ individual difference characteristics, such as wine knowledge, among others, to be included as potential factors explaining why and when expert ratings influence consumers.

Third-party wine ratings do indeed matter both in terms of release price and post-release price performance. In particular, following release, Wine Advocate ratings provide the most influential quality signal in the marketplace.

Scrutiny on the manner in which ratings information is used by retailers is appropriate, given the influence such ratings have on consumers as demonstrated by their effects on market behaviors.

The research examines the top three US expert ratings and considers their consistency and impact, not just on release price but also on price following release, as a direct indicator of product performance in the marketplace.

The purpose of this paper is to consider various strengths and weaknesses of the academic review process with an emphasis on the effect the process has on the relevance of business journals, particularly in the marketing literature.

The authors not only highlight some of the literature addressing the review process but also present insight and opinion largely based on decades of experience editing, reviewing, writing and publishing.

Reviewers can help develop research papers, but reviewers remain gatekeepers who, theoretically, protect journals from publishing research that would diminish the truthful body of knowledge within a field. However, many inefficiencies, some of which involve volition, allow one to question whether the review process as we know it best accomplishes that purpose.

Recognizing that reviewers affect journal prestige, the paper concludes with a number of ideas for improving the gate-keeping and developmental functions for academic articles.

Society should extract value from what appears in publicly circulated, academic, refereed journals. However, to the extent that the publication process interferes with objective dissemination of knowledge, that value is diminished and perhaps even absent.

The paper intends to stimulate frank conversation about the Academy’s refereed publication process and factors that tend to interfere with its function.

This study explores consumers' motivations to purchase luxury and counterfeit products using an international sample. In addition, it also examines the moderating role of interpersonal influence on this process. This study seeks to examine if the consumers who demand the highest quality express a preference for luxury goods over counterfeit goods.

Survey research was employed to subjects from the USA, India, China and Russia. Responses from US and India consumers were collected using online software, whereas responses from China and Russia were collected with the help of a local market research firm.

The findings of the study indicate that consumers tend to show similar reactions based on the luxury and counterfeit consumption process examined here. In terms of interpersonal influence as a moderator, however, the study found it significantly impacts status seekers' attitude toward luxury and how a perfectionist shopper perceives counterfeit consumption.

This study is one of the first in the literature to empirically address both luxury and counterfeit consumption. Further it considers consumers from multiple countries with high levels of luxury good purchases.

The research seeks to extend the notions of utilitarian and hedonic value to account for outcomes of consumer service encounters.

The research question is examined using a sample of Korean restaurant consumers who used a structured questionnaire to evaluate their dining experience. Structural equations analysis is used to test various research hypotheses and examine the extent to which consumer service value mediates the effect of the environment on customer satisfaction and future intentions.

Key findings include the ability of the consumer service value scale to account for utilitarian and hedonic value, the role of functional and affective service environment components in shaping consumer satisfaction and future patronage intentions and the relative diagnosticity of positive affect.

There is a need to extend the results to a diverse range of cultures.

Restaurant managers should place increased emphasis on the physical environment as it clearly plays a role in creating positive consumer outcomes and building strong customer relationships.

The use of the consumer value scale (CSV) – particularly in a novel service context.

Given resource constraints such as time and staffing, hotels cannot respond to all negative online reviews (NORs). Therefore, this study investigates (1) what types of NORs hotels should prioritize responding; and (2) what response strategies are more effective in handling different types of NORs to minimize the negative ramifications.

Four experiments in the context of hospitability were used to test the hypotheses.

Our findings show that NORs with implicit conclusions (e.g. “I do not believe that is a good choice, you know what I mean.”) are more dissuasive than NORs with explicit ones (e.g. “Do not buy it.”) because the former NORs are perceived as more objective than the latter NORs. More importantly, our results show that firms do not need to respond to explicit NORs. When responding to implicit NORs, firms should prioritize those related to service failures caused by external (e.g. weather, technological misfunction) rather than internal (e.g. poor management, employee skills) factors.

Our studies focus on the language styles of Chinese NORs, and future research should investigate how language styles influence dissuasion in other languages.

Our results show that NORs with implicit conclusions negatively impact consumer attitude and thus hurt performance more significantly than those with explicit conclusions. Therefore, firms should allocate limited staffing and resources to NORs with implicit conclusions. When responding to implicit NORs, firms should select NORs that can be attributed to external factors.

Our findings shed light on the importance of the language styles of NORs and provide marketers with insights into how to handle NORs. Our results reveal that consumers perceive higher objectivity of NORs when these reviews are implicit than when they are explicit. Furthermore, this study contributes to the online review literature by suggesting that firms should tailor their response strategies for NORs based on the reviewers’ language styles.