My UQ Research Podcast

Ep. 10 - Marketing-Mix Response Across Retail Formats: The Role of Shopping Trip Types. Jindal, Zhu, Chintagunta & Dhar, 2020. Journal if Marketing.


The authors study differences in the effects of prices, nonprice promotions, and brand line length on brand shares at different retail formats. Their conceptual framework rests on the presence of trip-level fixed and category-level variable utility components and shows how the trade-off between these components results in (1) different formats visited on different types of shopping trips and (2) differential marginal sensitivities of brand shares to changes in marketing-mix variables across trip types. Together, these provide predictions on how marketing-mix variables differentially affect brand shares at various retail formats. The authors use Nielsen Homescan and store-level data from 2011–2014 and analyze the top ten spending product categories across four retail formats—convenience stores, drugstores, supermarkets, and mass merchandisers—in over 200 Nielsen markets. Implications for brand manufacturers managing the marketing mix across different formats are offered.

Multi-channel shopping: channel use among rural consumers. Johnson, Yoo, Rhee, Lennon, Jasper & Damhorst, 2006.


The research purpose was to identify whether changes occurred between 2000 and 2003 in the retail channel use of rural consumers for searching product information and for purchasing food and fiber products and to investigate whether differences existed between channel use groups (i.e. store only shoppers, store and catalog shoppers, and multi‐channel shoppers) concerning perceived time property, satisfaction with local offerings, community attachment, shopping criteria, and financial security.
Design/methodology/approach
Survey methodology was used. Questionnaires were mailed to participants living in non‐metropolitan statistical areas of the USA with populations less than 12,500. In 2000, 2,198 participants returned the questionnaire. Follow‐up questionnaires were mailed to the same participants during 2003 and returned by 847 participants. The analysis is based on the responses of the 847 participants.
Findings
To search for information on apparel, food, or home furnishing products, internet use increased slightly as did use of the internet to purchase apparel and home furnishings. Multi‐channel shoppers rated themselves as time‐pressed, dissatisfied with local offerings, unattached to their community, and unconcerned with financial security while shopping.
Practical implications
Rural consumers are slowly increasing their use of internet even as they report their satisfaction with shopping with local brick and mortar stores increased during the time period studied. The time is right for rural retailers to enhance both personal and professional relationships with their customers. Rural retailers can capitalize on consumer satisfaction and provide outstanding value and service to keep local customers in local markets.
Originality/value
The paper provides information on new and different retailing practices that satisfy rural consumers in the USA.

Ep. 8 - Importance ratings of grocery store attributes. Nilsson, Garling Marell & Nordvall, 2015. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management

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.
Design/methodology/approach
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).
Findings
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.
Originality/value
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.

Ep. 7 - Consumers’ cross-format behaviour in an emerging retail market: Multiple discriminant analysis. Jayasankaraprasad, 2014. Journal of International Consumer Marketing. - - The evolution of store formats and the resultant consumers’ cross-shopping behavior has been the prevalent trends in Indian food and grocery retailing. More recently, however, the growing incidence of cross-format shopping—defined as consumers shopping regularly at each of two or more types of grocery retail outlets—has become a subject of research, as it is regarded as a necessary evil associated with concentric retail growth. The aim of the article is to identify factors influencing consumers’ cross-format shopping in relation to four retail formats—kirana stores, convenience stores, supermarkets, and hypermarkets. Furthermore, it investigates the impact of identified factors on repatronage behavior relative to four types of retail outlets. The mall intercept survey method was used to collect data from 1,040 adult food and grocery consumers. Results from exploratory factor analysis and zero-order correlation matrix indicate that value for money, value for time, shopping situations, shopping motives, and store attributes are significant and positively correlated with cross-format shopping. The multiple discriminant analysis provides empirical support, suggesting that value for money, task definitions, value for time, shopping trip pattern, basket size, price-conscious and local shopping motives, price promotions, customer service, store environment, distance to store, and monthly household income are not only the significant predictors but also able to discriminate repatronage intentions toward four types of retail outlets in an emerging retail market. The present study provides useful information on consumers' intertype cross-shopping (e.g., crossing from kirana store type to supermarket type and vice versa) between four types of grocery retail outlets.

Recent decades has seen continued rationalization in the retail sector and the growth of ‘big-box’ or ‘category-killer’ store formats leaving the small business struggling to compete and at a loss to determine how it can ‘win’. We propose that a segment of shopper exists that shop at small businesses for specific reasons. Using a choice experiment approach to investigate the reason consumers choose where to shop amongst small, independent and large scale retailers we see this different segment of consumers appear. Best:worse is a choice method that forces choice amongst a range of variables, designed to uncover ‘actual’ reasons for decisions made. This paper finds consumer choice for retail stores types identifies a segment that may assist in the sustainability of smaller stores if they cater to the attributes their target consumers seek. This is a contribution to small business researchers and small business strategy and practitioner effort in the marketing and design of small retailer offering.

The objective of this study is to consider how symbolic acts, such as those emphasized by Wal-Mart, affect retail store choice. Acts with much symbolic meaning include support of community charities, frontdoor greeters, and patriotic displays. In logit analyses of survey data from low-priced department store shoppers in the Atlanta, Chicago, Indianapolis, Dallas/Fort Worth, and Kingston, Canada markets, it was found that being identified as having a strong community reputation not only directly affected store choice, but also moderated the effect of the other determinant price, value, and location attributes.

We study the state of food retail system serving an ethnic minority community. This group, Israeli Arabs, enjoys a relatively high standard of living but continues to make many food purchases in a variety of small, specialized retail food formats. In contrast, the surrounding Jewish population is mostly shopping in supermarkets.Data from a survey of consumer shopping behavior across formats of different product lines are used to identify the barriers to the advancement of the supermarket format in this minority sector. Our study shows that socioeconomic factors, found in earlier supermarket diffusion studies to be the main barrier, have no impact in this case. We identify the tendency to purchase perishable food items in traditional outlets and the geographical diffusion barrier (distance of supermarket formats) to be the main limitation on supermarkets’ market share growth. Further, we find that both these factors are influenced by underlying cultural and ethnic factors characterizing the study population.

Retailers have always worked to establish close relationships with customers through the retail marketing mix. Thus, the literature has a long tradition of testing the effects of various instruments on retail patronage. This meta-study synthesizes prior research into one comprehensive framework. We use 14,895 effect sizes reported by more than 239,000 shoppers from 41 countries extracted from 350 independent samples, to test the impact of 24 marketing-mix instruments on retail patronage. Specifically, we investigate the direct and indirect effects of these instruments on store satisfaction, word of mouth, patronage intention, and behavior. Product and brand management related instruments display the strongest effects on most outcome variables, whereas price, communication, service and incentive management instruments affect only selected outcomes. Distribution management turns out to be of secondary importance. However, the effectiveness of these instruments depends on the specific shopping context (food/non-food, shopping frequency, single store/agglomeration, hedonic/utilitarian), the retail environment (gross domestic product, country innovativeness, retail sales share, retail employment, Internet era), and the employed method (participant type, study design, data source). Specifically, we reveal most differences for hedonic shopping environments and developed countries. Also, the store’s advertising and atmosphere have gained importance in the Internet era, while purchase incentives, in-store orientation, and store location have lost relevance. This study contributes to a synoptic understanding of the comparable effectiveness of retail marketing instruments on retail patronage. It offers insights into the effectiveness of marketing-mix instruments and provides guidance on whether and when to invest in them. It also presents an agenda for future research on marketing-mix instruments.

Factors contributing to rural consumers' inshopping behavior: Effects of institutional environment and social capital. Jiyoung Kim & Leslie Stoel, 2010. Journal: Marketing Intelligence & Planning. Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine how shopping behavior of rural consumers is affected by perceptions of local retailers' social norm-based activities and task-oriented actions, and social capital within the community. Design/methodology/approach – A mail survey is distributed using a modification of Dillman's method; 524 usable surveys are collected. Multi-group analysis in structural equation modeling is employed for the data analysis. Findings – The findings of the paper reveal significant relationships between institutional action and legitimacy, legitimacy and support, and value and support. The moderating effect of social capital on the relationships between institutional action and legitimacy, legitimacy and support, and value and support are significant. Research limitations/implications – This paper extends previous research by including both social environmental factors (social capital), and retailers' social actions in explaining consumer support. Limitations of the research design are discussed and directions for future research are suggested. Practical implications – This research provides rural retailers with ideas for marketing solutions that use socio-norm related (i.e. institutional action) and task-oriented (i.e. performative action) factors to attract local shoppers. Originality/value – This research adds to the current stream of rural research by integrating institutional theory and social capital theory to propose a conceptual framework. This research is significant as the study results provide implications to rural retailers and further to the community, as the sustainability of the rural sector is closely related to the well-being of the entire community.

A categorization of small retailer research? - Runyan & Droge, 2008. Journal of Retailing.

This paper presents an extensive review of 20+ years of research on small, independent retailers. For each of 134 articles, the focus, theory, analysis, methodology, and key findings were tabled. The articles were classified into distinct streams: strategy; structure; channels; patronage; and labor. Each stream is discussed, separate themes within a stream are identified, and directions for future research within that stream are offered. Directions for future research are also suggested for the small retailing field as a whole. In particular, we address the lack of construct development and the dearth of theoretical underpinning to much of the research.