Guest editorial

Citation

Fernie, J. (2010), "Guest editorial", International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Vol. 38 No. 11/12. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijrdm.2010.08938kaa.001

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Volume 38, Issue 11/12

About the Guest Editor

John Fernie Professor of Retail Marketing at Heriot-Watt University, Scotland. He has written and contributed to numerous textbooks and papers on retail management, especially in the field of retail logistics and the internationalisation of retail formats. In 2005, he created the George Davies Centre for Retail Excellence with generous financial support from the retail entrepreneur of the same name. Subsequently, much of his research has focused upon the fashion sector with work on offshore sourcing, on-shelf availability and luxury branding. He is a consulting editor of the International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management and is on the editorial board of numerous marketing and logistics journals. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Logistics and Transport and a member of the Logistics Directors Forum. He holds an Honorary Professorship at St Andrews University and a Visiting Professorship at Vienna University.

In 1989, I was asked by the Management of the then MCB University Press to become editor of the new journal International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management (IJRDM) that was the outcome of a merger of the newly acquired trade journal Retail & Distribution Management (RDM) and the existing MCB journal, The International Journal of Retailing. Looking back at the contributions in 1990, strong themes emerge in relation to current issues of the time. One contributor posed the question “Out of town shopping – is the revolution over?” and several papers discussed shopping centres and town centre management schemes. Perhaps reflecting the title of the journal and my own research interests, several papers discussed contract distribution and logistics topics. Of more relevance to later contributions to the journal in the ensuing decades were the large number of papers on international retailing including a piece on retail reform and trends in China. Furthermore, the emerging debate on electronic home shopping was discussed in two papers in the second issue of 1990. One of the contributors was Jonathan Reynolds who features in this current volume along with Alan Hallsworth, Alan McKinnon and myself who also had papers published in 1990.

During the last 20 years, the format and content of the journal has changed to move away from its “trade” image to a respected double-blind refereed journal while at the same time retaining its applied research focus. In the last decade and the switch to electronic copy, Emerald has been able to provide editors with updates on downloaded copy. It has been pleasing to see the journal perform so well in the 2000s and to note the topics that have been most popular in terms of individual papers and special issues. In recent years, electronic retailing has been the most popular theme, followed by international retailing, fashion and retail branding. Earlier themes mentioned in the 1990 volume have consistently appeared in the journal during the last 20 years – retail change, location, planning and logistics, a themed issue on the latter topic appearing in 2008.

The current issue reflects both the main topics in retailing and the people who have contributed to the journal over a long period of time. Each contributor was asked to reflect on the changes in retailing since the journal was launched and to reflect on possible challenges for the future. The first three papers deal with retail change, location decision making and local shopping in the UK; the next three focus upon supply chain issues, branding, buying and logistics and the final three papers discuss the “hotter” topics of fashion, international retailing and internet retailing.

Jonathan Elms, Catherine Canning, Ronan de Kervenoael, Paul Whysall and Alan Hallsworth begin the issue with a paper that reflects on 30 years of change in the UK grocery retailing. They chart the major changes that have occurred during this time and the numerous government inquiries into the competitive behaviour of the major retailers but conclude that the public will continue to be car-borne, superstore-based shoppers for the feasible future. In the early 1980s, concern was expressed about restrictions of consumer choice, the power of the multiples and their squeeze on suppliers’ margins, the same concerns expressed in Competition Commission investigations in the 2000s. However, they do note that consumers have changed how they shop in that they shop closer (in travel time), more frequently and invariably they buy alone, all a reflection of social change in the last few decades.

Our second paper by Jonathan Reynolds and Steve Wood discusses the challenges facing retail location practitioners over time with the rise of large-scale formats and complex store portfolios. The authors give an excellent summary of the evolution of retail location techniques and the journal’s contribution (including RDM since its inception in 1973) to the debate on the application of such techniques in practice. They undertake their own survey of location survey techniques to update work published by Hernandez and Bennison ten years earlier. They discovered that a greater range of techniques were employed than in the earlier survey although the site visit continued to play an important role in validating the modelling approach adopted. They note, however, that these site location teams are small and argue that greater resource allocation could yield greater forecast accuracy and greater engagement across retail businesses.

The paper by David Bennison, John Pal and Gary Warnaby reflects on the role of local shopping in the context of the attention that has been spent on large-scale formats and the planning mechanisms put in place to ensure viability of town centres. In the debate over out-of-town shopping, local shopping centres have largely been ignored despite concerns being raised about “local” shops’ provision in the 1970s and 1980s. Although some anecdotal evidence appears to accept the demise of such shops over time because of the rise of grocery multiples, research has shown that net increases of butchers, bakers and independent stores have occurred with a decline in the number of greengrocers and off licences. In the second half of 2009, 11,000 more shops were opened than closed, showing that even the demise of Woolworths led to a structural readjustment of local shopping rather than its collapse. The authors suggest a wide range of responses to maintaining a viable local shopping provision with a schema posited which seeks to integrate elements of business and place management.

Steve Burt and Keri Davies explore the evolution of the retail brand from essentially its product characteristics in the early research to the retailer as a corporate brand in more recent times with retailers as international brands. In this product perspective, they review the literature under five key themes; store brand consumers and product attributes, growth of retail brand development, changing channel relationships, intra-category brand relationships and copycat brands. The authors then discuss the retailer as the brand in that consumers now equate the brand with the store and retailers are using the brand to realise their corporate vision and values across the organisation.

Buying is crucial to retailing success and this function has changed markedly during the last 20 years. The function has centralised, its buyers have undertaken offshore sourcing and the buyer has increasingly become a part of an integrated retail team ensuring the proper flow of product from supplier to the shop floor. Technologies have been a major facilitator to improve the performance of retail buyers and this is the focus of the paper by Susan S. Fiorito, Myron Gable and Amanda Conseur. They argue that the major operational tasks of the buyer have not changed much over time but the technologies have changed the way buyers execute these tasks. The authors then describe the range of technologies available to retailers from data mining/warehousing, EDI, RFID to CPFR techniques prior to a short section on the role of e-showrooms and social networking as the possible future for retail buying.

The paper by John Fernie, Leigh Sparks and Alan C. McKinnon spans our research undertaken over the last 20 years when a logistics transformation of British retailing has occurred. The paper charts this transformation from a supplier-led supply chain to one of retail control. It incorporates the key concepts of supply chain management to both the grocery and fashion sectors. In view of the rising importance of e-tailing in the last decade, a section is devoted to the challenges of e-fulfilment. The types of fulfilment model are discussed and possible solutions to the last mile problem are mooted. Finally, future challenges for logisticians are reviewed including macro-environmental issues such as climate change and recession in addition to improvements to existing operations with technologies such as RFID.

Our last three papers reflect the most topical themes in the journal in recent years. Christopher M. Moore and Stephen A. Doyle discuss the main themes that have emerged in the fashion literature, especially in IJRDM, during the last 20 years. These themes are the fashion retailer as a brand, the internationalisation of fashion retailing, e-fashion, the fashion supply chain and fashion consumption trends. They then explore these themes in the second part of the paper by focusing on Prada as a pre-eminent international fashion retailer and brand and show how Prada has radically changed its business model in the last 20 years. Finally, they conclude by stating that fashion retailing is as much a reflection of culture as it is of the latest fashion fads.

Nicholas Alexander and Anne Marie Doherty provide an excellent overview of international retailing research from the late 1980s until the present day. They also provide a useful plug for the journal in that IJRDM has published a large proportion of the leading works during this time period. The authors comment that the early work focused on market expansion and market entry strategies, mainly focusing upon food retailers compared with the more recent work on operational strategies and divestment. In addition to big box retailing, fashion retailing research became more prominent in the late 1990s and 2000s. They also comment on the methodological approaches adopted and note a move to a more qualitative approach (ethnographies, case studies, in-depth interviews) in recent years. The authors conclude by providing a research agenda for the future that incorporates three dimensions – corporate domain, corporate orientation and market based activities.

Our final paper is by Neil F. Doherty and Fiona Ellis-Chadwick on internet retailing; the past, present and future. Indeed, Neil F. Doherty and Fiona Ellis-Chadwick edited a special issue for the journal on electronic commerce and the retail sector in 2006. The authors chart the early predictions on the role of the internet in terms of its growth, the demise of the High Street, demise of the intermediary and the rise of the electronic middleman and the transformation of direct marketing. They then go on to point out that early forecasts were ambitious albeit in the context of impressive growth in recent years. High Street retailers have not disappeared or cannabalised their sales, virtual merchants have not dominated the marketplace yet online advertising and social networking has led to a consumer-led cyberspace. They conclude by concurring that the future of internet retailing will be strongly focused upon word-of-mouth referrals, the market will continue to grow and strong brands will be prominent in the marketplace.

Enjoy!

John FernieGuest Editor