Editorial

Citation

Towers, N. (2011), "Editorial", International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Vol. 39 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijrdm.2011.08939aaa.002

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Volume 39, Issue 1

For this edition we have four quite different papers that address different activities of understanding TV shoppers in the USA; relationship quality affected by both the conflict management approach and the type of conflict found within the relationship with French retailers; understanding the effect of store atmospherics on the employees’ cognitive, affective and physiological responses in Tunisia; and shoppers’ demographic, geographic and psychographic dimensions in terms of format choice behaviour in the fast growing Indian food and grocery retailing in India.

The first contribution by Hyejune Park, Chae-Mi Lim, Vertica Bhardwaj and Youn-Kyung Kim addresses the need to understand who are TV shoppers, they particularly choose a TV shopping channel as a shopping medium, and what motivates them to continue to browse their channels. To address this need their study conducts a segmentation analysis to identify consumer groups based on the benefits sought from TV home shopping. Researchers have revealed that consumers who seek different benefits from TV shopping may exhibit different demographics (e.g. age, sex, education) or consumer orientations (e.g. time-consciousness, impulse buying tendency). In addition, since TV shoppers’ various personal characteristics were found to be related to certain TV shopping motivations it is anticipated that consumers seeking different benefits from TV shopping exhibit different attitudinal outcomes such as satisfaction with TV shopping. Four benefit segments of TV home shoppers were identified: convenience seekers, product-oriented shoppers, uniqueness seekers, and apathetic shoppers. Each consumer segment exhibited significant differences in demographic characteristics (i.e. gender, age, education level), consumer characteristics (i.e. time-consciousness, price-consciousness), and behavioural outcomes (i.e. satisfaction with TV shopping, repurchase intention). This study confirms that benefit segmentation can be a useful tool for targeting TV home shoppers. However, the findings of the current study should be interpreted with caution due to non-random sampling method and limited number of scale items for benefits sought and variables used in describing segments.

The next paper by Lionel Bobot presents and tests a conceptual framework, where relationship quality is directly affected by both the conflict management approach used and the type of conflict found within the relationship, and enhanced or diminished by conflict management approach’s moderating affect on the impact of type of conflict on relationship quality. The unit of analysis for this study was purchasing retailers who interact with industrial salespeople. Data used for this research were collected through interview questionnaire surveys aimed at the French retailers association during February 2009. A total of 320 French retailers were sampled to fill out the questionnaire. A total of 131 retailers completed and returned the survey for a response rate of 41 per cent. This study found that functional conflict positively affects the quality of the retailer-supplier relationship and this effect is amplified when retailers use a collaboration conflict management approach. However, the positive effects of functional conflict are mitigated by retailers engaging in accommodating and compromising approaches. Dysfunctional conflict did not positively or negatively affect the overall relationship quality in this study. Its management determines whether it will have a positive or negative effect on relationship quality. The survey results provide new insights on how retailers can use conflict management behaviours to cope better with functional and dysfunctional conflict and improve relationship quality with suppliers.

The purpose of the third paper by Hamida Skandrani, Norchène Ben Dahmane Mouelhi and Faten Malek is to better understand the effect of store atmospherics on the employees’ cognitive, affective and physiological responses. It tries to build on store atmospherics literature to gain more insights on how these store atmospherics – often handled to produce positive outcomes among consumers – affect employees’ attitudinal and behavioural reactions. This study adopted an explanatory approach with in-depth interviews conducted with 13 employees working in internationally reputed clothing stores. It reveals that employees could adopt avoidance behaviours because of the environmental factors. Specifically, it suggests that the lack of variation in the musical program, incongruence of music genre – salespersons musical preferences, long exposure to the same rhythms, task complexity, crowding, might affect the employees’ attitudinal and behavioural responses. In addition, the relationships between the sales force team are found to influence employees’ reactions.

The final paper by Cherukuri Jayasankaraprasad and Ankisetti Ramachandra Aryasri includes a detailed study on the effect of shoppers’ demographic, geographic and psychographic dimensions in terms of format choice behaviour in the fast growing Indian food and grocery retailing. Retailing in India is an unchartered territory. Food and grocery is the most promising area for setting up retail business in India. An understanding of shopper retail format choice behaviour will enable retailers to segment their market and target specific consumer groups with strategies premeditated to meet their retail needs. A descriptive research design is adopted applying mall intercept survey method using structured questionnaire for data collection. Statistical tools like χ², factor analysis and multivariate analysis are used to analyse the data collected from 1,040 food and grocery retail customers from neighbourhood kirana stores, convenience stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets in conjoint cities of Secunderabad and Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh in India. The findings suggest that shoppers’ age, gender, occupation, education, monthly household income, family size and distance travelled to store have significant association with retail format choice decisions. The choice decisions are also varied among shoppers’ demographic attributes. The findings from shoppers’ psychographic dimensions like values, lifestyle factors and shopping orientations resulted in segmentation of food and grocery retail consumers into hedonic, utilitarian, autonomous, conventional and socialisation type.

Neil Towers