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In the context of the European city, the regeneration of former industrial sites is a unique opportunity to actively steer urban development. These plots of land gain strategic importance in actively triggering development on the city scale. Ideally, these interventions radiate beyond the individual site and contribute to the strengthening of the location as a whole. International competition between locations is rising and prosperous development a precondition for wealth and wellbeing. This approach to the regeneration of inner city plots makes high demands on all those involved. Our framework suggests a stronger focus of the conceptualization and analysis of idiosyncratic resources, to enable innovative approaches in planning. On the one hand, we are discussing spatially restrained urban plots, which have the capacity and need to be reset. On the other hand, each plot is a knot in the web of relations on a multiplicity of scales. The material city is nested into a set of interrelated scale levels – the plot, the quarter, the city, the region, potentially even the polycentric megacity region. The immaterial relations however span a multicity of scale levels. The challenge is to combine these two perspectives for their mutual benefit. The underlying processes are constitutive to urban space diversity, as urban form shapes urban life and vice versa.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of consumer shopping travel behaviour with a focus on its environmental effects. In particular, the paper aims to contribute a deeper understanding of the drivers of consumer travel behaviour and their interrelations.

Based on a literature review, relevant influencing factors of shopping travel behaviour are identified and a theoretical model is deducted. Qualitative interviews were conducted to analyse the model, with interviewees chosen from five life cycles and three residential areas.

The influencing factors of shopping travel behaviour differ among life cycles. There are two main aspects hindering environmentally friendly behaviour: the perceived necessity of mobility during the various life cycles (by which parents are particularly affected) and the negative evaluation of public transport in terms of flexibility and comfort. The life cycles are linked with a shopper typology, characterizing shopper types by shopping trip planning and the needs the transport modes should address.

The theoretical framework and the shopper typology can serve as a basis for future research.

Retailers, transport service providers and policy makers should encourage environmentally friendly travel behaviour (e.g. delivery services offered by retailers would make public transport use more comfortable).

While previous studies have analysed single influencing factors of shopping travel behaviour, we provide a comprehensive theoretical framework, synthesising several influencing factors. A qualitative study based on the model derived analyses interrelations among these factors.

This paper aims to analyse past and current sustainability considerations and developments in scientific research and practice with a focus on the role of retailers in supply chains.

A summative content analysis is used to identify major research areas and industrial branches in the sustainability literature relevant to retail supply chains, and sustainability considerations in retail practice.

Sustainability‐related issues have been discussed for many years and the term sustainability has received increased attention in research since the mid‐1990s. In retail research, there seems to be a time lag of more than ten years in using the term sustainability compared to other fields in research and industry. However, some of these other research fields and industries have an impact on retail supply chains. At the same time, it seems that sustainability has received more attention in retail management practice compared to research applications.

Future retail research should try to integrate the findings from related research areas and industry sectors, and emerging issues in practice magazines.

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of past and current sustainability research in retailing and sustainability relevance in retail practice. The paper considers the specific role of retailers in supply chains through a broad analysis of sustainability considerations in different research areas and industries relevant to retail supply chains.

Eliminating overpackaging is a central question in sustainable development, and poses a dilemma for retailers. Since packaging is a differentiation tool for private labels, eliminating it could limit the capacity to give those labels an equivalent image to national brands just as much as it could be a sustainable development opportunity and a positioning instrument. Drawing on the attribution theory framework, the purpose of this paper is to examine how eliminating overpackaging influences consumers’ perception of products sold under generic and mimic private labels, and their purchase intention.

This research uses a 2 (overpackaging: present vs absent)×2 (brand concept: generic vs mimic private label) between-subjects experiment on a convenience sample of 217 French consumers. The conceptual framework was tested using ANCOVA and mediation analyses.

The experiment shows that eliminating overpackaging does have an influence on mimic private labels’ image, particularly on perceived quality, convenience and environmental friendliness. The authors also find that this influence negatively transfers to purchase intention for mimic private labels through lower perceived quality and convenience. No such effect appears for generic private labels’ image.

This study addresses an issue as yet unexplored in marketing – the effect of overpackaging on private label products – and proposes areas for managerial and societal reflection relevant to retail chains interested in eliminating overpackaging.

Retailers are facing pressure to promote sustainable consumption. Building on literature about the role of retailers as “translators” of the sustainability discourse, this paper studies how retailers cope with this pressure. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This study focuses on the Swedish retail sector. In 22 interviews with retail representatives and 13 store observations it explores the way food retailers approach sustainable consumption, particularly focusing on the role retail stores receive in operationalising sustainable consumption.

The retail store is identified as important organisational layer within retailers to operationalise sustainable consumption. However, retailers do not acknowledge this potential sufficiently. An idealised model of multi-layered sensemaking to successfully promote sustainable consumption is presented.

The study results only cover a small part of the entire retail organisation and only provide a snapshot in time of their working. Future research should study how the internal process of translating sustainability to the market develops over time and how it is connected to different parts of the retail organisation (e.g. marketing, HR). More research is also necessary to specify the division of responsibilities between headquarters (HQs) and stores.

This paper proposes a divide of responsibilities between HQs and the individual store to better deal with societal pressures and market demand.

The results of this study add depth to the theoretical notions of “translation” and “sensemaking” in retailers’ efforts to promote sustainable consumption. A model for how this process works is provided.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of distributing sustainable labels on the retailer’s corporate brand. More specifically, the objectives are to investigate how the scope of a portfolio of sustainable labels affects the consumer perceived ethicality (CPE) of the retailer that distributes them and to understand how the perceived ethicality affects retail patronage.

In total, 230 individuals participated in a street intercept survey. Data were analysed with partial least squares structural equation modelling.

Both the perceived scope of the portfolios of collective sustainable labels and retailer-owned sustainable labels improve the CPE of the retailer. In addition, the CPE of the retailer increases patronage. The portfolio of collective sustainable labels has more impact on the CPE of the retailer than the portfolio of retailer-owned labels, but the latter has more impact on retail patronage.

In addition to limitations inherent to the methodology (e.g. survey based on stated behaviours), the model developed is simple and exploratory and does not include potential boundary conditions of the highlighted effects.

Sustainable labels may not only contribute to product sales and product positioning, but also to position the retailer brand by improving the consumer perception of ethicality and indirectly increase retail patronage.

Anchored in the branding literature, this research is the first to conceptualize sustainable labels as a portfolio and measure their collective impact on the retailer’s corporate brand and indirectly on patronage.

The purpose of this paper is to examine and explain what organizes the marketing of retail sustainability.

Theoretically, this paper takes a marketing-as-practice approach and makes use of practice theory to conceptualize the marketing of sustainability. Methodologically, an ethnographic study of three Swedish retail chains and their marketing work has been conducted. Interviews with management, observations made at the stores of these three retailers and various marketing texts and images produced by these retailers form the material analysed.

This paper illustrates three different ways of marketing and enacting sustainability. It shows that sustainability is framed differently and, indeed, enacted differently in order to fit various ideas about who are the responsible consumers. The argument is that rather than consumer demand, supply pressure or media scandals, the marketing of sustainability is in each of the cases studied configured around a specific notion of the responsible consumer. What sustainability work is marketed, through which devices it is marketed, and how it is framed is guided by an idea of whom the retailers’ responsible consumers are, what their lifestyles are, and what they will be interested in. Images of responsible consumers work as configuring agents around which retailing activities and devices are organized.

The paper provides an in-depth analysis of the marketing of sustainability and offers a new explanation about what it is that influences the various approach to sustainable marketing taken by retailers.

The purpose of this paper is, first, to examine environmental, economic and social sustainability. Second, to build upon Jones et al.’s (2011) preliminary investigations into the sustainability agendas of the world’s top ten retailers through an examination of Marks and Spencer’s (M&S) Plan A sustainability strategy. Third, to complement this with a case study examination of its first eco-learning store.

A case study of M&S’s first eco-store using a consideration of the published literature and interviews with members of staff.

Retailers exert a significant influence on sustainability issues due to their position in the supply chain between producers and customers. It is argued that M&S’s Plan A environmental strategy demonstrates evidence of an economically successful “strong model of sustainability” compared with the world’s top ten retailers. In total, 15 factors emerged which may provide a checklist for organisations undertaking and managing their own sustainability change programmes.

The research examined only public material produced by M&S and was not privy to internal documentation. Also, due to the traditional limitations of the case study approach findings about the first eco-store may not have transferability to other situations.

Environmental strategies can produce positive financial and social benefits. The grounded approaches used by M&S’s Plan A and first eco-store provide many illustrations of the possible future directions of retailing. Whole life accounting overcomes some of the limitations of annual accounting methods.

The triple bottom line and whole life accounting at M&S have been little discussed. The prototype eco-learning store in Sheffield provides practical insights into a holistic strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of eco-designed packaging on consumers’ responses. It defines the concept of eco-designed packaging, and proposes a consumer-led taxonomy of its cues. Attitudinal and behavioral, positive and negative responses triggered by the perception of these signals are analyzed.

Results were reached through qualitative methods. A phenomenological approach consisting of eight in-depth interviews has been followed by a series of ten Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) interviews. The synergy of these two methods is underlined.

The complexity of packaging ecological cues perception is outlined by expressing the differences in the nature of these cues. A taxonomy is then presented; ecological cues fall into three categories: structural cues, graphical/iconic cues and informational cues. Finally, consumers’ responses to the perception of eco-designed packaging are presented and perceived benefits and perceived sacrifices are revealed.

Packaging is of great importance in consumers’ purchase decision process, especially in situations of temporal pressure and hyperchoice environments. Since consumers take more and more into account the ethicality of the brand in their consumption, the understanding of their attitudes and behaviors toward eco-designed packaging may enable brands to build a competitive advantage.

The literature review reveals that there is no similar research available. The use of two qualitative methods enables to understand consumers’ deep-seated motivations, attitudes and behaviors toward eco-designed packaging. The results of this study can also be used by advertisers, for social marketing campaigns, to encourage consumers to reduce the global ecological footprint of packaging.