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The purpose of this study is to explore the role played by digital channel integration in the town-centre shopping experience. It also explores how customers perceive the role of digital in the town-centres shopping journeys, improves shopping experiences and encourages positive future patronage behaviour. Ultimately, the aim is to identify the likely implications of a connected shopping experience on patronage intentions.

A qualitative research design using focus groups to explore customers' perceptions of connected town-centre shopping experiences was deployed. Then, data were analysed using thematic analysis to identify overarching themes.

Digital integration has the potential to serve discreetly different functions in the town-centre context: create interconnected information channels, facilitate improved connected shopping experiences, generate positive perceptions of a town, which subsequently shape future patronage intentions. The study also revealed expectations of digital integration are yet to be fully realised in the town-centre context and there are tensions between physical and digital domains to be overcome if digital integration is to positively influence patronage intentions.

The nature of exploratory research tends to pose questions and open out a problem rather than provide definitive answers. This study has sought to highlight key issues and also provide points of departure for future studies. The significance and generalisability of the results are limited by the size and nature of the sample.

This study provides theoretical contribution to the town-centre literature by expanding the understanding of consumers' perceptions of the role of digital integration in shopping journey experiences and unlocks insights into its potential impact on future patronage intentions. Practical considerations for integrating digital in the town centre to create more connected shopping experiences.

Fashion retail has faced immense changes in the rapid development of e-commerce, creating significant uncertainty about physical stores’ future. To improve the consumer shopping experience and increase sales revenue for fashion retailers, this paper investigates how Augmented Reality (AR) can be implemented within high-street fashion retail by exploring leading UK retailers’ reactions to pragmatic future scenarios.

This study conducted qualitative research through 13 interviews – eight retail staff from high-street and high-end markets and five AR/UX designers regarding their insights into how AR can enhance consumer engagement at each market level.

The results showed that the fashion retail market is ill-prepared to use AR. AR could help high-street brands offer a seamless shopping experience for consumers by prioritising the functional purpose but exciting AR animation. This would offer consumers an efficient and enjoyable shopping experience. While implementing AR, high-end stores should tell stories through hedonic engagement, letting consumers efficiently engage with brand messages, since building an AR ecosystem is cheaper than creating the story flow physically.

The study devises 16 retailer-supported guidelines for designing AR for Fashion Retail levels to guide innovators and retailers.

Despite the availability of retail management graduates, retailers continue to recruit graduates from any discipline. A key issue, therefore, is to what extent are retail degrees developing the competences of prime importance to retailers? Conversely, considering retailer graduate recruitment objectives, how well do students understand retailers’ priorities amongst competences in graduate selection? As a relatively recent management profession, do the retail competences differ from other more established management disciplines such as finance? This paper examines these issues through the results of a survey of employer and undergraduate perceptions of competence development in undergraduate degrees. Findings suggest that retail degrees provided a high level of perceived competence development. However, the strongest focus was not necessarily on those competences the retailers most wished to see in applicants. Furthermore, the competence profile of placement work was no closer to the retailers’ selection priorities than that of academic work. The paper concludes with a discussion of the main implications for retailers and retail management degrees.

High-street fashion retail faces an uncertain future because of fluctuating consumer shopping habits. To revive fashion retailers, adopting disruptive technologies such as virtual reality (VR) becomes important to offer highly valued consumer experiences. Yet v-commerce designers still lack sufficient guidance to create effective retail environments. This paper establishes the v-commerce experience that targets fashion consumers’ desire and presents 13 specific design guidelines.

In this study, 22 participants, 20 consumers and two VR developers were interviewed regarding attitudes towards VR, motivation to shop through v-commerce and the moderating variables that influence virtual environment perceptions.

Consumers expect a vivid shopping environment with authentic product features instead of the more common simulated environment. Hedonically motivated consumers are more open to v-commerce than utilitarian consumers and consumers aged 18–34 years regard interactivity, personalisation and social networking as critical to offer a cost-efficient shopping experience.

This paper explored the ways v-commerce delivers creative experiences to facilitate consumer purchase behaviour, contributing to the high street's regeneration. Yet consumers have too high expectations of lifelike interaction in v-commerce, which is beyond contemporary VR's capabilities. Future research should focus on developing authenticity of v-commerce environments, i.e. vivid interaction with product and people.

This paper establishes the fundamental design rules for v-commerce platforms, enabling designers to create effective retail environments, sympathetic to the consumer's cognitive desires.

In contrast to outer apparel, academic research has neglected consumer behaviour for intimate apparel or lingerie. It is argued that within this category the bra deserves singular research attention. This paper presents the results of exploratory research designed to explore in depth the bra consumer decision process. The key findings indicate a highly involved consumer who is motivated by a complex range of interlinked factors, and a consumer who desires to be brand loyal in order to enjoy a less extensive decision process, but who is prevented from doing so by high levels of perceived risk and “obstructive” marketing. The authors offer directions for future empirical research based on the consumer behavioural constructs of involvement, perceived risk and the self‐concept. Implications for marketing management are also discussed.

Refers to the tendency in UK supermarkets for diversification into non‐food areas which has emphasized the need to improve how and where the products are presented to the customers. Service diversifications, such as dry cleaners or opticians, have traditionally been situated as separate “shops” behind the checkouts. Contrastingly, product range diversifications such as stationery, entertainment and clothing have tended to be incorporated into the main shopping aisles. Attempts to identify whether consumers would prefer these non‐food ranges to be differently merchandised, and more specifically, whether consumer preferences are different between retailers? Asks what alternative display formats may be used and which specific ranges are considered appropriate for these formats. Using six different retail multiples, examines the perceptions and preferences of 500 shoppers from the results of an attitude survey carried out in two UK cities. Finally, provides recommendations for retail management.

This paper seeks to identify the skills gaps associated with retail employees in SME and multiple retail companies, and to investigate the potential training and business implications that arise from these skills gaps, from the point of view of retail employers.

Research was conducted within one geographical region and across five counties within the UK. Telephone and face‐to‐face interviews and focus group workshops were conducted, resulting in responses from 52 retailers.

The key issues and areas of concern to emerge were: the industry image and impact on recruitment and retention; employee and management skills gaps; and barriers to training.

The findings highlight the need for UK retail industry to raise the image of the sector, to identify the skills sets for specific roles, and to clarify the retail qualifications and training required delivering these.

Succeeds in identifying the skills gaps associated with retail employees in SME and multiple retail companies and in investigating the potential training and business implications arising from these skills gaps.

To date, most of the commentary on the impact of the Internet on retail marketing has been anecdotal, offering exaggerated speculative forecasts of its future potential. One view contends that the Internet will become a major new retail format, replacing the traditional dominance of fixed location stores. However, little academic research exists to either disprove or support the claims of Internet penetration by retailers. Seeks to redress the balance by presenting a comprehensive and rigorous review of UK retailer Internet activities. A sampling frame of 1,099 UK retail multiples was used, and each Web site individually inspected to categorise the range of marketing functions and services offered. The findings indicated that, despite the hype, the majority of retail organisations surveyed have not yet registered a Web site address. Moreover, of those retail organisations that have developed a Web site, the vast majority are using it primarily as a communication tool to promote corporate or product information to Internet users, rather than to support direct sales. In conclusion, summarises the implications of these current levels of Internet activity for the future of retail marketing.

The Producer Responsibility Regulations incorporated the EU Packaging Waste Directive into UK law in March 1997. The UK legislation adopted the concept of the “polluter pays” by sharing the responsibility for waste packaging recovery across the whole supply chain. However, the retailer as the last member of the supply chain assumed the greater share of 47 per cent of waste recovery targets. The operational and resource implications for individual company obligations were compounded by the introduction of a complex waste collection scheme involving third‐party waste recovery operators trading packaging recovery notes (PRNs). The UK approach has been criticised as “bureaucratic, ill‐conceived and confusing”, requiring companies to provide data on all primary, secondary and transit packaging they have generated, recovered and recycled over the previous year. While many retailers were unprepared for the complexities it created, others view the legislation as an opportunity to reduce waste, optimise their packaging supply chain and reduce costs. This paper will examine and compare the impact of the new regulations on various food retailers. Findings are discussed from a series of in‐depth interviews with a number of senior managers involved in implementing the legislation. In particular it discusses the initiatives carried out to comply with the regulations, the impact on existing logistics networks and the investment required to implement the regulations.

As a supply chain management initiative, category management has to date been the almost exclusive preserve of the grocery sector and, within that sector, limited to food categories. This paper proposes that the fashion industry might usefully follow the grocery industry's lead and implement category management. A comprehensive review of the literature on category management highlights the opportunity for fashion marketing to consider the potential of category management, and the specific research gaps. In operationalising the subsequent research objectives, the paper reports the results of exploratory, in‐depth consumer research for a particular category of intimate apparel. The managerial implications of these findings are then discussed in the context of the established eight‐step category management process. The overall tentative conclusion of this study is that as a consumer‐oriented joint planning tool, category management offers retailer‐supplier partnerships in the fashion industry an important adjunct to the industry's quick response methods. The paper closes with an agenda for future research.