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This study aims to shape the future trajectory of scholarly research on traditional, reputational and societal supply chain risks and their management.

The research uses a narrative literature review of the overview type. To control bias stemming from the subjectivity of the methodology, the authors synthesized the relevant literature transparently and established various safeguarding procedures.

The established research stream on traditional supply chain risk has generated a wealth of concepts that can potentially be transferred to the study of reputational and societal risks. The maturing research stream on reputational risks has mostly focused on risk manifestation, from the upstream perspective of the focal firm. The emerging scholarship on societal supply chain risks has anecdotally highlighted detrimental effects on contextual actors, such as society-at-large.

This study shifts scholarly attention to the role of the context in the risk manifestation process – as a potential risk source for traditional supply chain risk, during the risk materialization for reputational supply chain risk, and as the locus of the risk effect for societal supply chain risk.

This review is unique in that it fosters a holistic understanding of supply chain risk and underscores the increased importance of the context for it. The socioeconomic, institutional and ecological contexts connect the three reviewed research streams. Detailed research agendas for each literature stream are developed, comprising 23 topical areas in total.

The following article is composed of excerpts from a book, just published, which has the self‐explanatory title of “Guide to Retail Data Capture Systems”. This very welcome (and extremely hefty) tome is the most detailed document of its kind to have been produced in the UK. It also claims to be exhaustive, covering all equipment marketed in the UK by 38 different supplier companies, and therefore should prove invaluable to the hard‐pressed businessman. There is a detailed review of available systems, sections on merchandise marking and reading, data communication, information on specialist areas eg fast food systems, systems for small retailers, food systems: laser scanning, systems for clothing and shoes, warehouses, and cash and carry. There is also a review of how data capture systems are being applied by UK retailers and a review of price look‐up systems and an analysis of the impact of recent technological developments on systems design. The appendix, moreover, contains lists of suppliers of POS and related equipment (plus addresses and contact names) and a reading list. The Guide was prepared by Gil Jones and Associates.

Software is now being developed which will allow non‐expert programmers to analyse complex images.

A vision system has been installed on the fully automated framing line at Ford, Southampton to check for incorrect body configurations.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management is split into six sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Business Strategy; Personnel and Training; Marketing and Customer Service; Logistics and Distribution; Financial Management; Information Technology.

The purpose of this paper is to present exploratory examination of the ways in which large retailers in the UK are using corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a means of communicating with customers while they are in the store.

After a literature‐based review of CSR, its relationship to marketing and the rationale for growing retail interest in the topic, an analysis is conducted of CSR reports and information posted on the world wide web by the UK's top ten food retailers, followed by participant observation in their largest branch stores in one medium‐sized English town.

While there were considerable variations in the extent to which the top ten retailers used CSR themes to communicate with customers at the point of sale, the scope was found to be generally limited. The main messages used concerned support for British food producers, Fairtrade, fitness, healthy living, healthy eating, organic produce, sustainability, employment policies, charitable giving, and support for local communities.

Further studies could confirm and extend understanding of the role of in‐store CSR communications in strengthening brand image and engaging customers with wider social and environmental issues to a company's advantage.

Marketing intelligence insights can form the basis for marketing plans and strategies related to CSR, principally in the context of retailing but also beyond it.

An accessible review of how the UK's leading retailers are addressing CSR issues, of potential interest to marketing academics and practitioners working on and in the retail marketplace.

The writer has recently been engaged in a research project addressing the theme of retailing internationalisation. The thrust of the research has been an identification of the extent and geographical orientation of cross‐frontier retailing, and the strategies employed by major retailers to enter and subsequently operate in overseas markets. This paper reviews the recent activities of a number of major retailers, principally from the UK and continental Europe but also from North America, Australia and Scandinavia, to have developed such an international presence. The writer suggests that in considering the location of their overseas interests together with the strategies employed to enter foreign markets, a number of distinct groupings are identifiable. Furthermore, these groupings are, to some extent, indicative of the way in which retailers will pursue their international ambitions in the future. The research presented in this paper was funded by Coopers & Lybrand as part of a joint programme of research into the retail trades being conducted by Coopers & Lybrand and OXIRM.

Based on recent research, an overview of the new impetus which the 1992 programme has added to the internationalisation of European retailers is given. It is suggested that, in the past, much of the international growth in the retail sector has been a direct result of the constraints placed on retailers by a relative absence of opportunities in their domestic markets. During the 1980s a more proactive type of international retailer has emerged, motivated by the presence of growth opportunities outside the domestic market. The removal or easing of apparent barriers facing retailers has been a major driving force; particularly the legislative role of the 1992 programme in the European Community.