Editorial

Citation

Towers, N. (2010), "Editorial", International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Vol. 38 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijrdm.2010.08938daa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Volume 38, Issue 4

This edition contains four very different papers, each very topical from three different international regions of the world. They include the diferent perspectives of management philosophy, retail format in the USA, shopper trust in India and patronage intentions and ethics and social responsibility in Australian grocery retailing.

The first contribution by Mark Palmer, Geoff Simmons and Ronan de Kervenoael examines students’ perceptions of managerial mistakes and why (and why not) managers admit mistakes. Their study provides a reflective account of how students’ perceive management mistakes and deal with admitting “mea culpa” – “I am to blame”. The findings show a range of attitudes that highlight the intermingling pressures associated with the cultural environment and mistakes; that identify media characteristics and its influences on mistakes and mea culpa; that highlight ceremonial processes and tasks that shape and influence the declaration of mea culpa; and that identify how the psychology and sociology of mistakes confronts and affects students. Taken together, the study highlights the varying degrees of wariness that is carried forward by the students from vicariously learning about management mistakes. The theoretical contribution of this paper rests in several areas. First, broadening the conceptual space of mistake making is important because it helps to explain why mistakes happen, and why (and why not) managers admit mea culpa – “I am to blame”. Second, the study broadens the boundaries of and adds nuances to theory because it details students’ accounts of management dialogue around critical mistake-making instances or controversies, and the various ways in which management react and cope with these incidents. The student accounts therefore help to extend the three streams of literature and simulate a range of research topics for mistake studies. In doing so, it offers potential avenues for progressive theoretical and empirical possibilities, for example, in long-drawn-out retail planning controversies, male-dominated corporate retail board environments, retail management apologies and retail corporate rituals. Third, the study provides insights into the perceptions of students and their (in)ability to recognise the conditions of mistake making as well as the ways to cope with this business inevitability.

The second paper, from Jason M. Carpenter and Vikranth Balija provides a general understanding of retail format choice among consumer electronics shoppers in the US market. US consumer electronics shoppers (n=252) were surveyed via telephone and adopted a quantitative research methodology using Linear regression to evaluate the data. The findings identifies a number of profiles for shopper groups who frequent specific retail formats (department stores, specialty stores, discounters, category killers, internet-only retailers and catalogues) based on demographic characteristics (gender, age, education and income) and desired retail attributes (price competitiveness, customer service, product selection, presence of new products, hours of operation, ease of access to the retailer and store atmosphere). This research provides consumer electronics retailers with specific knowledge of the attributes that consumers consider to be important when making format choices and identifies the demographic characteristics of shoppers who frequent each retail format. Further, the fact that their findings do not consistently agree with findings reported in other product contexts suggests that predictors of format choice may be context dependent.

The third contribution, from Subhashini Kaul, Arvind Sahay and Abraham Koshy, examines the role of “initial” store image in a new store with a study of young male apparel shoppers in India. Their study operationalizes “trust-image” of a new store as an antecedent to shopper trust, uses a multidimensional conceptualization for “trust-image” which is similar to the existing tripartite view of “trustworthiness” and examines the effect of store visit on perceived salience of trust image. The findings highlight the significance of trust-image in influencing shopper trust and patronage intentions of a new store suggesting store “dependability” is not really significant for Indian apparel retail consumers at initial stages of store visits. However, the study results offer limited insights for say book stores or grocery stores (since most unmarried Indian males would teleorder grocery from the local unorganized kirana). Even for large apparel stores, the respondent age group (20-28) is rather distinct from older male shoppers (SEC “A” married men often shop for apparel with their family and wives usually influence selection of clothing as well as choice of store).

The fourth paper, from Jasmine Williams, Juliet Memery, Philip Megicks and Mark Morrison explores the importance of ethical and socially responsible (ESR) factors in Australian consumers’ choices of grocery products and stores. Their study utilised factor analysis of an initial qualitative investigation and then a survey of grocery shoppers in New South Wales, Australia. It found that when “top-up” shopping, ESR consumers are less discriminating than when “main” shopping. The provision of ethically farmed produce has most influence on store choice when “main” shopping, while retailers’ fair trading and environmentally responsible policies have the greatest influence when “topping-up”. The ethical provenance of goods is the most important factor in product choice. The practical implications suggest that the two large Australian retail grocers may benefit by developing roles as “choice editors” on behalf of their ESR customers, whilst smaller retailers may gain advantage by concentrating on community-based, environmentally friendly and fair trading policies. Manufacturers of grocery products may benefit by emphasizing their products’ ESR provenance and their organizations’ ethical policies.

Neil Towers