Editorial

Citation

Fernie, J. (2008), "Editorial", International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Vol. 36 No. 11. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijrdm.2008.08936kaa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Volume 36, Issue 11

Our first two papers in this issue deal with operational efficiencies of retailing in UK and Spanish markets. Wantao Yu and Ramakrishan Ramanathan use a variety of techniques, including DEA, to calculate the operational efficiencies of 41 retail companies in the UK from 2000 to 2005. Results show that the average efficiency of UK companies over this time was less than 75 per cent with Netto showing the greatest improvement in productivity and IKEA suffering the poorest improvement. Carlos Barros and Ricardo Sellers-Rubio apply a random stochastic frontier model to evaluate the cost efficiency of the Spanish grocery retailing sector. The final sample comprised of 78 supermarket chains, representing 65 per cent of supermarket sales with data from 2001 to 2004. The results show that there are high levels of cost inefficiency in the sector with the larger retailers exhibiting the greatest efficiencies.

Yan Lu and Yoo-Kyoung Seock then discuss grey consumers’ (those over 50 years old) perception of service quality at their favourite department store in SE USA. From a convenience sample of 232, drawn from local community organisations, the researchers found that personal interaction, i.e. director customer service from employees was the key service quality factor for this growing segment of the population. Store image was the most important dimension for repeat purchases.

The penultimate paper by Liu, He, Gao and Xie explores the factors which influence customers’ satisfaction on online shopping in the developing Chinese retail market. Using a variety of research methods – field surveys in large cities in China and a web-based survey, 1018 responses were collected. The results show that eight constructs – information quality, website design, merchandise attributes, transaction capacity, security/privacy, delivery, payment and customer service – are strongly predictive of online shopping customer satisfaction, while the effect of response time is not significant. Our final paper by Veronika Tarnovskaya, Ulf Elg and Steve Burt examines the relationship between corporate branding and market driving. A case study approach was used and IKEA was the subject of the research and its practices in the Russian market. The results show how the core values of the brand were utilised to communicate to both internal and external stakeholders.

John Fernie