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Retailing evolution research: Introduction to the special section on retailing research
Journal of Business Research 64 (2011) 541–542
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Business Research
Retailing evolution research: Introduction to the special section on retailing research David J. Ortinau a,⁎, Barry J. Babin b, Jean-Charles Chebat c a b c
Department of Marketing, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33620, United States Marketing Department, Louisiana Tech University, Ruston, LA 71272, United States Marketing Department, HEC-Montreal, Montreal, QC Canada
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Available online 16 July 2010
a b s t r a c t This JBR Special Issue on Retailing includes several high quality research studies presented at the 10th and 11th Society for Marketing Advances Retail Strategy and Patronage Behavior Symposiums. The articles cover a wide range of interesting and important retailing topics including topics such as atmospherics, self-esteem and advertising. This introduction offers a few comments on the 2007 and 2008 Symposiums' content including a brief overview of each article. © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
The Society for Marketing Advances (SMA) hosts an annual Symposium specifically focusing on the latest in basic retailing research. In 2007, the Tenth SMA Retail Strategy and Patronage Behavior Symposium took place in San Antonio, Texas. In 2008, the Eleventh Symposium took place in St. Petersburg, FL. As usual, the Symposiums attracted scholars from practically every corner of the world and covered a variety of relevant and important research topics within the retailing domain. The section editors invited some authors presenting papers at these events to submit their papers for further review following the conference. This issue includes the articles that moved successfully through this rigorous process. The Symposium co-chairs extend a sincere thanks to all who participated by submitting a paper, making a presentation, attending the sessions or by reviewing papers. Special thanks go to those who reviewed manuscripts at various stages in this process. The reviewers' conscientiousness and constructiveness helped make the program a success. Our thanks to all these individuals, including Thomas Baker (Clemson University), Sharon Beatty (University of Alabama), Jim Boles (Georgia State University), Adilson Borges (Reims Management School), Laurent Bourdeau (Laval University), Karin Braunsberger (University of South Florida), Rusty Brooks (University of Georgia), Charles Futrell (Texas A&M University), Christine Gonzalez (Nantes University), Yany Gregoire (Washington State University), Mitch Griffin (Bradley University), Eric Harris (Pittsburg State University), Gopal Iyer (Florida Atlantic University), James Kellaris (University of Cincinnati), Michel Laroche (Concordia University), Richard Michon (Ryerson University), Maureen Morrin (Rutgers School of Business— Camden), Sylvain Sénécal (HEC Montreal), Ikuo Takahashi (Keio University) and Arch Woodside (Boston College). Authors for three of these articles originally presented the research at the 2007 SMA Retail Symposium. Discussed at the conference were nine other research papers. Authors for the other four articles originally presented this research at the 2008 Symposium along with nine other articles making up the program. The brief summaries 0148-2963/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2010.06.004
below highlight and suggest the wide range of interesting and insightful topics covered in these articles and illustrated by papers presented at the Symposiums. Magnini and Karande's study brings together the services literature with the channels literature. In this article, they focus on the how buyers utilize three communication channels (Internet-third party site, Internet-proprietary site and telephone). The authors report significant differences between service consumers in terms of external search, brand loyalty, and perceived risk based on the medium used to obtain information. The findings are reminiscent of what McLuhan said in the 1960s; the medium is the message and therefore the communication channel chosen by consumers says a lot about them. The empirical findings suggest that service consumers relying on the Internet enter the consumption setting with more information than do consumers relying on other media. Kaltcheva, Patino and Chebat analyze the effects of extraordinary retail environments on shoppers. Their article explores the idea that extraordinary retail environments activate atypical self-relevant attributes in the shoppers' self-concept. Overall, the results suggest that extraordinary retail environments, those characterized by an unusual set of environmental characteristics, can enhance a consumer's self-concept. Morrison, Gan, Dubelaar and Oppewal offer an unusual and relevant study on store atmospherics for at least two main reasons. First, they focus on the interactive effects of two environmental dimensions: background music and ambient scents. They argue that these interactions are still under-researched. Second, their experiment took place in a real store with real customers, which significantly enhances the ecological validity of their findings. Some of the empirical results suggest that the arousal induced by music and aroma results in increased pleasure levels, which in turn positively influence shopper behaviors, including time and money spent, approach behavior, and satisfaction with the shopping experience. Breazeale and Lueg provide much needed research describing the American teen consumer market. They apply psychographics to the
542
study of this demographic to identify actionable market segments. Descriptive segment labels provide insight into the characteristics of each segment. In particular, American teens fit into one of three important market segments: Social Butterflies, Confident Techies and Self-Contained Shoppers. This research reminds us of the efficacy of psychographic approaches and human lifestyles in understanding the keys to value creation. Ellinger et al. present scale development research aimed at theoretically defining and empirically validating an important strategic concept. A 7-item scale captures retail employees' Organizational Investments in Social Capital (OISC). The construct shows predictive validity with key retail and service employee attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. Retailing research increasingly focuses on the emotions involved in the shopping experience. However, less research addresses the anticipation of emotions. Harrison and Beatty take this interesting perspective in studying risk reduction strategies of retail consumers. Readers with a particular interest in social risk will be interested in this work and in particular, the key role played by anticipation of worry. Finally yet importantly, Fortenberry and McGoldrick provide empirical results describing how consumers are affected by targeted
billboard advertising. In particular, the work contrasts reactions of white consumers with those of black consumers. The results suggest that black consumers are more receptive to the information provided on billboards in terms of awareness, information conveyance and influence. Given the study context, these results speak to the ability of retailers to reach important markets. The results also speak toward ways of effectively delivering important service announcements. We encourage you to read these relevant and interesting retailing articles and hope you find them as enjoying and meaningful in spawning new research ideas as did those scholars in attendance of the SMA Retailing Symposiums. In particular, they highlight the dynamic nature of retailing research and the ability to blend traditional and new research approaches and contexts. Researchers should continue to address new topics including social networking and e-messaging as they are changing the way consumers communicate, but retailing researchers should continue to revisit research topics traditional to retailing including store location, merchandising and point of sale promotion. In this way, new developments can be better tied to existing knowledge and contribute to the development of general retail theory.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Business Research
Retailing evolution research: Introduction to the special section on retailing research David J. Ortinau a,⁎, Barry J. Babin b, Jean-Charles Chebat c a b c
Department of Marketing, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33620, United States Marketing Department, Louisiana Tech University, Ruston, LA 71272, United States Marketing Department, HEC-Montreal, Montreal, QC Canada
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Available online 16 July 2010
a b s t r a c t This JBR Special Issue on Retailing includes several high quality research studies presented at the 10th and 11th Society for Marketing Advances Retail Strategy and Patronage Behavior Symposiums. The articles cover a wide range of interesting and important retailing topics including topics such as atmospherics, self-esteem and advertising. This introduction offers a few comments on the 2007 and 2008 Symposiums' content including a brief overview of each article. © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
The Society for Marketing Advances (SMA) hosts an annual Symposium specifically focusing on the latest in basic retailing research. In 2007, the Tenth SMA Retail Strategy and Patronage Behavior Symposium took place in San Antonio, Texas. In 2008, the Eleventh Symposium took place in St. Petersburg, FL. As usual, the Symposiums attracted scholars from practically every corner of the world and covered a variety of relevant and important research topics within the retailing domain. The section editors invited some authors presenting papers at these events to submit their papers for further review following the conference. This issue includes the articles that moved successfully through this rigorous process. The Symposium co-chairs extend a sincere thanks to all who participated by submitting a paper, making a presentation, attending the sessions or by reviewing papers. Special thanks go to those who reviewed manuscripts at various stages in this process. The reviewers' conscientiousness and constructiveness helped make the program a success. Our thanks to all these individuals, including Thomas Baker (Clemson University), Sharon Beatty (University of Alabama), Jim Boles (Georgia State University), Adilson Borges (Reims Management School), Laurent Bourdeau (Laval University), Karin Braunsberger (University of South Florida), Rusty Brooks (University of Georgia), Charles Futrell (Texas A&M University), Christine Gonzalez (Nantes University), Yany Gregoire (Washington State University), Mitch Griffin (Bradley University), Eric Harris (Pittsburg State University), Gopal Iyer (Florida Atlantic University), James Kellaris (University of Cincinnati), Michel Laroche (Concordia University), Richard Michon (Ryerson University), Maureen Morrin (Rutgers School of Business— Camden), Sylvain Sénécal (HEC Montreal), Ikuo Takahashi (Keio University) and Arch Woodside (Boston College). Authors for three of these articles originally presented the research at the 2007 SMA Retail Symposium. Discussed at the conference were nine other research papers. Authors for the other four articles originally presented this research at the 2008 Symposium along with nine other articles making up the program. The brief summaries 0148-2963/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2010.06.004
below highlight and suggest the wide range of interesting and insightful topics covered in these articles and illustrated by papers presented at the Symposiums. Magnini and Karande's study brings together the services literature with the channels literature. In this article, they focus on the how buyers utilize three communication channels (Internet-third party site, Internet-proprietary site and telephone). The authors report significant differences between service consumers in terms of external search, brand loyalty, and perceived risk based on the medium used to obtain information. The findings are reminiscent of what McLuhan said in the 1960s; the medium is the message and therefore the communication channel chosen by consumers says a lot about them. The empirical findings suggest that service consumers relying on the Internet enter the consumption setting with more information than do consumers relying on other media. Kaltcheva, Patino and Chebat analyze the effects of extraordinary retail environments on shoppers. Their article explores the idea that extraordinary retail environments activate atypical self-relevant attributes in the shoppers' self-concept. Overall, the results suggest that extraordinary retail environments, those characterized by an unusual set of environmental characteristics, can enhance a consumer's self-concept. Morrison, Gan, Dubelaar and Oppewal offer an unusual and relevant study on store atmospherics for at least two main reasons. First, they focus on the interactive effects of two environmental dimensions: background music and ambient scents. They argue that these interactions are still under-researched. Second, their experiment took place in a real store with real customers, which significantly enhances the ecological validity of their findings. Some of the empirical results suggest that the arousal induced by music and aroma results in increased pleasure levels, which in turn positively influence shopper behaviors, including time and money spent, approach behavior, and satisfaction with the shopping experience. Breazeale and Lueg provide much needed research describing the American teen consumer market. They apply psychographics to the
542
study of this demographic to identify actionable market segments. Descriptive segment labels provide insight into the characteristics of each segment. In particular, American teens fit into one of three important market segments: Social Butterflies, Confident Techies and Self-Contained Shoppers. This research reminds us of the efficacy of psychographic approaches and human lifestyles in understanding the keys to value creation. Ellinger et al. present scale development research aimed at theoretically defining and empirically validating an important strategic concept. A 7-item scale captures retail employees' Organizational Investments in Social Capital (OISC). The construct shows predictive validity with key retail and service employee attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. Retailing research increasingly focuses on the emotions involved in the shopping experience. However, less research addresses the anticipation of emotions. Harrison and Beatty take this interesting perspective in studying risk reduction strategies of retail consumers. Readers with a particular interest in social risk will be interested in this work and in particular, the key role played by anticipation of worry. Finally yet importantly, Fortenberry and McGoldrick provide empirical results describing how consumers are affected by targeted
billboard advertising. In particular, the work contrasts reactions of white consumers with those of black consumers. The results suggest that black consumers are more receptive to the information provided on billboards in terms of awareness, information conveyance and influence. Given the study context, these results speak to the ability of retailers to reach important markets. The results also speak toward ways of effectively delivering important service announcements. We encourage you to read these relevant and interesting retailing articles and hope you find them as enjoying and meaningful in spawning new research ideas as did those scholars in attendance of the SMA Retailing Symposiums. In particular, they highlight the dynamic nature of retailing research and the ability to blend traditional and new research approaches and contexts. Researchers should continue to address new topics including social networking and e-messaging as they are changing the way consumers communicate, but retailing researchers should continue to revisit research topics traditional to retailing including store location, merchandising and point of sale promotion. In this way, new developments can be better tied to existing knowledge and contribute to the development of general retail theory.