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Project Team

• Dr Steve Wood

• Professor Michelle Lowe

• Dr Richard Adams

• Professor Andy Neely

Indicative Management Priorities

From research to date, the following nine themes have emerged as management priorities among managers in the UK retail sector. If you wish to comment, please contact Richard Adams, or click on the link following the descriptive paragraphs below.

1. The art of selling and service: implications for staff training
2. The changing customer base: understanding and implications
3. Retail sales productivity and innovation
4. Internationalization: international comparisons and market entry and development
5. E-tailing: business models, the consumer and sustainability
6. Retail planning issues and the effect of development on local economies
7. Balancing environmental/ethical concerns with retail performance
8. Understanding the Global Supply Chain: control, development and wider effects
9. Improving the academic/retail link

1. The Art of Selling and Service: Implications for Staff Training

Interviewees reported the importance of a deeper understanding of the idea of the service experience, and - more practically - any implications that there are for staff training:

• How can assisted selling be achievable while keeping costs down?

• What are implications for training staff?

• How does this dovetail with constructing a store experience?

2. The Changing Customer Base: Understanding and Implications

With increasing heterogeneity in the customer base, this is a key and wide ranging area of concern that crosses all retail sectors:

• How can we really get to know the customer and their needs, wants and demands?

• How can the customer market be broken down for better understanding and identification of market potential and growing (and contracting) areas of demand?

• Which are the important characteristics to distinguish between customers - demographic variables, geographic, cultural...?

• What is the size and nature of the informal economy and what are the practical implications of this?

• What are the implications of large scale changes to disposable consumer income (e.g. mortgage equity withdrawal)?

• What drives customer loyalty and to what extent can retail brands be leveraged into new product areas? What is the relationship with consumers' decision-making processes?

• What is the extent of external market influences on the way consumer behave: what are the effects of taxation on customer use of selected products (e.g. cigarettes, alcohol, potentially unhealthy foods) and how is this related to broader social concerns?

• To what extent are these influenced by price, educational, cultural or psychological factors? For example, do alcohol promotions cause under-age binge drinking?

• As consumers' lives change (e.g. ‘the time-poor' consumer), what factors are driving subtle shifts in the consumption process? How can retailers react to this?

3. Retail Sales Productivity and Innovation

The theme of innovation has been a central concern of respondents

• How does the UK retail sector, and sub-sectors, measure-up against international competitors? What are the implications of these international comparisons for retailers and competition policy?

• What drives productivity? - capital expenditure, information technology; economies of scale, global supply chain, replacement of old distribution centres, bigger stores (and implicit implications for retail planning?), stock rotation etc.?

• How do sales productivity and floor space growth relate? Do they relate the same way internationally?

• How can innovation improve the in-store shopping experience and also reduce costs?

4. Internationalisation - International Comparisons and Market Entry and Development

It is strongly felt that further academic work on this broad topic would be useful to investigate and develop two main issues:

• What drives success and failure in markets overseas?

• Why some markets are more/less efficient than our own?

• What drives success and failure in retailers' internationalization strategies?

• What, typically are the problems, and what has previous academic research had to say about them?

• How are difficulties solved?

• How do successful retailers balance the demands of scale and local market sensitivity?

• Is there any internationalization best practice that can be identified?

• What are the implications of the emerging markets of Eastern Europe, India and China for the internationalization strategies of retailers? How will operators have to adapt and learn?

5. E-Tailing: Business Models, the Consumer and Sustainability

Internet retailing has received a huge amount of academic consideration but it was felt by practitioners that there are some key practical issues that could be addressed more directly in research:

• What are the physical implications for store space growth? Are there broader implications for retail property?

• What are implications of e-tailing for retail productivity? Which sectors are most affected?

• How can the "bricks n'clicks" approach become profitable? How can retailers gain scale economies? What are the long term growth projections for this form of retailing?

• How can customer data gathered from e-tailing be productively used?

• How can customers be actively retained?

• Can retailers actually build a strong and loyal relationship with consumers? If so, how?

• Understanding customer views and opinions. For example:What is the relationship between e-shopping and conventional stores?

• In overcoming consumer resistance to using e-tailing, what factors are important? Not just in terms of product searching, but also ordering.

• Do security concerns remain and how can they be overcome?

• How important are press reports of service failure in forming negative perceptions and changing behaviour?

• What is the level of real customer satisfaction?

• How much substitution is there really?

• What is the relationship between the store and the Internet? Is there best practice at some retailers? If so, how can this be replicated?

• What is the role of a retailer's brand name and how can it be leveraged to best effect?

• How is e-shopping integrated into consumers' lives? Who makes the consumption decisions and is it different than with conventional shopping?

6. Retail Planning Issues and the Effect of Development on Local Economies

This is a key area that engages with Governmental planning policy, retailer strategy, and the public interest. Studies that further deepen our understanding of the following would provide a wealth of topical information and data for policy to draw on:

• What are the economic and social implications of shopping centre and store development across a variety of locations and spatial scales?

• A retrospective view on the effectiveness of planning policy. This will aid future policy modification and development.

• How do customers perceive the retail experience and what do they require from retailers and shopping provision?

• How can retailers come to better understand optimal size of catchments and "the market" more widely?

7. Balancing Environmental/ Ethical Concerns with Retail Performance

The following priority areas are currently topical, and their importance was emphasised by interviewees:

• Can retailers be global but act (and be seen to act) locally?

• How can retailers become environmentally friendly yet remain consistent with a progressive sales generation strategy?

• Just how important are consumers' views? Should retailers change their own behaviours in response to this issue?

• What are the commercial benefits of sustainability and how can they be developed?

• Is the concern with the push towards ethical/fair trade with poorer nations diametrically opposed to the concern with the carbon footprint of products?

8. Understanding the Global Supply Chain: Control, Development and Wider Effects

This wide ranging issue was a popular theme in interviews and has a range of managerial implications that need to be understood by the sector, while the wider societal and environmental implications are also significant.

• To what extent are the supply terms due to a Global Supply Chain superior and what are the competition policy implications?

• How do retailers foster and control a Global Supply Chain?

• What is the vulnerability of a Global Supply Chain?

• What are food security implications of a centralised, Global Supply Chain based on scale economies?

• What are the implications of environmental concerns for Global Supply Chains?

• What is the ease of controlling labour standards within Global Supply Chains?

• How can cost and quality be balanced within Global Supply Chains?

9. Improving the Academic/ Retail Link

A key issue that emerged during interviews was the perceived lack of a strong retailer/academic link. It is clear that much academic research - both that supported by the Advanced Institute of Management Research (AIM) and more widely - confronts issues that are of interest to retail practitioners. However, an issue that came across clearly throughout all of the interviews was the perceived lack of communication of this retail-related academic work. With the exception of the National Retail Planning Forum (NRPF) which uses and disseminates some academic work, it is delusional to believe that retailers or the wider interested community ever pick up an academic journal. In the main, the industry does not have time to search around for such potentially relevant information.

Retail Sector Full Report

 

For any further queries please contact Dr Richard Adams on r.adams@cranfield.ac.uk

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