Indian Organised Apparel Retail Sector and DSS (Decision Support Systems)

Indian apparel retail sector poses interesting challenges to a manager as it is evolving and closely linked to fashions. Appealing mainly to youth, the sector has typical information requirements to manage its operations. DSS (Decision Support Systems) provide timely and accurate information & it can be viewed as an integrated entity providing management with the tools and information to assist their decision making. The study exploratory in nature, adopts a case study approach to understand practices of organized retailers in apparel sector regarding applications of various DSS tools. Conceptual overview of DSS is undertaken by reviewing the literature. The study describes practices and usage of DSS in operational decisions in apparel sector and managerial issues in design and implementation of DSS. A multi brand local chain and multi brand national chain of apparel was chosen for the study. Varied tools were found to be used by them. It was also found that for sales forecasting and visual merchandising decisions, prior experience rather than any DSS tool was used. The benefits realized were; “help as diagnostic tool”, “accuracy of records and in billing”, “smooth operations”. The implementation issues highlighted by the store managers were; more initial teething problems rather than resistance on the part of employees of the store, need for investment of time & money in training, due to rapid technological advancements, time to time updation in DSS tools is required . Majority of operational decisions like inventory management, CRM, campaign management were handled by ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) or POS (Point of Sale). Prioritization as well as quantification of benefits was not attempted. The issues of coordination, integration with other systems in case of ERP usage, training were highlighted. Future outlook of DSS seems bright as apparel retailers are keen to invest in technology.

DSS (Decision Support Systems) in Indian Organised Retail Sector

Indian organised retail industry is poised for growth. Rapid state of change due to speedy technological developments, changing competitive positions, varying consumer behaviour as well as their expectations and liberalized regulatory environment is being observed in organized retailing. Information is crucial to plan and control profitable retail businesses and it can be an important source of competitive advantage so long as it is affordable and readily available. DSS (Decision Support Systems) which provide timely and accurate information can be viewed as an integrated entity providing management with the tools and information to assist their decision making. The study, exploratory in nature plans to adopt a case study approach to understand practices of organized retailers in grocery sector regarding applications of various DSS tools. Conceptual overview of DSS is undertaken by reviewing the literature. The study attempts to describe practices and usage of DSS in operational decisions in grocery sector and managerial issues in design and implementation of DSS. Comparision across national chain and local organized retailer in grocery sector reveals that national chain having implemented ERP partially are mostly using the same for majority of operational decisions like inventory management, CRM, campaign management. Two local players use spread sheets and in house software to make the above operational decisions. The benefits realized remain the same across the retailers. Prioritization as well as quantification of benefits was not communicated. The issues of coordination, integration with other systems in case of ERP usage, training were highlighted. Future outlook of DSS by the respondents portrayed a promising picture.

Towards sustainable textile and apparel industry: Exploring the role of business intelligence systems in the era of industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 is a new era of industrial revolution in which textile and apparel (T&A) companies are adopting and integrating advanced technologies to achieve sustainability and a competitive edge. Previous studies have just focused on the perspective of big data utilization in Industry 4.0 and neglected the role of business intelligence systems (BIS), especially in the T&A industry. The current study is one of the first to investigate the determinants of BIS adoption with an eye towards understanding how BIS can resolve sustainability issues in T&A companies with Industry 4.0 technologies. Methodology: A qualitative research approach is applied with 14 semi-structured in-depth interviews from 12 of the world's high-end T&A companies. The snowball and purposeful sampling strategy is used to select the participants. The qualitative content analysis technique is used to analyze the interview data. Results: The findings revealed various themes, such as sustainability issues in T&A companies, improved value creation processes with leading BI solutions, and perceived difficulties in the adoption of BIS. Major improvements are perceived in the apparel retail business because apparel companies are more prone to adopt the Industry 4.0 technologies with advanced business intelligence (BI) solutions. The results prove the pivotal role of economic sustainability in the adoption of BIS and Industry 4.0 technologies in T&A companies

Past, present, and future research on self-service merchandising: A co-word and text mining approach

Purpose This study aims to discern emerging trends and provide a longitudinal perspective on merchandising research by identifying relationships between merchandising-related subdomains/themes. Design/methodology/approach This study sourced 657 merchandising-related articles published since 1960, from the Scopus database and 425 from Web of Science. After processing and normalizing the data, this study performed co-word and thematic network analyses. Taking a text mining approach, this study used topic modeling to identify a set of coherent topics characterized by the keywords of the articles. Findings This study identified the following merchandising-related themes: branding, retail, consumer, behavior, modeling, textile and clothing industry and visual merchandising. Although visual merchandising was the first type of merchandising to be used in-store, only recently has it become an emerging topic in the academic literature. There has been a further trend over the past decade to understand the adoption of simulation technology, such as computer-aided design, particularly in supply chain management in the clothing industry. These and other findings contribute to the discussion of the merchandising concept, approached from an evolutionary perspective. Research limitations/implications The conclusions of this study hold implications at the intersection of merchandising, sectors, new technologies, research methodologies and merchandising-practitioner education. Research trends suggest that, in the future, virtual reality and augmented reality using neuroscientific methods will be applied to the e-merchandising context. Practical implications The different dimensions of merchandising can be used to leverage store managers’ decision-making process toward an integrated store-management strategy. In particular, by adopting loyalty merchandising tactics, the store can generate emotional attachment among consumers, who will perceive its value and services as unique, thanks to merchandising items designed specifically with that aim in mind. The stimulation of unplanned purchases, the strategic location of products and duration of each merchandising activity in the store, the digitalization of merchandising and the application of findings from neuroscience studies are some of the most relevant practical applications. Originality/value This study provides the first-ever longitudinal review of the state of the art in merchandising research, taking a holistic perspective of this field of knowledge spanning a 60-year period. The work makes a valuable contribution to the development of the marketing discipline.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Past, present, and future research on self-service merchandising: A co-word and text mining approach

Purpose: This study aims to discern emerging trends and provide a longitudinal perspective on merchandising research by identifying relationships between merchandising-related subdomains/themes. Design/methodology/approach: We sourced 657 merchandising-related articles published since 1960, from the Scopus database and 425 from Web of Science. After processing and normalizing the data, we performed co-word and thematic network analyses. Taking a text mining approach, we used topic modeling to identify a set of coherent topics characterized by the keywords of the articles. Findings: We identified the following merchandising-related themes: branding, retail, consumer, behavior, modeling, textile and clothing industry, and visual merchandising. Although visual merchandising was the first type of merchandising to be used in-store, only recently has it become an emerging topic in the academic literature. There has been a further trend over the last decade to understand the adoption of simulation technology, such as computer-aided design, particularly in supply chain management in the clothing industry. These and other findings contribute to our discussion of the merchandising concept, approached from an evolutionary perspective. Research limitations/implications: The conclusions of the study hold implications at the intersection of merchandising, sectors, new technologies, research methodologies, and merchandising-practitioner education. Research trends suggest that, in the future, virtual reality and augmented reality using neuroscientific methods will be applied to the emerchandising context. Practical implications: The different dimensions of merchandising can be used to leverage store managers’ decision-making process toward an integrated store-management strategy. In particular, by adopting loyalty merchandising tactics, the store can generate emotional attachment among consumers, who will perceive its value and services as unique, thanks to merchandising items designed specifically with that aim in mind. The stimulation of unplanned purchases, the strategic location of products and duration of each merchandising activity in the store, the digitalization of merchandising, and the application of findings from neuroscience studies are some of the most relevant practical applications. Originality/value: The study provides the first-ever longitudinal review of the state of the art in merchandising research, taking a holistic perspective of this field of knowledge spanning a 60-year period. The work makes a valuable contribution to the development of the marketing discipline

Hybrid Model for It Investment Analysis: Application to Rfid Adoption in the Retail Sector

One of the major obstacles in Information Technology (IT) adoption is its return on investment analysis. IT benefits in organizations are hard to measure and are usually realized over time. System dynamics approach has been used in IT literature to identify the impact of IT on business processes. Given benefits of any IT system in organizations, however, there is a high degree of uncertainty in achieving such benefits. Managerial flexibility in decision making process of implementing a new IT helps managers to overcome this uncertainty over time. Traditional cost benefit analysis such as NPV that is typically used to value any technology is unable to value managerial flexibilities while real options theory offers a model that can value a new investment as uncertainties about the system decreases over time. In this dissertation, we are proposing a new hybrid model for IT return on investment (ROI) that combines system dynamics and real options as two major techniques in economics of IT. This robust hybrid model takes advantages of both techniques while overcoming their weaknesses. We propose a systems dynamic solution to simulate the way an IT influences and improves an organization to be able to estimate the parameters used in the real options model. The hybrid model is used to find the best time for investing in item-level RFID in the retail sector.The results of return on investment analysis on item-level investment show that the variable cost of investment that is the tag prices dominates the return on investment. Other factors such as product unit price and consequently type of retail stores are important as well. The system dynamics simulation provided some major parameters of the real options model such as the expected payoffs and volatility of the expected payoffs that were hard to find in the literature.Business Administration (MBA

Fashion retailing – past, present and future

This issue of Textile Progress reviews the way that fashion retailing has developed as a result of the application of the World Wide Web and information and communications technology (ICT) by fashion-retail companies. The review therefore first considers how fashion retailing has evolved, analysing retail formats, global strategies, emerging and developing economies, and the factors that are threatening and driving growth in the fashion-retail market. The second part of the review considers the emergence of omni-channel retailing, analysing how retail has progressed and developed since the adoption of the Internet and how ICT initiatives such as mobile commerce (m-commerce), digital visualisation online, and in-store and self-service technologies have been proven to support the progression and expansion of fashion retailing. The paper concludes with recommendations on future research opportunities for gaining a better understanding of the impacts of ICT and omni-channel retailing, through which it may be possible to increase and develop knowledge and understanding of the way the sector is developing and provide fresh impetus to an already-innovative and competitive industr

The ‘Store Of The Future’ In Popular Culture: Trends In Press Coverage Of Experiential Retailing

Since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, the global retail market has witnessed massive demographic and technological changes that have re-defined consumer experience. Such changes include the rise of the millennial consumer cohort, and the introduction of retailers implementing enhanced artificial intelligence (AI) data methodology to analyse business, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) to enhance experience and co-customization interfaces. Two seminal pieces of literature regarding consumer experience are Ballantine and Parson’s analysis of consumer experience factors and Pine and Gilmore’s (1999) Experience Economy. However, these studies were conducted nearly a decade ago, leaving a void in the literature that does not consider more current factors impacting consumer experience. The purpose of the present research was to: analyse popular press coverage to understand trends in experiential elements; and to extend the Ballantine and Parsons’ framework by proposing more current experiential elements. The researchers used the EBSCO database to generate a list of articles written from 2008 to 2018; these articles were then analysed via a qualitative content analysis method, using Ballantine and Parson\u27s and Pine and Gilmore\u27s frameworks as a base. Emergent themes that did not fit the above frameworks were added, thereby updating and extending the current body of knowledge. Findings indicated an increased emphasis on \u27experiential retailing\u27 over the years 2016‐18. Product display, employees, colour and comfort features emerged as the most important Ballantine and Parsons themes, while new emergent themes of technology, uniqueness/personalization and entertainment/escapism/discovery were added to the Ballantine and Parsons framework, thus updating it to reflect current retailing trends. Implications for industry and academia, along with directions for future research are provided

A Review of Consumer-Facing Digital Technologies Across Different Types of Fashion Store Formats

Several current trends in the fashion retail and marketing landscape are associated with the ongoing digital revolution, including the increasing tendency for fashion retailers to adopt consumer-facing digital technologies across their online and physical store formats. Such technology helps improve the store environment by conferring a more engaging and stimulating shopping experience for consumers. This chapter provides a review of existing literature, supported by relevant industry reports and current examples from key players in the fashion retail sector, to provide a comprehensive analysis of different types of consumer-facing digital technology in various fashion store formats and how they impact on the overall shopping experience. The authors review a number of technologies including interactive touchscreens, RFID tags, beacon technology, magic mirrors and mobile apps, and consider how they are implemented in online stores, digitally enhanced stores, brand stores and pop-up stores in the fashion sector