Modelling Grocery Retail Topic Distributions: Evaluation, Interpretability and Stability

Understanding the shopping motivations behind market baskets has high commercial value in the grocery retail industry. Analyzing shopping transactions demands techniques that can cope with the volume and dimensionality of grocery transactional data while keeping interpretable outcomes. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) provides a suitable framework to process grocery transactions and to discover a broad representation of customers' shopping motivations. However, summarizing the posterior distribution of an LDA model is challenging, while individual LDA draws may not be coherent and cannot capture topic uncertainty. Moreover, the evaluation of LDA models is dominated by model-fit measures which may not adequately capture the qualitative aspects such as interpretability and stability of topics. In this paper, we introduce clustering methodology that post-processes posterior LDA draws to summarise the entire posterior distribution and identify semantic modes represented as recurrent topics. Our approach is an alternative to standard label-switching techniques and provides a single posterior summary set of topics, as well as associated measures of uncertainty. Furthermore, we establish a more holistic definition for model evaluation, which assesses topic models based not only on their likelihood but also on their coherence, distinctiveness and stability. By means of a survey, we set thresholds for the interpretation of topic coherence and topic similarity in the domain of grocery retail data. We demonstrate that the selection of recurrent topics through our clustering methodology not only improves model likelihood but also outperforms the qualitative aspects of LDA such as interpretability and stability. We illustrate our methods on an example from a large UK supermarket chain.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figure

The Impact of Experiential Augmented Reality Applications on Fashion Purchase Intention

Utilizing the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) model, the purpose of this study is to examine the effects of augmented reality (AR) (specifically augmentation) on consumers’ affective and behavioral response and to assess whether consumers’ hedonic motivation for shopping moderates this relationship. An experiment using the manipulation of AR and no AR was conducted with 162 participants aged between 18 and 35. Participants were recruited through snowball sampling and randomly assigned to the control or stimulus group. The hypothesized associations were analyzed using linear regression with bootstrapping. The paper demonstrates the benefit of using an experiential AR retail application (app) to positively impact purchase intention. The results show this effect is mediated by positive affective response. Furthermore, hedonic shopping motivation moderates the relationship between augmentation and the positive affective response. Because of the chosen research approach, the results may lack generalizability to other forms of augmentation. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed model using different types of AR stimuli. Furthermore, replication of the study with other populations would increase the generalizability of the findings. Results of this study provide a valuable reference for retailers of the benefits of using AR when attempting to optimize experiential value in online environments. The study contributes to experiential retail and consumer purchase behavior research by deepening the conceptualization of the impact of experiential technologies, more specifically AR apps, by considering the role of hedonic shopping motivations.Peer reviewe

A commentary on social & experiential (e-)retailing and (e-)shopping deserts

Purpose – The last ten years have seen a gradual withdrawal of retail facilities from many local areas and the consequent growth of ‘shopping deserts’, resulting in social and health disbenefits. This paper examines the potential for e-shopping to fill the vacuum and to assist disadvantaged shoppers. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses prior published research to comment on the extent to which e-retailing may be the shopping solution of the future? Findings – The Internet has limited potential to compensate for shopping deserts, as consumers who do not have a good range of physical shops within walking distance also tend to lack access to the Internet. Research limitations/implications – The paper is based solely on prior research. The authors recommend action research that may hopefully help excluded shoppers to become more included by addressing the problems of access to e-shopping. Practical implications – Government, service providers and e-retailers are may consider interventions such as subsidised Internet access, training and the provision of e-cash. Originality/value – The paper links research from diverse fields relating to shopping deserts, the digital divide, health, wellbeing, social and experiential aspects of (e-)shopping

Factors influencing consumers’ intention towards online grocery shopping for Tesco Malaysia

Nowadays, Internet is one of the most popular platforms for people to do online shopping include grocery items. Many studies have been conducted to investigate the determinants of customer intentions for online grocery shopping. Till now, there is no consensus on what are the factors that actually influencing people to shop grocery items through Internet. This paper aims to explore the factors including social influences, facilitating conditions, hedonic motivations, financial risk and perceived trust which influence the consumer intention to purchase grocery online. From the literature review, this paper found that many studies have investigated numerous factors for purchase intention, especially, in the cases which fashion and trends are involved. However, few studies have focused on the factors that affect consumers’ intention to online grocery shopping particularly in Malaysia. A total of 400 questionnaires were distributed to the virtual community of Tesco Malaysia using private message. Multiple regression was used to test the relationships between motivational factors and purchase intention of grocery products. The results show that social influences, facilitating conditions, hedonic motivations and perceived trust are positively related to consumers’ intention to purchase grocery online. However, financial risk has no impact on the purchase intention. This can be explained that the risk of online shopping is reduced due to the popularity of online shopping nowadays and also online consumers have more confident about the security of e-commerce business transaction. Theoretical and managerial implications, as well as suggestions for future researches and limitations are discussed

Sustainable horticultural supply chain: the case of local food networks in the United Kingdom

In the UK there is widespread support from Government, media and consumers for local food networks. These have the potential to provide a more sustainable supply chain and are well suited to the unique production and consumption characteristics of horticultural products. In terms of food marketing, local food is in its relative infancy and is still without any formal definition. This lack of clarity hampers research activities. Although the profile of local food buyers and their expectations has been explored, our knowledge of its social, economic and environmental aspects is minimal. This research contributes by exploring the structure and scope of local food activities in the UK in terms of profiling those specialised retail outlets who provide consumers with the opportunity to purchase locally grown horticultural products

Factors influencing consumers’ intention towards online grocery shopping for Tesco Malaysia

Nowadays, Internet is one of the most popular platforms for people to do online shopping include grocery items. Many studies have been conducted to investigate the determinants of customer intentions for online grocery shopping. Till now, there is no consensus on what are the factors that actually influencing people to shop grocery items through Internet. This paper aims to explore the factors including social influences, facilitating conditions, hedonic motivations, financial risk and perceived trust which influence the consumer intention to purchase grocery online. From the literature review, this paper found that many studies have investigated numerous factors for purchase intention, especially, in the cases which fashion and trends are involved. However, few studies have focused on the factors that affect consumers’ intention to online grocery shopping particularly in Malaysia. A total of 400 questionnaires were distributed to the virtual community of Tesco Malaysia using private message. Multiple regression was used to test the relationships between motivational factors and purchase intention of grocery products. The results show that social influences, facilitating conditions, hedonic motivations and perceived trust are positively related to consumers’ intention to purchase grocery online. However, financial risk has no impact on the purchase intention. This can be explained that the risk of online shopping is reduced due to the popularity of online shopping nowadays and also online consumers have more confident about the security of e-commerce business transaction. Theoretical and managerial implications, as well as suggestions for future researches and limitations are discussed

A planned study of the impact of B2C logistics service quality on shopper satisfaction and loyalty

Purpose of the paper: This paper reports on an in-progress study of the impact of business to consumer (B2C) logistics service quality (LSQ) on in-store shopper satisfaction and loyalty. Methodology: A comparative research approach is being used across the UK, France and Germany to also investigate country-specific differences of consumer shopping behaviour and channel strategies. The first stage, in-line with a deliberate integrated supply chain approach, consists of structured in-depth interviews conducted with managers at the producer/retailer interface, e.g. producer category captains and retail category managers. This qualitative stage will be followed-up by a quantitative survey stage targeting consumers as shoppers to determine how their expectations of retail LSQ and associated activities influence their satisfaction and ongoing loyalty. Findings: A broad literature review has generated over 40 variables of interest for both LSQ and loyalty, and almost 10 variables of satisfaction. This study will contribute theoretically by considering a B2C setting for LSQ, which is the final aspect of point of origin to point-of-consumption, whereas most general LSQ literature and LSQ’s impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty has been dominated by business to business (B2B) designs from point-of-origin to point of sale, that is they assume consumer expectations are a given or a different domain. Research limitations: Although covering three major European grocery retail markets, this study might not be considered as representative, especially when adopting a world-wide perspective. Practical implications: As this study emphasises consequences of B2C LSQ on downstream or consumer satisfaction and loyalty, rather than considering the upstream origins of related problems that dominate extant research, it will contribute practically by providing managers with an understanding of the components of LSQ considered critical by consumers

Consumer Segments in Urban and Suburban Farmers Markets

cluster analysis, consumer segments, farmers markets, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Consumer/Household Economics, Crop Production/Industries,

Shop different : consumers' motivations for unplanned purchases

Despite marketers’ interest in consumers’ motivations for in-store decision making, past research has treated all unplanned purchases as the same behavior. To address this research gap, this dissertation investigations consumers’ motivations for unplanned purchases. The introduction presents the definition and importance of the unplanned purchasing phenomenon before reviewing past research on in-store decision making and the significant remaining research questions. The first essay distinguishes between consumers’ intrinsic (i.e., internal) and extrinsic (i.e., instrumental) motivations for unplanned purchases and introduces a novel theory of sequential choice: in-store motivation balancing. This theory predicts that consumers’ motivations for unplanned purchases change over a shopping trip to reflect the balancing of intrinsic and extrinsic purchase motivations. A field study and two online shopping experiments that integrate the in-store path-to-purchase with consumers’ motivations provide evidence that consumer motivations are dynamic and impacted by a three-way interaction between the personality trait of buying impulsivity, trip progress, and budget focus. This theory extends the literature on motivation change during sequential choice to the in-store decision making domain. Importantly, the factors that influence purchase motivations address several unanswered questions in the literatures of impulse buying and self-control. Finally, the dynamics of in-store motivation provide insights for retailers and manufacturers to become more shopper-centric with their in-store merchandising and promotion tactics. The second essay investigates the moderating effect of consumers’ dynamic motivations for unplanned purchases on the effectiveness of in-store marketing. Based on motivation theory and the general fit literature, two field studies and two shopping experiments test the relationship between consumers’ intrinsic and extrinsic shopping motivations and three types of point-of-purchase messages (i.e., intrinsic motivation messages, non-price extrinsic motivation messages, and price-based messages). The results demonstrate that retailers frequently employ non-price in-store marketing, that in-store marketing is significantly related to shopping motivations, and that consumers are more likely to make an unplanned purchase from a display with in-store marketing that matches their dynamic shopping motivations. While the effectiveness of price-related retail promotion is well established in past research, this research is the first to investigate the effect of in-store marketing on the likelihood of an incremental unplanned purchase. From a managerial point-of-view, the results provide insights for how retailers and manufacturers can deliver the right message to the right consumer at the right time using personalized in-store marketing tactics such as mobile applications and digital signage.Marketin