20 research outputs found

    British high streets: from crisis to recovery? A comprehensive review of the evidence

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    In one of the most exhaustive evidence reviews into high streets, town centres and consumer habits ever conducted in Britain, researchers at the University of Southampton have highlighted that seismic shifts in consumer behaviour, combined with significant technological innovations, are having a deep and profound impact on the evolution of UK high streets.Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and commissioned by the Government’s advisory group The Future High Streets Forum, this report comes at a time when radical shifts in consumer culture and practices are becoming increasingly apparent and widely discussed in public debate on what is changing UK town centres and high streets.This review offers an important resource for many groups with stakes in British town centres and high streets. It reflects the fact that reversing the decline of Britain’s high streets can only be achieved through research and informed discussion and by harnessing the goodwill and common purpose which has recently been displayed by the many stakeholders in the retail, hospitality, property and leisure sectors in working together to understand and address those challenges

    New channel introduction and customer touchpoint experience in a multichannel environment

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    Examining the effectiveness of activation techniques on consumer behavior in temporary loyalty programs

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    The use of temporary loyalty programs has become increasingly common in recent years. However, much like permanent programs, temporary programs also deal with limited or declining consumer saving behavior throughout the program. Considering the limited time span and small window of opportunity during which consumers can act, it is crucial to determine how to maintain program salience and increase customer engagement in the temporary program. This dissertation aims to provide new insights on how this can be done, by looking into several activation techniques commonly used in such programs. The first essay studies the impact of mobile push messaging and determines heterogeneous treatment effects thereof. In addition, it investigates how saving dynamics and message timing influence the effectiveness of push messaging. The second essay focuses on the impact of in-store execution quality, and to what extent deviations from planned support plans are common, and how they influence sales. The third essay looks at the differences in effectiveness of different message types, and determines how they vary for different consumer types and outcome variables

    Can Upward Brand Extensions be an Opportunity for Marketing Managers During the Covid-19 Pandemic and Beyond?

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    Early COVID-19 research has guided current managerial practice by introducing more products across different product categories as consumers tried to avoid perceived health risks from food shortages, i.e. horizontal brand extensions. For example, Leon, a fast-food restaurant in the UK, introduced a new range of ready meal products. However, when the food supply stabilised, availability may no longer be a concern for consumers. Instead, job losses could be a driver of higher perceived financial risks. Meanwhile, it remains unknown whether the perceived health or financial risks play a more significant role on consumers’ consumptions. Our preliminary survey shows perceived health risks outperform perceived financial risks to positively influence purchase intention during COVID-19. We suggest such a result indicates an opportunity for marketers to consider introducing premium priced products, i.e. upward brand extensions. The risk-as�feelings and signalling theories were used to explain consumer choice under risk may adopt affective heuristic processing, using minimal cognitive efforts to evaluate products. Based on this, consumers are likely to be affected by the salient high-quality and reliable product cue of upward extension signalled by its premium price level, which may attract consumers to purchase when they have high perceived health risks associated with COVID-19. Addressing this, a series of experimental studies confirm that upward brand extensions (versus normal new product introductions) can positively moderate the positive effect between perceived health risks associated with COVID-19 and purchase intention. Such an effect can be mediated by affective heuristic information processing. The results contribute to emergent COVID-19 literature and managerial practice during the pandemic but could also inform post-pandemic thinking around vertical brand extensions

    Detection and Measurement of Sales Cannibalization in Information Technology Markets

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    Characteristic features of Information Technology (IT), such as its intrinsic modularity and distinctive cost structure, incentivize IT vendors to implement growth strategies based on launching variants of a basic offering. These variants are by design substitutable to some degree and may contend for the same customers instead of winning new ones from competitors or from an expansion of the market. They may thus generate intra-organizational sales diversion – i.e., sales cannibalization. The occurrence of cannibalization between two offerings must be verified (the detection problem) and quantified (the measurement problem), before the offering with cannibalistic potential is introduced into the market (ex-ante estimation) and/or afterwards (ex-post estimation). In IT markets, both detection and measurement of cannibalization are challenging. The dynamics of technological innovation featured in these markets may namely alter, hide, or confound cannibalization effects. To address these research problems, we elaborated novel methodologies for the detection and measurement of cannibalization in IT markets and applied them to four exemplary case studies. We employed both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, thus implementing a mixed-method multi- case research design. The first case study focuses on product cannibalization in the context of continuous product innovation. We investigated demand interrelationships among Apple handheld devices by means of econometric models with exogenous structural breaks (i.e., whose date of occurrence is given a priori). In particular, we estimated how sales of the iPod line of portable music players were affected by new-product launches within the iPod line itself and by the introduction of iPhone smartphones and iPad tablets. We could find evidence of expansion in total line revenues, driven by iPod line extensions, and inter- categorical cannibalization, due to iPhones and iPads Mini. The second empirical application tackles platform cannibalization, when a platform provider becomes complementor of an innovative third party platform thus competing with its own proprietary one. We ascertained whether the diffusion of GPS-enabled smartphones and navigation apps affected sales of portable navigation devices. Using a unit-root test with endogenous breaks (i.e., whose date of occurrence is estimated), we identified a negative shift in the sales of the two leaders in the navigation market and dated it at the third quarter of 2008, when the iOS and Android mobile ecosystems were introduced. Later launches of their own navigation apps did not significantly affect these manufacturers’ sales further. The third case study addresses channel cannibalization. We explored the channel adoption decision of organizational buyers of business software applications, in light of the rising popularity of online sales channels in consumer markets. We constructed a qualitative channel adoption model which takes into account the relevant drivers and barriers of channel adoption, their interdependences, and the buying process phases. Our findings suggest that, in the enterprise software market, online channels will not cannibalize offline ones unless some typical characteristics of enterprise software applications change. The fourth case study deals with business model cannibalization – the organizational decision to cannibalize an existent business model for a more innovative one. We examined the transition of two enterprise software vendors from on-premise to on-demand software delivery. Relying on a mixed- method research approach, built on the quantitative and qualitative methodologies from the previous case studies, we identified the transition milestones and assessed their impact on financial performances. The cannibalization between on-premise and on-demand is also the scenario for an illustrative simulation study of the cannibalization

    Pricing in Online Retailing: Understanding Drivers of Sales, Revenue, and Profit

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    This dissertation analyzes topics related to price decisions in online retailing that are relevant for both managers and researchers

    Essentials of Business Analytics

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    Analysing the role of information exchange for demand forecasting in collaborative supply chains

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    It is now widely recognized that supply chains, not individual organisations, are responsible for the success or failure of businesses. This has necessitated close coordination among supply chain partners. In the past few decades, in an attempt to improve the overall efficiency of the supply chain, many companies have engaged in collaboration with other supply chain members. Consequently, several supply chain management initiatives such as Vendor Managed Inventory, Efficient Consumer Response, Continuous Replenishment and Accurate Response have been proposed in the literature to improve the flow of materials as well as information among supply chain partners. In this line, Collaborative Planning Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR) is a relatively new initiative that combines the intelligence of multiple trading partners in planning and fulfilment of customer demand by linking sales and marketing best practices. The role of CPFR has been widely studied in the US retail industry, but it has not been researched much in the UK and also in Asian countries. Hence, this research focuses on the adoption of CPFR in the UK and India. Levels of collaboration and information sharing differ to a great extent across the supply chains based on the needs of individual businesses. Accordingly, the importance of CPFR varies in different supply chains. The study reported in this research explores the operations of CPFR and highlights the corresponding benefits in different firms using case studies of Indian (4 cases) and British (2 cases) companies operating in Make-To-Stock (MTS) and Make-To-Order (MTO) environments. In this research, information exchange among collaborating partners is analysed with a focus on its role in demand forecasting and timely replenishment. In order to identify potential benefits of CPFR, this research has adopted a four stage approach. In the first stage, interviews with top and middle managers in the case companies helped to develop a clear understanding of the collaborative arrangements in each company. In stage two, a conceptual model called the Reference Demand Model (RDM) was developed. RDM is a specific model representing the dependency of demand projection on information from different supply chain members involved in supply chain processes. When fully developed, the RDM will serve as a decision tool for the companies involved in collaboration to decide on the level of collaboration and the type of information exchange in order to improve supply chain planning and forecasting. Further, to explore how demand information collected through RDM can help improve forecasts accuracy, a quantitative approach is employed in the next two stages. Therefore, stages 3 and 4 were studied only for the cases with detailed sales data. In stage 3, structural equation models were developed to establish the underlying relationships among demand factors that were identified using RDM. In stage 4, regression forecast models of sales were developed using the demand factors identified through RDM. The forecast models showed an improved accuracy and thus this research suggested the case company (Soft Drink Co.) to use the demand information (identified from RDM) in the demand forecasts. The results strongly support CPFR in a MTS environment with promotional sales, and exchanging the detailed sales information from downstream to upstream supply chain members may improve the accuracy of demand forecasts. Information exchange is also required to ensure timely replenishment for MTS products. However, in a MTO environment, there is less need for collaboration with downstream supply chain partners for the purpose of short term demand forecasting
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