Store Format Choice and Shopping Trip Types

Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to identify store format attributes that impact on store format choice when consumers conduct fill-in or major trips to buy groceries. By doing so, we take into consideration that consumers patronise multiple (store-based) formats depending on the shopping situation operationalised by the type of shopping trip. Design/methodology/approach: The paper adopts the conceptual framework of random utility theory via application of a multinomial logit modelling framework. The analysis is based on a survey of 408 consumers representing households in a clearly defined central European retail area. Findings: The results reveal a considerable moderating effect of the shopping situation on the relationship between perceived store format attributes and store format choice. Consumers’ utilities are significantly higher for discount stores and hypermarkets when conducting major trips. To the contrary, supermarkets are preferred for fill-in trips in the focused retail market. Merchandise-related attributes of store formats have a higher impact on the utility formation regarding major-trips, whereas service- and convenience-related attributes do so regarding fill-in trips. Research limitations: The findings can only be generalised to retail markets having similar characteristics like the one under study. It is highly concentrated, contains considerable share of small size retail stores, it is urban and has clear cut boundaries due to its geographical location. Originality/value: This paper considers the fact that consumers patronise multiple store formats and investigates the moderating effect of the shopping situation – operationalised by different types of shopping trips – on store format choice

Production of IFN-β during Listeria monocytogenes Infection Is Restricted to Monocyte/Macrophage Lineage

The family of type I interferons (IFN), which consists of several IFN-α and one IFN-β, are produced not only after stimulation by viruses, but also after infection with non-viral pathogens. In the course of bacterial infections, these cytokines could be beneficial or detrimental. IFN-β is the primary member of type I IFN that initiates a cascade of IFN-α production. Here we addressed the question which cells are responsible for IFN-β expression after infection with the intracellular pathogen Listeria monocytogenes by using a genetic approach. By means of newly established reporter mice, maximum of IFN-β expression was observed at 24 hours post infection in spleen and, surprisingly, 48 hours post infection in colonized cervical and inguinal lymph nodes. Colonization of lymph nodes was independent of the type I IFN signaling, as well as bacterial dose and strain. Using cell specific reporter function and conditional deletions we could define cells expressing LysM as the major IFN-β producers, with cells formerly defined as Tip-DCs being the highest. Neutrophilic granulocytes, dendritic cells and plasmacytoid dendritic cells did not significantly contribute to type I IFN production

NOD2, RIP2 and IRF5 Play a Critical Role in the Type I Interferon Response to Mycobacterium tuberculosis

While the recognition of microbial infection often occurs at the cell surface via Toll-like receptors, the cytosol of the cell is also under surveillance for microbial products that breach the cell membrane. An important outcome of cytosolic recognition is the induction of IFNα and IFNβ, which are critical mediators of immunity against both bacteria and viruses. Like many intracellular pathogens, a significant fraction of the transcriptional response to Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection depends on these type I interferons, but the recognition pathways responsible remain elusive. In this work, we demonstrate that intraphagosomal M. tuberculosis stimulates the cytosolic Nod2 pathway that responds to bacterial peptidoglycan, and this event requires membrane damage that is actively inflicted by the bacterium. Unexpectedly, this recognition triggers the expression of type I interferons in a Tbk1- and Irf5-dependent manner. This response is only partially impaired by the loss of Irf3 and therefore, differs fundamentally from those stimulated by bacterial DNA, which depend entirely on this transcription factor. This difference appears to result from the unusual peptidoglycan produced by mycobacteria, which we show is a uniquely potent agonist of the Nod2/Rip2/Irf5 pathway. Thus, the Nod2 system is specialized to recognize bacteria that actively perturb host membranes and is remarkably sensitive to mycobacteria, perhaps reflecting the strong evolutionary pressure exerted by these pathogens on the mammalian immune system

The Evolving Concept of Retail Attractiveness: what makes retail agglomerations attractive when customers shop at them?

This paper attempts to contribute to a more thorough understanding of the on-site (‘in vivo’) evaluation of retail agglomerations once shoppers have already made their destination choices. To address this issue, a modification of more conventional concepts of retail attractiveness that considers situational contexts is proposed and empirically tested. The survey comprised more than 2,000 on-site interviews of customers of an inner city shopping street and a competing peripheral shopping mall. The results show that the tenant mix and the atmosphere, unlike parking and accessibility, exert a major impact on distinct dimensions of perceived attractiveness. Furthermore, the empirical findings provide evidence that factors characterizing aspects of the individual shopping situation significantly affect on-site evaluation. Some methodological limitations and future research directions are also discussed

A Combined Approach for Segment-Specific Analysis of Market Basket Data

There are two main research traditions for analyzing market basket data that exist more or less independently from each other, namely exploratory and explanatory model types. Exploratory approaches are restricted to the task of discovering cross-category interrelationships and provide marketing managers with only very limited recommendations regarding decision making. The latter type of models mainly focus on estimating the effects of category-level marketing mix variables on purchase incidences assuming cross-category dependencies. We propose a procedure that combines these two modeling approaches in a novel two-stage procedure for analyzing cross-category effects based on shopping basket data: In a data compression step we first derive a set of market basket prototypes and generate segments of households with internally more distinctive (complementary) cross-category interdependencies. Utilizing the information on categories that are most responsible for prototype construction, segment-specific multivariate logistic models are estimated in a second step. Based on the data-driven way of basket construction, we can show significant differences in cross- effects and related price elasticities both across segments and compared to the global (segment-unspecific) model