Marketing Approaches to Pop Up Stores: An Exploration of Social Networking

Internet and mobile technologies are redefining how retailers promote themselves to consumers. For instance, over recent years, the high street has witnessed the phenomenon of ‘pop up stores’, which rely on social network sites (SNS) and text messaging to inform consumers of their presence. In essence, they are retail stores that open up at empty retail locations for a temporary period of time and then disappear. The purpose of this paper is to describe this trend in terms of which retailers are doing it, why, where and how are they doing it? In addition, the paper is theoretically underpinned by an examination of literature drawn from entrepreneurial marketing in order to explore how retailers have exploited internet and mobile technologies in order to create marketing and branding opportunities. Finally, the paper offers directions for future research

An Autoethnographic Approach to Examining Electronic Retail Development

Autoethnographic approaches to doing research in retailing are rare. Through the researcher reflecting on and analysing her own personal experiences as a fashion retail store proprietor, this study reconstructed the process of her strategic decision making with regard to moving from selling fashion goods via an independent high street store to selling online. The study is concerned with the issues surrounding the adoption of e-commerce. In doing so, the study reviewed the various development models that exist within e-commerce literature, and in particular, examined the extent to which a retailer adoptions an evolutionary and linear approach to developing a web site. Hence the study’s contribution to advances in retailing is in the field of strategic decisions pertaining to electronic retailing. Specifically the aim of the study was to either confirm or adjust the models within e-commerce literature that describe the internet adoption process. Through the adoption of an autoethnographical approach, the study acknowledges that there is a complex interdependency between the researcher and the researched and thereby utilizes subjective experience as an intrinsic part of the research process. This is achieved through offering the retail proprietor’s ‘insider’ perspective based upon both self narratives and self observations. Whilst the author’s acknowledge that the subject of the study needs to be examined in a broader sense, beyond the self generated data presented in the study, they argue that such self introspections can be considered as a basis of useful, albeit non-scientific, knowledge in itself. In this study the intention is to use the data as a means of generating hypotheses which will be tested in a future study by a more traditional research technique. This study is a work in progress

How do fashion retail customers search on the Internet?: Exploring the use of data mining tools to enhance CRM

This paper seeks to determine the usefulness of data mining tools to SMEs in developing customer relationship management (CRM) in the fashion retail sector. Kalakota & Robinson’s (1999, p.114) model of ‘The Three Phases of CRM’ acts as a basis to explore the use of data mining software. This paper reviews the nature and type of data that is available for collection and its relevance to CRM; providing an advisory framework for practitioners for them to examine the scope and limitations of using data analysis to improve CRM. The data mining tool examined was Google Analytics (GA); an online freeware tool that enables businesses to understand how people find their site, how they navigate through it, and, ultimately, how they do or don’t become customers of it (Google Analytics, 2009). Establishing these relationships should lead to retailer development of enhanced web site aesthetics and functionality to coincide with consumer expectations. The paper finds that the competitive nature and homogeneity of the fashion retail sector requires retailers to improve the ‘reach, richness and affiliation’ (Hackney et al) of their sites by using technology to explore CRM

Sustainable assessment and fashion brand ratings

In response to the growing demand for transparency in the supply chain,fashion brands have responded through sustainability marketing in the form of freeform communication, application for certifications and making publicly available sus-tainability reports, which in turn have been used by third party organisations forbrand rating. The purpose of the chapter is to explore the purpose, examine the meth-odologies and assess who benefits from these ratings

Economic costs of chemotherapy-induced febrile neutropenia among patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in European and Australian clinical practice

Background: Economic implications of chemotherapy-induced febrile neutropenia (FN) in European and Australian clinical practice are largely unknown. Methods: Data were obtained from a European (97%) and Australian (3%) observational study of patients with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) receiving CHOP (±rituximab) chemotherapy. For each patient, each cycle of chemotherapy within the course, and each occurrence of FN within cycles, was identified. Patients developing FN in a given cycle (“FN patients”), starting with the first, were matched to those who did not develop FN in that cycle (“comparison patients”), irrespective of subsequent FN events. FN-related healthcare costs (£2010) were tallied for the initial FN event as well as follow-on care and FN events in subsequent cycles. Results: Mean total cost was £5776 (95%CI £4928-£6713) higher for FN patients (n = 295) versus comparison patients, comprising £4051 (£3633-£4485) for the initial event and a difference of £1725 (£978-£2498) in subsequent cycles. Among FN patients requiring inpatient care (76% of all FN patients), mean total cost was higher by £7259 (£6327-£8205), comprising £5281 (£4810-£5774) for the initial hospitalization and a difference of £1978 (£1262-£2801) in subsequent cycles. Conclusions: Cost of chemotherapy-induced FN among NHL patients in European and Australian clinical practice is substantial; a sizable percentage is attributable to follow-on care and subsequent FN events

Quantitative historical analysis uncovers a single dimension of complexity that structures global variation in human social organization.

Do human societies from around the world exhibit similarities in the way that they are structured, and show commonalities in the ways that they have evolved? These are long-standing questions that have proven difficult to answer. To test between competing hypotheses, we constructed a massive repository of historical and archaeological information known as "Seshat: Global History Databank." We systematically coded data on 414 societies from 30 regions around the world spanning the last 10,000 years. We were able to capture information on 51 variables reflecting nine characteristics of human societies, such as social scale, economy, features of governance, and information systems. Our analyses revealed that these different characteristics show strong relationships with each other and that a single principal component captures around three-quarters of the observed variation. Furthermore, we found that different characteristics of social complexity are highly predictable across different world regions. These results suggest that key aspects of social organization are functionally related and do indeed coevolve in predictable ways. Our findings highlight the power of the sciences and humanities working together to rigorously test hypotheses about general rules that may have shaped human history

Quantitative Historical Analysis Uncovers a Single Dimension of Complexity that Structures Global Variation in Human Social Organization

Do human societies from around the world exhibit similarities in the way that they are structured, and show commonalities in the ways that they have evolved? These are long-standing questions that have proven difficult to answer. To test between competing hypotheses, we constructed a massive repository of historical and archaeological information known as “Seshat: Global History Databank.” We systematically coded data on 414 societies from 30 regions around the world spanning the last 10,000 years. We were able to capture information on 51 variables reflecting nine characteristics of human societies, such as social scale, economy, features of governance, and information systems. Our analyses revealed that these different characteristics show strong relationships with each other and that a single principal component captures around three-quarters of the observed variation. Furthermore, we found that different characteristics of social complexity are highly predictable across different world regions. These results suggest that key aspects of social organization are functionally related and do indeed coevolve in predictable ways. Our findings highlight the power of the sciences and humanities working together to rigorously test hypotheses about general rules that may have shaped human history

Global maps of soil temperature

Research in global change ecology relies heavily on global climatic grids derived from estimates of air temperature in open areas at around 2 m above the ground. These climatic grids do not reflect conditions below vegetation canopies and near the ground surface, where critical ecosystem functions occur and most terrestrial species reside. Here, we provide global maps of soil temperature and bioclimatic variables at a 1-km2 resolution for 0–5 and 5–15 cm soil depth. These maps were created by calculating the difference (i.e. offset) between in situ soil temperature measurements, based on time series from over 1200 1-km2 pixels (summarized from 8519 unique temperature sensors) across all the world\u27s major terrestrial biomes, and coarse-grained air temperature estimates from ERA5-Land (an atmospheric reanalysis by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts). We show that mean annual soil temperature differs markedly from the corresponding gridded air temperature, by up to 10°C (mean = 3.0 ± 2.1°C), with substantial variation across biomes and seasons. Over the year, soils in cold and/or dry biomes are substantially warmer (+3.6 ± 2.3°C) than gridded air temperature, whereas soils in warm and humid environments are on average slightly cooler (−0.7 ± 2.3°C). The observed substantial and biome-specific offsets emphasize that the projected impacts of climate and climate change on near-surface biodiversity and ecosystem functioning are inaccurately assessed when air rather than soil temperature is used, especially in cold environments. The global soil-related bioclimatic variables provided here are an important step forward for any application in ecology and related disciplines. Nevertheless, we highlight the need to fill remaining geographic gaps by collecting more in situ measurements of microclimate conditions to further enhance the spatiotemporal resolution of global soil temperature products for ecological applications