Journal of Business and Retail Management Research

Abstract This paper explores the environmental efforts of retailers in the United States to reduce their impact on the planet. A sample of thirty five annual reports and corporate social responsibility reports from eight retailers were analyzed. Findings suggest that at a strategic level all sample retailers commit to integrating waste minimization goals into their operations. Target, Wal-Mart, Albertson and Safeway were the most successful. This study also suggests that specialty stores and department stores environmental commitments are more aspirational than operational.

The number of older adults remaining or returning to the labor force is growing due to the financial and social benefits associated with work. Although businesses recognize that older workers will be vital to the global economy in the future, few studies have examined the job designs that optimize generational needs for older workers. This study explored the perceptions of job characteristics (opportunities for decision-making, skill variety, coworker support, supervisor support) as related to healthy aging (social network, emotional support, personal sense of control, generativity) in 109 older sales associates in the retail homebuilding industry. Older workers completed four standardized surveys measuring job characteristics and qualities associated with healthy aging. The job of a sales associate enabled them opportunities to make decisions, use a variety of skills, and experience social support in their jobs. These job design characteristics contributed to healthy aging outcomes of generativity and personal control. The most important job design characteristics for healthy aging were skill variety and coworker support. Recommendations are provided for supervising older workers based on these findings.

Every retail web site is actively seeking out new innovations and approaches that create competitive advantage and increase the profitability. In general, retailers constantly monitor the behaviour of the real shoppers on the website and any changes in the market requirements. This paper presents a chat invitation web funnel structure, profiling web visitors and selection of hot leads for retail business processes through scoring method using geographic region, product page and other factors. Choosing the right hot prospects through rule base real time chat invitation method based on product type, time on page, cart load, search behavior, cookie information etc. and providing chat to those hot prospects is a special merit to this work. Active rules selection process is done using rule effectiveness indicator and chat load contribution which ensures sales revenue, chat volume and profit margin. An indirect increase in customer delight for interacting with representatives is also expected.

Recent advances in data collection technology and computing power yield opportunities to apply robust analytical methods to retail. Additional profitability can be obtained by leveraging data-mining techniques and optimization models to decisions that have heretofore been based heavily on experiential understanding. Scientific methods can be applied to the revenue-driving areas of merchandise such as assortment, pricing, placement, and promotion to obtain further insight and make more precise decisions.

The main purpose of this paper is to determine whether brand awareness, brand association, brand service quality and brand loyalty factors can be taken as the elements of mall equity elements in a second order context. The analyses revealed that all mall equity elements can be loaded to mall equity dimension. These four dimensions have a total of 15 items. In this study, we empirically demonstrate that mall equity structure parallels that of brand equity as a second order model

Brand extensions have become a famous strategy for many of companies since many years ago. It’s success depends on acceptance and evaluations of consumers about brand extension. Thus,our purpose is to identify the effective factors on consumers primary attitudes formation towards brand extension of Pegah company of Kerman .We understood that external information, knowledge about parent brand/extension category, affect toward parent brand/extension category and fit perception influence attitudes toward brand extensions .Also, increasing consumer expertise, increases the rate of effect of fit perception, consumer knowledge about parent brand/extension category, affect toward parent brand/ extension category and external information on attitudes towards brand extension. Increasing consumer self-monitoring increases the rate of effect of external information on attitudes towards brand extension .Increasing consumer age decreases the rate of effect of external information on attitudes towards brand extension.

Food purchase behavior of consumers in the state of Punjab has significantly changed due to an increase in the per capita disposable income, higher penetration of media, urbanisation, education and health awareness, movement of households towards higher income groups, changes in lifestyle and family structure. Consumer buying behavior for food and grocery products has always been influenced by socio demographic factors like age, gender, income etc The present study attempts the influence of consumer demographic characteristics on attitudes and preference of food and grocery shopping.

The retail market in India is facing slowdown with the ongoing financial crisis happening across the world markets. Since the markets always have internally linked with each other, the impact of the crisis is generally shared among all. The inflation or the economic slowdown is adversely affecting the retail industry. With the suddenly disturbed economical status, consumers are gradually losing interest on buying. And for the interested, the unbalanced income, followed by the economic slowdown, is not meeting their buying requirements. Recessions do offer a myriad of opportunities for those marketers who understand marketplace dynamics and who are willing to plan thoughtfully for recession survival, learn from the problems and then move on to prosperity.

Entrepreneurship and innovation are considered among the main characteristics of strategic thinking in business organizations today because of their complicated effects on designing and executing the different activities of such organizations, especially the marketing activities which constitute the core of all other activities. In this context, many researchers confirm that the two vital tasks that should be undertaken by top management is marketing and innovation, both are interdependent and interrelated. Innovation is a vital key to the organization survival at the top competitive level and in helping create marketing leaders. The compatibility between entrepreneurship and innovation create marketing strategies that are characterized by entrepreneurship and innovation, such strategies involve innovative methods that transform existing products and services into new ones with high quality that adds value to existing businesses. Entrepreneurship is the process of seeking and utilizing opportunities available in the business environment or those opportunities realized through innovation to create value to business organizations. The economics war at the present is "the war waged to create talents", innovation. This means that the organization must be entrepreneurial in strategic planning for its marketing activities through making use of all innovative ideas and methods that secure its competitive position in different markets. The objective of this study is to clarif

The term strategic cost management has a broad focus, it is not confined to the continuous reduction of costs and controlling of costs and it is far more concerned with management's use of cost information for decision-making. Strategic cost management is important to organizations because it is more than focusing on costs; in the successful companies of the 21st century costs will not be the only most important factor, but also value and revenue consider critical factors in the success of companies. At this point the researcher advocates that strategic cost management is a philosophy, an attitude, and a set of techniques to contribute in shaping the future of the company. Authors suggested a framework which has far more impacts on any organization compare to traditional cost management.

The mind-set of voters, taking part in general elections of Pakistan has matured over the years. Politically, they have become more aware and at the same time demanding as well. Therefore, it is argued that the political parties, in the near future, shall have to plan their political marketing in a more responsive, accountable and in a professional manner. That could be the major possible reason that research interest in application of brand management principles to political parties is continuously increasing in developed countries. Managing a political party on the basis of brand management is very challenging task. But, by applying traditional branding theories to political marketing, it is possible to develop an increased knowledge of brand behavior in politics. In addition to brand attributes, trust plays a significant role in developing long-term relationship with voters. Voters make electoral choices analogous to commercial brand typology to choose among the available choices based on trust. Election results are evident of the fact that voters are continuously switching parties due to lack of trust in politics of the Pakistan. Purpose of this paper is to identify the possible reasons of decline in trust and the role of trust in making electoral choices. Specifically, this paper investigates three core questions. First, what are the reasons for candidates’ decline in trust? Secondly, what are the key factors, according to the political experts, that will h

Corporate governance has shifted from its focus on agency conflicts to address issues of ethics, accountability, transparency, and disclosure. Moreover, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has increasingly focused on corporate governance as a vehicle for incorporating social and environmental concerns into the business decision-making process, benefiting not only financial investors but also employees, consumers, and communities. Currently, corporate governance is being linked more and more with business practices and public policies that are stakeholder-friendly. This study concurs with research findings from the extant literature that good practice in corporate governance, social responsibility and business ethics. This article examines these developments and their impact on the formulation of a hybridized body of business legal norms by proceeding in three stages: First, the article explores the recent transformations in the regulation of corporate governance, corporate social responsibility and ethics. Second, it reads these transformations as a convergence that encompasses both corporate self-regulation and the efforts by various social groups to make it more effective. Third, the article discusses the prospects and challenges of this convergence by outlining a series of conceptual and methodological inquiries as well as policy ramifications to be pursued by scholars and practitioners in the field of law and corporate conduct.