Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) play a significant role in economic development and international trade in Southeast Asia. With increasing global competition, the adoption of digital technologies and sustainable business models has become essential for MSMEs aiming to expand across borders and sustain long-term growth. This study investigates how digital marketing and entrepreneurial capabilities affect sustainable cross-border expansion of MSMEs in Indonesia and Malaysia, with energy efficiency as a mediating factor, using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) analysis. A quantitative, cross-sectional research design was employed, and data were collected through a structured questionnaire from 120 MSME owners and managers involved in digital business and cross-border trade. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, reliability and correlation analysis, and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The results indicate that digital marketing capabilities significantly enhance sustainable cross-border growth, while entrepreneurial capabilities positively influence business growth and strategic flexibility. These findings support the need for MSMEs to transform their retail and consumer marketing strategies, as digital tools foster better engagement and global market reach. Furthermore, energy efficiency practices were found to have a positive effect on sustainable MSME performance and partially mediate the relationship between digital strategies and cross-border expansion. These findings highlight the importance of integrating digital marketing strategies, entrepreneurial competencies, and sustainable practices to strengthen MSME competitiveness. The study suggests that policymakers and business support organizations should promote digital transformation and sustainable entrepreneurship to facilitate MSME growth in an increasingly dynamic and competitive global market.
Hospitality micro and small enterprises (SMEs) operating in island and peripheral economies face persistent challenges related to limited scale, seasonal demand, resource constraints, and the liability of smallness and newness. In such contexts, entrepreneurial survival depends less on formal planning and more on the ability of owner-managers to learn from experience, build legitimacy, and adapt strategically under uncertainty. This study examines how social media engagement and online reviews function as entrepreneurial learning and adaptation mechanisms rather than as conventional marketing tools. Using Weizhou Island as a motivating case, this study conducts a qualitative systematic literature review (SLR) guided by the PRISMA framework, synthesizing recent qualitative and mixed-methods research on hospitality SMEs in island and peripheral tourism settings. The findings show that platform-based feedback enables hospitality entrepreneurs to engage in sensemaking, experiment with incremental changes, and develop dynamic capabilities under conditions of resource scarcity. Social media interactions and online review narratives support legitimacy building through authenticity, responsiveness, and relational trust, while also facilitating learning-by-doing and strategic renewal. These processes are strongly moderated by cultural norms, institutional arrangements, and local embeddedness characteristic of island economies. By integrating insights from entrepreneurial learning, dynamic capabilities, and legitimacy theory, the study advances a process-oriented understanding of how digital platforms support resilience in micro-enterprises. This paper offers theoretical contributions to entrepreneurship research and policy-relevant implications for strengthening SME resilience and self-employment in island and peripheral tourism destinations.
The aim of our paper is to investigate the existence of differences in how generational cohorts are exposed to touchpoints, based on the generational cohort theory, in supermarket retailing. A survey on eight thousand consumers across one European country (Italy) and one Asian country (Japan) was implemented. A series of binomial logistic regressions were employed to identify differences in terms of exposure to touchpoints with reference to the respondents' likelihood of belonging to a specific generational cohort. Frequency of exposure to touchpoints differs among generations in both Italy and Japan. There are differences with reference to most frequent touch-points between Italy and Japan as far as Silent, Baby boomers, and Generation X are concerned. We also found that there are similarities as far as social networks and website touchpoints in both countries on Generation Y. This paper contributes to the retailing and consumer behaviour domains by expanding the lens from media and channels to touchpoints. Results point to the effectiveness of market segmentation based on the generational cohorts instead of age groups (i.e. senior, middle age segments) in terms of touchpoints. The work shows to what extent findings on generational cohorts in terms of touchpoint exposure are consistent between two different countries and provides actionable managerial implications on how to optimize interventions and allocation of resources to touchpoints for targeting different generations.
Retail and consumption stand at a precipice, tethered to the urgency of the planetary crisis and propelled by the accelerating force of digital transformation. At this crossroads, we introduce imagined retail and consumption futures as the organising concept for this special issue on the Future of Retail and Consumption. Drawing on Jens Beckert's theory of fictional expectations, we argue that the future of retail and consumption is a contested terrain of competing narratives that, by motivating present action, partially bring themselves into being and obscure others that go unfunded and unbuilt. We articulate three features of imagined futures (narrativity, performativity, and contestation) and four tensions that structure how they are negotiated in scholarship and in practice: accumulation (circular economy versus growth capitalism), accountability (consumer responsibilisation versus collective provisioning), sovereignty (consumer agency versus platform governance), and tangibility (physical circulation versus digital dematerialisation). The seven contributions to the special issue are illustrated through this framework, making plausible a future in which sustainability is approached as a systemic property of well-designed retail environments, irreducible to the cumulative outcome of individually enlightened choices. We close with a research agenda that considers how certain retail and consumption futures become plausible, funded, designed, and normalised, while others remain peripheral, underfunded, or difficult to imagine.
The rapidly growing Q-Commerce sector in India has made a significant transformation in the world of consumer behaviour research that is heavily focused on speed, convenience, and customisation. The current academic article intends to analyse the association between the brand passion and the customer engagement as well as the brand evangelism with AI-driven personalization being a moderating factor. Based on Social Exchange Theory, Engagement Theory and Experiential Marketing Theory, the research investigates how customer enthusiasm about a given brand promotes consumer engagement, which leads to subsequent brand evangelism. A quantitative online survey utilized Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) with 374 respondents from Generation Z and Millennials in the Delhi NCR region. The results verified that the relationship between brand passion and brand evangelism is substantially mediated by consumer engagement. However, although AI personalization enhances these relationships, the moderating effects are minimal, suggesting that engagement strategies should incorporate or be supplemented by AI personalization. Emotional and cognitive involvement were identified as catalysts of brand evangelism, serving as a rationale for the burgeoning engagement-based marketing strategies in Q-commerce.
Global digitalization, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has fundamentally altered how customers engage with banking services. Focusing specifically on incumbent retail banks' online banking websites and mobile banking applications, this study examines retail digital banking (RDB) channel acceptance rather than the broader digital banking domain that also includes digital-only banks and other fintech services. This study presents a large-scale meta-analysis of 117 studies on RDB acceptance, synthesizing 645 correlation-based effect sizes across 58 distinct relationships. The core contribution is the Retail Digital Banking Acceptance (RDBA) framework, which integrates five driver dimensions (user-centric, system-centric, trust and security, service and support, and social influence) with an outcome dimension spanning attitude, behavioural intention, and usage. The framework is intended as an evidence-based organizing structure that clarifies which relationships confirm established acceptance theories and which extend them through cross-domain linkages specific to incumbent-bank channels. These insights also inform the Retail Digital Banking Strategy Roadmap (RDBSR), a practitioner-focused blueprint for optimizing online and mobile banking. Finally, using the Theory, Context, Characteristics, and Methodology (TCCM) framework, this study proposes future research directions for RDB channels and related digital financial service contexts. Researchers and practitioners can apply these findings to better understand the drivers of RDB channel acceptance and to design more targeted engagement strategies.
This study employs a qualitative case study approach to explore how collaborative logistics pooling enhances last-mile delivery performance and strengthens supply chain resilience in the retail sector. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, roundtable discussions, and on-site observations with stakeholders involved in a real-world pooling initiative. By analysing a real-world logistics pooling initiative, the research identifies how shared logistics resources, such as transportation and warehousing, address key challenges in modern supply chains, including cost efficiency, environmental sustainability, and adaptability to disruptions. The study reveals significant cost savings, enhanced flexibility, improved visibility, and stronger collaboration among stakeholders. Consolidated deliveries and optimized routes reduced transportation costs and carbon emissions. Shared digital platforms enabled real-time coordination, ensuring swift responses to disruptions and fluctuating demand. These findings highlight the strategic value of pooling in building adaptive, efficient, and sustainable supply chains. The study's focus on practical and strategic implications, offers valuable insights for addressing modern supply chain challenges in competitive and dynamic environments.
The rise of online second-hand marketplaces marks a significant shift in the future of retail and consumption. Second-hand trade has re-emerged as a digitally mediated practice embedded in broader transformations toward circularity, digitalization, and post-ownership consumer models. This study presents a systematic literature review of consumer motivations and barriers in online second-hand commerce, examining how attitudes, perceptions, and evaluative factors shape engagement with these platforms. The review shows that consumers are motivated by economic savings, sustainability concerns, operational convenience, and identity expression, while facing persistent barriers related to product and seller uncertainty, psychological discomfort, and platform-related constraints. These coexisting motivations and barriers highlight structural and cultural frictions in the transition toward more circular and hybrid retail models. This paper contributes to debates on the future of retail by clarifying the mechanisms through which second-hand commerce challenges traditional hierarchies of value and ownership. It also highlights the limits of platform-mediated markets in advancing genuine circularity. We conclude by proposing a research agenda addressing ethical, cultural, and systemic questions emerging from this rapidly expanding domain.
Grocery retailing faces a transformation caused by increasing online offerings and digital technologies. Traditional grocery retailers develop into omnichannel retailers by providing a seamless shopping experience across their physical stores, online channels, and touchpoints. The special issue 'Omnichannel in Grocery Retailing' addresses these dynamic developments in the grocery sector with a focus on omnichannel retailing. The papers discuss (1) the acceptance and (2) barriers of online grocery shopping, (3) digital technologies and features and (4) the backend of omnichannel grocery retailers. This editorial provides a structured overview over the papers and discusses future research avenues for omnichannel grocery retailing.
In this article, we discuss the connection between shopping centers and the development of circular economy (CE), a topic scarcely examined in prior research. Our purpose is to shed light on the role of shopping center as a platform in facilitating key actor relations in promoting CE. The theoretical framework provides insights into CE retail and shopping center's role as a platform that enables the facilitation of CE actors and practices. The research is based on the case study methodology, the case being Ratina shopping center located in the city center of Tampere, Finland. The qualitative analysis relies primarily on interviews with shopping center operator, waste management operator, and various retailers. Results indicate that circularity materializes in the interplay between shared processes and contractual arrangements facilitated by the shopping center, and individual retailers' circularity efforts in their own business models and value chains. In practice, CE promotion becomes visible through circular business models and offerings, effective waste management systems, and advanced data collection and provision within the shopping center. This study provides forward-looking insights and managerial implications into the shopping center dynamics that could be used for supporting and accelerating less advanced retailers while enabling advanced retailers to implement their own innovative practices.
This study examines how background music is experienced and interpreted in supermarkets and how these experiences relate to shopping behaviour. Moving beyond a simple 'positive versus negative' dichotomy, the research adopts a qualitative, mechanism-oriented perspective to investigate when music servers as a supportive background and when it becomes a salient, potentially disruptive foreground stimulus. The research was conducted in supermarkets in the country of Georgia, and the data were collected using semi-structured interviewees with eighteen participants (fourteen customers, two store assistants, and two experts) and analysed thematically. The results show that background music generally influences emotional experience, pace, and browsing behaviour in an indirect and contingent way rather than direct behavioural control. The majority of customers associated music with comfort, relaxation, and engagement, while silence was often described as emotionally dull and acoustically uncomfortable due to increased awareness of ambient store noise. Enjoyable and congruent music was connected to slower shopping speed, longer shopping time, and increased willingness to unplanned purchases, primarily through mood enhancement and perceived time extension. However, the effects of music were not consistent. Once music becomes salience, it actually shifts from background ambience to foreground distraction, irritating, distracting, and discomforting customers while they shop. Notably, distraction was seen as related to the task. Salient music disrupted higher-effort, thoughtful purchasing moments more than it did simple, low-effort grocery choices. Across participants, tempo, volume, genre, and perceived cultural and situational fit were the key factors in whether music helped or disrupted. Preferences showed a combination of internationally known genres and local music hints, while also focusing on moderation and being non-intrusive. The study contributes context-specific evidence from an underexamined setting and refines a process-based explanation of heterogeneity of retail music effects by integrating affective response, attentional salience, and decision effort into a single interpretive framework.
Online retail is growing rapidly, but fierce and global competition poses a challenge for retailers seeking to compete on values beyond price. Research in product and physical retail branding shows that building a relevant brand image can increase consumers' willingness to pay a premium over competing brands with similar products. However, the academic literature lacks understanding of how branding can influence consumers to pay a price premium in the growing online retailing sector, which is frequently conceptualized as distinct from traditional product marketing and traditional retailing contexts. This study aims to address this gap by developing a conceptual framework of online store brand image on willingness to pay. Six brand image dimensions: Social prestige, Digital Fulfillment, Sustainability, Digital Inspiration, Price, and assortment are identified. In order to highlight the unique contribution of price premium as the outcome, rather than loyalty and willingness to buy, which have been discussed within online retailing, this study also examines how the six online retail images influence brand loyalty. Results show that Social Prestige and Sustainability Image of the retailer have the strongest impact on willingness to pay a premium, followed by Digital Fulfillment and Digital Inspiration, while Digital Fulfillment and Price Image influence brand loyalty the most. In groceries, Digital Fulfillment Image dominates both outcomes. Sustainability Image impacts price premium, especially in fashion and electronics, but less so regarding loyalty. Social Prestige image consistently predicts both outcomes across categories, and Digital Inspiration impacts hedonic products more than utilitarian ones.
Although fashion retailers increasingly engage with sustainable initiatives, such as resale programs and garment repair services, the fashion system remains largely entrenched in unsustainable practices. In this case study, we examine the transition work (TW) undertaken by members of a sustainable fashion consortium in Tampere, Finland. The consortium includes several niche actors, such as sustainable fashion start-ups, and is led by the renowned department store Sokos Tampere, which belongs to the largest Finnish retailer, S-Group. Together, they aim to drive sustainability transitions within the relatively stable institutional context of fashion retail. We adopt TW as an institutional work-informed lens to examine how niche and incumbent actors engage in sustainability transitions within the fashion retail context. In doing so, we further develop TW as a conceptualization of the (de)institutionalization of niche initiatives within a socio-technical regime. The qualitative data consist of seven in-depth interviews with key consortium actors, ethnographic observation and in situ interviews with customers. In addition, documents such as news articles, company presentations, and social media postings were included in the analysis. By examining the establishment of a sustainable fashion floor within a department store, we contribute to transition research by (1) advancing understanding of transition work in retail contexts, (2) extending sustainability transition studies to consumer-facing environments, and (3) highlighting the role of collaboration between niche and incumbent actors in driving institutional change. In addition to theoretical contributions, we offer practical guidance for managers planning sustainability initiatives in fashion retailing.
Safety is becoming an increasingly important concern for retailers, both in physical stores and online. Reports indicate that criminality is on the rise, with incidents of theft, violence and harassment becoming more common. While criminology research has addressed this issue to some extent, particularly within the area of crime prevention through environmental design, this remains a relatively under-researched topic. Simultaneously, research within the retail sector is still largely dominated by ideas centred on creating attractive environments and immersive experiences, with its roots in servicescape research. This paper challenges these assumptions by introducing safety as an additional consideration in retail design. A critical case study was conducted in Sweden during the pandemic, demonstrating how retailers had to balance service with safety. Insights from this case study, based on interviews and complementary observations, form the basis of an analytical framework in which safety is prioritised over service. This framework is referred to as a 'safescape'. The results demonstrate how the informationscapes shifted from product- and brand-oriented information to safety-oriented information, how socialscapes shifted from encouraging social interaction to managing interaction to reduce risks, and how experiencescapes shifted from creating extraordinary experiences to creating safe and controlled environments, both in physical stores and online. Although many of the artefacts from the pandemic are no longer visible in stores, these changes have collectively normalised and legitimised increased behavioural control in retail environments. Furthermore, this development opens a discussion about how retailers can address safety aspects going forward. This paper contributes to the field by proposing an analytical framework for addressing safety considerations in retail.
When marketing private labels (PL), managers must decide between two PL branding strategies: 1) linking the PL with the respective retailer's brand name (linked PL branding strategy) or 2) avoiding any link between the PL and the retailer's brand (stand-alone PL branding strategy). To improve retailers' PL branding strategies this paper is the first considering the degree of specialization as a moderator. While focused retailers have a widely homogenous product portfolio (i.e. high degree of specialization), generic retailers do not have any focus on a specific product category (i.e. low degree of specialization). An online experiment with a 2 (PL branding strategies) & times;2 (degree of specialization) & times;2 (PL tier: economy vs. premium) between-subjects design with 358 participants was conducted. As a result, the moderator degree of specialization has a significant impact in combination with the PL branding strategies and the PL tier, demonstrated by a significant three-way interaction. Thus, for focused retailers, our findings suggest that a linked strategy may be more favorable for premium PLs, whereas a stand-alone strategy could be more appropriate for economy PLs. For generic retailers, the results indicate that a stand-alone PL branding strategy might be more effective for both economy and premium PLs.
This study investigates the young consumers' purchase intention towards Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) brands using the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). The study extends TPB by incorporating Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) and AI-enabled personalized recommendations. A sample of 449 young Indian consumers participated in the online questionnaire-based survey. The results reveal that purchase intention alone does not significantly predict actual behavior; however, AI-enabled recommendations significantly moderate this relationship. Digital experience and sustainability consciousness strongly influence consumer attitudes, which consequently affect purchase intention. Among subjective norms, peer influence has the most significant influence, followed by influencer endorsements and expert recommendations. Perceived behavioral control and FOMO also influence purchase intention significantly. This study answers the key question of what drives young consumers to purchase D2C brands. Theoretical contributions and the implications for D2C brands are also presented.
Retail chains continually reconfigure their store networks to serve their customers and maximize profits. One consequence of these actions is changes in the distances between consumers' residences and nearest stores, altering their transportation-related CO2 emissions. Therefore, this study examines the environmental impact of the reconfiguration of the IKEA store network in Sweden during the twenty-first century, comparing it to the one that minimizes consumers' CO2 emissions. The expansion of the IKEA network in Sweden between 2004 and 2016, adding four (2004-2007) and then three (2013-2016) additional stores, reduced consumers' average travel distance to their nearest store from 87 to 65.2 km. However, using our decision support tool, eCOmpass, this reduction could have been achieved after the first round of additions since the distance-minimizing locations for the stores established in 2004-2007 would have reduced average travel distance to 64.9 km.
This study applies a positivist, deductive S-O-R framework to examine how social-media-marketing stimuli - interactivity, informativeness, and WOM - shape Chinese consumers' online purchase intentions for local beauty products, with gratification as a mediator. Using a cross-sectional survey of 343 Chinese online beauty users and SEM, results show informativeness (beta = 0.335) and interactivity (beta = 0.315) strongly drive gratification, which in turn predicts purchase intention (beta = 0.244). Direct effects from informativeness (beta = 0.273) and interactivity (beta = 0.292) to purchase intention are substantial; WOM has a smaller direct effect (beta = 0.158). Indirect effects via gratification are 0.082, 0.077, and 0.071, indicating partial mediation. Reliability is high (alpha approximate to 0.848-0.855; AVE approximate to 0.62-0.63); discriminant validity warrants CFA or higher-order modeling and HTMT checks. Findings support integrating gratification as a mediator within S-O-R and offer practical guidance for designing interactive, informative, and credible online experiences to boost trust, engagement, and conversion in China's local-beauty market, with clear implications for marketers, platforms, and policy makers. The findings demonstrate that interactivity, informativeness, and word-of-mouth significantly influence purchase intention both directly and indirectly through gratification. By positioning gratification as an organismic evaluative mechanism within the S-O-R framework, the study advances theoretical integration between stimulus-response modeling and uses-and-gratifications logic. This integrated perspective clarifies how affective-experiential evaluation mediates social commerce influences in the Chinese beauty market and contributes to a more nuanced understanding of digital persuasion dynamics.
