Search Results (16)

In the context of new retail, the development of omni-channels is flourishing. The entry threshold for the clothing industry is low, and the popularity of online shopping has, to some extent, reduced consumers’ perception of the authenticity of clothing. As a result, returns are a serious issue in the clothing industry. This article focuses on a clothing retailer while addressing retail and return issues in the clothing industry. It develops and analyzes models for an online single-channel strategy and two omni-channel showroom strategies: “Experience in Store and Buy Online (ESBO)” with an experience store and “Buy Online and Return in Store (BORS)” with a physical store. These models are used to examine the pricing and return decisions of the retailer in the three strategic scenarios. Additionally, this study considers the impact of fashion trends on demand. It explores pricing and return strategies in two showroom models under the influence of the fashion trend decay factor. Moreover, sensitivity analyses and numerical analyses of the important parameters are performed. This research demonstrates the following: (1) In the case of high return transportation costs and online return hassle costs, clothing retailers can attract consumers to increase profits through establishing offline channels; (2) extending the sales time of fashionable clothing has a positive effect on profits, but blindly prolonging the continuation of the sales time will lead to a decrease in profits; (3) the larger the initial fashion level or the smaller the fashion level decay factor, the greater the optimal retailer profits. The impacts of the initial fashion level and fashion level decay factor on profits are more significant in omni-channel operations. This article aims to identify optimal strategies for retailers utilizing omni-channel operations and offer managerial insights for the sale of fashionable apparel. Full article

Specialized botanical gardens such as a rose garden, or rosarium, play a significant role due to their multifunctional nature surpassing simple gene bank assembly. Thus, this study conducted a detailed analysis of a rose garden through field and desk research, SWOT analysis, and ecosystem services assessment, aiming to determine the major strengths and opportunities, as well as weaknesses and threats that can promote or constrain the establishment of the first national rosarium in Serbia. After the analysis, the need for complete green area reconstruction arose to achieve both attractiveness and usefulness. Featuring old varieties, wild species, and companies’ own specific rose collections, the proposed garden has the potential to contribute major ecosystem services reflected in environmental, societal, and economic purposes. Owing to the uniqueness of the breeding program and collections created in the past decade, specific thematic parts—open field or greenhouse classroom, ‘roses under the glass bell’, abundant river flow, pollinators’ shelter, taste garden, and scent garden—are envisaged in the future exemplary rosarium that would not be only a classroom but a showroom for interested nurseries, small-scale functional food producers, flower shops, or amateur gardeners that would become aware of new cultivars and expand their marketing and utilization. Full article

With the continuous development of rural revitalization and urbanization in China, the sustainable transformation of traditional rural architecture has become increasingly important. This study takes the Thangka exhibition hall in rural Malkang, Sichuan Province, as the research object and proposes a Thangka exhibition hall architectural design centered around solar heating and aiming for near-zero energy consumption. The research method involves establishing a solar energy system model on the roof of the exhibition hall and utilizing solar angle and area calculation formulas along with simulation software to calculate the optimal installation angle and area of solar panels, with the aim of achieving indoor temperatures that meet Thangka protection requirements while achieving zero-energy heating. Preliminary results indicate that this solar-centric near-zero energy architectural design can effectively promote the increase in indoor temperature through solar thermal conversion. Additionally, through calculation and simulation, the optimal installation angle for the solar panels achieving zero-energy heating is determined to be 24.25 with an azimuth angle of −1.2. The optimum installation area for solar panels is 8.2 square meters in the showroom and 2.7 square meters in the storeroom. Among these, the solar panel area for the Thangka exhibition hall constitutes 4.12% of the total area and is required for maintaining Thangka protection temperature requirements throughout the year, while the solar panel area for the storage room constitutes 1.88% and is also needed for the same purpose. Studying the optimal installation angle and area of solar panels can transform the exhibition hall into a near-zero-energy building, meeting the temperature requirements for Thangka preservation and human thermal comfort, while also achieving optimal economic benefits. This provides guidance and a reference for promoting near-zero-energy buildings in rural areas. Full article

The availability of digital copies of historical artifacts modeling the territory through the so-called “plan-reliefs” is important for many reasons: the preservation of the artifact if the physical object is damaged or destroyed, the possibility of creating virtual showrooms and providing researchers a tool to study the object combining information from different sources. For these reasons, a set of plan-reliefs created during World War I on the Italian front and kept by the Italian Historical War Museum of Rovereto (Italy) was surveyed to create digital models of the surfaces, which were georeferenced in the ETRS89 datum. A set of historical military maps of the same period was georeferenced to overlay the sets to the surface in the digital representation and to try to infer clues about the cartographic sources used in the historical artifact creation. The best transformation for georeferencing the maps is different depending on the map scale, map origin, conservation status and number of Ground Control Points. The georeferencing process precision and accuracy were evaluated. The digital models created in this study were compared to the official Digital Terrain Model (DTM) provided by the Regions or the autonomous provinces. The results demonstrate the feasibility of the approach, and the combination of the models with the georeferenced maps is used by historians to describe the process used in the creation of plan-reliefs. Full article

This paper presents the design of an autonomous humanoid robot designed to optimize and enrich customer service in showrooms, e.g., electronic equipment, mobile network operators, and generally in stores with various articles. The proposed humanoid robot design is distinguished by two key components: a sensor-equipped mobile platform with drives and a body featuring a head outfitted with a touch tablet and an RGBD camera. The control system enables autonomous navigation in both known and uncharted environments, with a special focus on diverse, crowded, and cluttered spaces. To enhance its adaptability, this robot is not only fitted with LIDAR sensors but also cliff and ultrasonic sensors. While the interactive ability with humans is an expected functionality, this paper brings forth certain distinct innovations in humanoid robot design for customer service. One of these unique aspects includes the robot’s ability to physically alter its configuration, such as rotating its head and adjusting the height of its torso to maintain line-of-sight with the customer. This capability signifies a novel degree of spatial responsiveness that exceeds static interaction. Moreover, the proposed robot is equipped with a user-friendly gesture recognition system, uniquely designed to detect and recognize simple human hand gestures. This attribute paves the way for understanding simple commands such as requests for assistance. Upon recognizing a request, the robot tailors its services by following the person around the showroom, effectively assisting and answering customer queries or displaying requisite information on its screen. This active assistance model, specifically tailored for human interaction, showcases the robot’s unique capability to respond proactively and dynamically to human inputs. Full article

Advertising and service investment can enhance brand goodwill to increase the sales of branded goods. However, the impact of advertising and services on brand goodwill is not immediate but delayed. At the same time, due to the different service characteristics provided by various channels, the phenomenon of bidirectional free-riding occurs. Therefore, this paper studies the dynamic cooperation between service and advertising in the O2O (online to offline) supply chain dominated by brand owners and explores the impacts of advertising, service delay and service free-riding among channels on the dynamic cooperation decisions of the O2O supply chain. A differential game model between brands and retailers is constructed by incorporating the delay effect and the bidirectional free-riding phenomenon. The optimal advertising and service strategies and performance problems of O2O supply chain enterprises under a centralized decision, brand cost-sharing decision and bilateral cost-sharing decision are compared and analyzed. The influence of delay time, showrooming and webrooming effects on the profit of each firm is investigated by example. The results show that the service strategy, advertising strategy and brand goodwill of the O2O supply chain members are optimal under a centralized decision. Still, the supply chain profit is not necessarily optimal under the delay time, showrooming and webrooming effect coefficients. Bilateral cost-sharing contracts can achieve Pareto improvement of supply chain performance. Appropriate setting of a bilateral cost-sharing ratio can adjust the adverse effects of delay and bidirectional free-riding. The long-term strategies to deal with the delay and bidirectional free-riding phenomena are as follows: the bilateral cost-sharing contract can improve corporate profits. Setting the wholesale price, online direct-selling price and service-sharing ratio by brand owners can effectively promote retailers’ investment in service, achieving a win-win situation. Retailers maintain high pricing and service levels to enhance the brand premium ability of physical stores and achieve long-term development. Full article

Omnichannel retailing is a revolutionary business strategy of recent years which allows customers to engage with retailers using multiple channels and touchpoints to make their shopping experiences better. The main purpose of the current research is to identify the determinants of omnichannel shopping intention for sporting goods. This research applied the UTAUT2 model to study the determinants of omnichannel shopping intention of 406 Indian respondents and tested the relationship using the structural equation model. Responses were collected from December 2021 to January 2022. The empirical result of the research shows the influence of performance expectancy, social influence, effort expectancy, hedonic motivation, habit, and perceived value on omnichannel shopping intention for sporting goods. Among the seven constructs, performance expectancy emerged as the major contributor, followed by hedonic motivation, habit, perceived value, effort expectancy, and social influence of the omnichannel shopping intention. This paper also presented the analysis of the moderating effect of gender and found that performance expectancy, habit, perceived compatibility, and hedonic motivation have significantly different effects on omnichannel shopping intention. These findings provide several important implications for both researchers and sporting goods retailers in developing marketing strategies. Full article

The present paper aims to demonstrate the combined impact of memory, selling price, and exhibited stock on a retailer’s decision to maximizing the profit. Exhibited stock endorses demand and low selling prices are also helpful for creating demand. The proposed mathematical model considers demand as a linear function of selling price and displayed inventory. This work utilized fractional calculus to design a memory-based decision-making environment. Following the analytical theory, an algorithm was designed, and by using the Mathematica software, we produced the numerical optimization results. Firstly, the work shows that memory negatively influences the retailer’s goal of maximum profit, which is the most important consequence of the numerical result. Secondly, raising the selling price will maximize the profit though the selling price, and demand will be negatively correlated. Finally, compared to the selling price, the influence of the visible stock is slightly lessened. The theoretical and numerical results ultimately imply that there can be no shortage and memory restrictions, leading to the highest average profit. The recommended approach may be used in retailing scenarios for small start-up businesses when a warehouse is required for continuous supply, but a showroom is not a top concern. Full article

It is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore circular and sustainable economies. A traditional chain transits to a dual-channel supply chain, extending its online channel for more customers, and keeping its offline channel so as to reduce resource utilization for sustainable business. However, there exists some conflict between offline and online channels, such as the showrooming effect (i.e., customers visit an offline store to experience products but then buy them online with a lower price). This work studies a three-echelon book dual-channel supply chain involving an author, an online publisher and an offline retailer. Based on Stackelberg game theory, it investigates the optimal pricing solutions and the optimal retailer’s service effort level with two copyright models and considers the showrooming effect based on either decentralized or centralized decision-making. Afterwards, it develops a cost-sharing contract to make them achieve Pareto optimality. Furthermore, this research studies the influence of the showrooming effect on the optimal decisions and the profits of each member through theoretical and numerical analyses. The findings show that a well-designed contract can lead dual-channel members to cut down the negative impact of the showrooming effect and realize the win–win situation. Finally, it proposes some managerial insights and possible directions for the future. Full article

In practice, several e-commerce platforms offering online channels not only act as resellers but also serve as the marketplace. However, the existing literature rarely explores the impact of the offline service effort strategy with the showrooming effect on the platform’s optimal sales mode. Considering a supply chain consisting of a manufacturer and a platform, we examine the interplay between the manufacturer’s offline service effort strategy and the platform’s online sales modes. We derive conditions under which each of the four scenarios (adopting the service effort strategy under the agency or reselling modes, not adopting the service effort strategy under the agency or reselling modes) emerges in equilibrium. Our results show that the service effort strategy with the showrooming effect can induce the platform’s sales mode selection. Specifically, when the referral fee is low and the showrooming effect is moderate, the platform may choose the agency mode instead of the reselling mode, while when the referral fee is sufficiently high and the showrooming effect is moderate, the platform may adopt the reselling mode instead of the agency mode. Furthermore, when the competition intensity and showrooming effect are sufficiently small, the service effort strategy will be beneficial to the manufacturer and the platform, creating a win-win situation. When the competition intensity or showrooming effect is sufficiently large, the service effort strategy may cause a prisoner’s dilemma for the manufacturer and the platform. In addition, the supply chain consisting of a manufacturer, an offline store and an online platform is also studied in the extension section, and we find that our main results are valid. Full article

The objective of this study is to ascertain the effects of omni-channel retailing on the promotional strategy of retail organisations in order to better understand how to alter the promotional strategy in accordance with the ever-changing needs of customers and ultimately provide the customer with a seamless experience. This research is based on a critical systematic literature review of articles related to the topics of ‘omni-channel retailing’ and ‘promotional strategy’. The analysis made evident that most literature is focused on developing an understanding of omni-channel retailing; uncovering consumer behaviours in omni-channel retailing; and ways to adapt promotional strategies related to merchandising, sales promotion, selling, and word of mouth. Past research is quite fractured and does not represent a holistic picture of the implications of omni-channel retailing for promotional strategy. The analysis provided in this paper provides a general guideline for researchers and practitioners concerning promotional strategies that can be adopted in omni-channel retailing. Full article

Showrooming is an increasingly popular behaviour in the omnichannel era. The purpose of this paper is to understand the consumer intention to showroom through a technology acceptance and use model based on UTAUT2 that includes value consciousness and purchase involvement as drivers of showrooming intention and mobile dependency as a moderator. Data collected via a survey answered by 659 showroomers were analysed using Partial Least Squares (PLS). Results show that value consciousness, purchase involvement, hedonic motivation and social influence explain mobile showrooming intention and mobile dependency moderates the impact of value consciousness on mobile showrooming intention. Our results offer suggestions for multichannel retailers to deal with showroomers visiting their stores to try to turn them into buyers. Full article

Recently, the showroom model has developed fast for allowing consumers to evaluate a product offline and then buy it online. This paper aims at exploring the optimal information acquisition strategy and its incentive contracts in an e-commerce supply chain with two competing e-tailers and an offline showroom. Based on signaling game theory, we build a mathematical model by considering the impact of experience service and competition intensity on consumers’ demand. We find that, on the one hand, information acquisition promotes supply chain members to obtain demand information directly or indirectly, which leads to forecast revenue. On the other hand, information acquisition promotes supply chain members to distort optimal decisions, which results in signal cost. The optimal information acquisition strategy depends on the joint impact of forecast revenue, signal cost and demand forecast cost. Notably, in some conditions, the offline showroom will not acquire demand information even when its cost is equal to zero. We also design two different information acquisition incentive contracts to obtain Pareto improvement for all supply chain members. Full article

Physical inactivity and chronic stress at work increase the risks of developing metabolic disorders, mental illnesses, and musculoskeletal injuries, threatening office workers’ physical and psychological well-being. Although several guidelines and interventions have been developed to prevent theses subhealth issues, their effectiveness and health benefits are largely limited when they cannot match workday contexts. This paper presents LightSit, a health-promoting system that helps people reduce physically inactive behaviors and manage chronic stress at work. LightSit comprises a sensor mat that can be embedded into an office chair for measuring a user’s sitting posture and heart rate variability and a lighting display that is integrated into a monitor stand to present information unobtrusively, facilitating fitness and relaxation exercises during microbreaks. Following the showroom approach, we evaluated LightSit during a public exhibition at Dutch Design Week 2018. During the eight days of the exhibition, we observed more than 500 sessions of experiences with healthy microbreaks using our prototype. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 50 participants who had office-based jobs and had experienced LightSit. Our qualitative findings indicated the potential benefits of LightSit in facilitating health-promoting behaviors during office work. Based on the insights learned from this study, we discuss the implications for future designs of interactive health-promoting systems. Full article

Retailers and consumers are increasingly “omnichannel”. This means that retailers offer multiple integrated offline and online channels to their customers, while consumers use multiple offline and online channels throughout their shopping journeys. In these shopping journeys, consumers can travel for researching, testing, receiving and returning activities related to a purchase, next to the purchasing itself. It is unclear how such omnichannel consumer behaviour materialises in practice. This information is important for practitioners from retail as well as for society, not in the least because of the environmental impact that shopping trips generate. Existing environmental assessments of retail-related transport and logistics do not account for consumers’ omnichannel shopping and travel behaviour. To fill this gap in research, we set up a case-study collaboration with an omnichannel footwear retailer in Belgium. We collected data on logistics and consumer flows and analysed this data to determine the CO₂ footprint. Our research results in six profiles, of which “the online shopper” that shops online and receives its purchase at home or at a collection point generates the lowest impact. However, when online shoppers travel to stores prior to their e-purchase and become “showroomers”, the external CO₂ costs double compared to “traditional shoppers” that carry out all shopping activities in-store and are more than eight times higher compared to “online shoppers”. Although the case-study context should be taken into account (e.g., in terms of product type, retailer type and geography), a sensitivity analysis demonstrates the robustness of our results. Full article