Purpose
– The study seeks to understand the influences on the prevalence of rural retailing institution of periodic markets. It examines the influence of access to and population of the location on the performance of periodic markets and their effect on the competition between periodic markets and local rural retail stores.
Design/methodology/approach
– Simultaneous cross-sectional study on census data is used to understand changes in performance of periodic markets in the context of growth in retail stores.
Findings
– The superior performance of local retail shop compared to outshopping in periodic markets is contrary to observation in literature developed in the context of urban outshopping.
Practical implications
– Retail chains need to develop a separate program for location of outlets that serve rural areas as access influences retail performance. In rural areas marketers can use traditional periodic markets in addition to conventional retail store given the limited inter-format retail competition.
Originality/value
– This is one of the few studies to explicitly examine periodic markets as a retail format. Outshopping is studied in the context of growth in local retail stores unlike earlier studies in the urban context where the local stores exhibit reduced sales.
Retail institutions offer economic and social benefits to the participants in a market. It is expected that in a less developed economy the social factors influence economic behaviour much more than in developed economies. The rural markets offer increased opportunities for the influence of social factors on economic transactions. This study examined the case of a rural periodic market. To ensure reliability the case study protocol questions reflected propositions developed on the research questions. It was expected that the participants would exhibit the influence of social relations in their market transactions. The results indicated that the economic benefits than social considerations influenced participant behaviour in the rural periodic market. Contrary to expectations not all consumers in a less developed economy exhibit social embeddedness in economic behaviour. Implications are for policymakers involved in planning and regulating rural markets. They need to take into consideration the differing behaviour of consumer groups in designing or regulating retail markets. This study examining the social embeddedness of buyer behaviour in the rural retail context of a less developed economy is presumably the first.
Purpose – This study aims to examine empirically how consumers' attitude towards retail stores gets affected by situational, consumer, store and product characteristic variables when they face out‐of‐stock situations. Design/methodology/approach – Survey method for data collection was used. Data were collected from a sample of 1,207 retail customers in India's unorganized retail sector across five product categories in Varanasi, India. Findings – Results showed that six of the independent variables considered, namely, shopping attitude of respondent, store loyalty (SL), perceived store prices, store distance, shopping frequency, and brand loyalty (in order of importance of impact) significantly influenced consumers' attitude towards retail store in out‐of‐stock. Research limitations/implications – Data were collected only for five product categories and for unorganized retail setting because of which results and findings are not generalizeable to beyond these boundaries. Practical implications – Implications of this for retailers and future research are discussed. Originality/value – Since attitudes towards retail outlets are very important in determining future SL and subsequent profitability, understanding of consumer store attitudes in negative events like stockout is importantly for retailers. The paper provides crucial insights to retailers by identifying independent variables that must be considered while designing their operations.
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