How do retailers increase the benefits of buyer innovativeness?

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop and empirically test a model investigating the relationship among inter-departmental communication, buyer innovativeness, and retail competitiveness. The authors also explore whether a retail strategy of supply base diversification for managing suppliers moderates the association between innovativeness and competitiveness. Design/methodology/approach Hypotheses were tested using a structural equation model and survey data drawn from general merchandise managers of 149 supermarket retailers in Japan. Findings The results indicate that inter-departmental communication between merchandising and store divisions drives innovativeness among retail buyers and ultimately strengthens firm competitiveness. Moreover, when buyer innovativeness is evident and less actively the retail buyers utilize supply base diversification, the stronger is the retailer’s competitiveness. The study failed to find any direct impact of inter-departmental communication on retail competitiveness. Practical implications This study offers managerial insights into the roles that buyer innovativeness, inter-departmental communications, and supply base diversification play in developing effective competitive strategies. Originality/value This study makes two key contributions. First, it is novel in using inter-departmental communication to explain the antecedents of buyer innovativeness. Second, drawing on the power-dependence theory, the authors extend the well-established innovativeness-performance linkage by exploring the moderation effect of supply base diversification.

Factors Impacting Digital Payment Adoption: An Empirical Evidence from Smart City of Dubai

“…Perceived personal innovation was found to have a significant relationship with the consumers' actual use of e-payment in Dubai, which supported the third hypothesis H3, which was in line with many past studies. [18], [34], [35]. And this implied that the extent to which individuals consider themselves as technology leaders and pioneers is considered an important factor influencing the user's adoption of e-payment.…”

“…Innovativeness is defined as the extent to which individuals consider themselves as technology leaders and pioneers [33]. This factor has been considered as an important factor influencing user's adoption of e-payment systems [18], [34], [35]. Thus, it is hypothesized that: H3 -There is a significant relationship between perceived personal innovativeness and consumers' perception toward epayments.…”

Effects of retail organisation design on improving private label merchandising

“…store division) and inter-organisational (i.e. suppliers) divisions are multiple and sophisticated (Kim et al, 2018). For better PL merchandising, retail managers should design an optimal control system (i.e.…”

“…They primarily fulfil the buying function, which is another critical merchandising activity. Merchandising is a series of retail practices and processes from sourcing to selling merchandise to attract customers (Kim et al, 2018). These merchandising activities include searching for suppliers and selecting merchandise, negotiating with suppliers, setting selling prices and margins and developing sales promotion methods including shelf space allocation within stores.…”

The influence of conflict with suppliers on retailers’ private label performance

“…There is considerable interest among retailers and suppliers, and previous studies on conflict in Japanese retailer – supplier relationships have contributed to our understanding of how these relationships operate from the perspective of power and dependence (Chung et al , 2008; Kim et al , 2018; Takashima and Kim, 2016). However, they provide little guidance on the link between PL types and retailer–supplier conflict.…”