(Press-News.org) MANHATTAN, KAN. -- With the concept of a store-within-a-store growing across the country, a Kansas State University researcher's work shows the increasing importance of brand reputation and its strong role in governing decisions.
Richard McFarland, associate professor of marketing, and four colleagues recently completed "Understanding Governance Decisions in a Partially Integrated Channel: A Contingent Alignment Framework." Their research will be published in the elite Journal of Marketing Research next year.
The research looks at separate companies who entered a store-within-a-store agreement, which occurs when a manufacturer has its own store and salespeople inside a retailer store. Examples of a store-within-a-store include Estee Lauder using cosmetic stores in department stores, Jones Apparel Group placing salespeople in department stores and Apple Inc. using the Apple Sales Consultants Program, which places Apple salespeople in retail stores. In such stores the manufacturers hire and train their own sales force so that they can control how their brand is marketed and the customer service they provide.
"It's interesting in a practical sense because more companies are starting to do this," McFarland said. "It's important to be able to provide companies with advice on whether they should do it or not. For companies who are doing it, how they manage those relationships has practical implications for retailers."
Although the concept of a store-within-a-store is growing in importance in the United States, it has been popular for years in Asia, and it is beneficial for global companies in the U.S. to be familiar with the store-within-a-store model, McFarland said. The research team used data from Korea for the study and coined the term "partially integrated channel," or PIC, to describe a store-within-a-store.
The store-within-a-store concept is especially common among strongly branded consumer markets for cosmetics, apparel and technology goods, McFarland said.
"These are generally characterized by short product lifestyle and rapidly changing customer preferences," he said. "Because things are changing so quickly, manufacturers want to have flexibility, but at the same time, they want to have salespeople there so that they can have good customer service and good customer support."
While the benefits for both sides are mutual, the research shows that cooperation between the manufacturer, the manufacturer's sales force and the retailer is key for a store-within-a-store to succeed, McFarland said. Manufacturers with rapidly changing products like the flexibility that a retailer can provide, and a store-within-a-store lets the manufacturer have more control of its brand and brand reputation. On the other hand, retailers are able to attract more customers with well-established and well-known products, as well as a knowledgeable sales force.
Brand reputation, market uncertainty and sales force performance ambiguity are key factors in how the three entities interact, McFarland said.
"If brand reputation is high and feedback from the retailer is high, then the manufacturer is going to give more decision power to the salespeople," McFarland said. "If environmental uncertainty is high and brand reputation is high, the manufacturer will be more flexible with negotiations with the retailer."
INFORMATION:
Other researchers involved in the project included: Stephen Kim, associate professor of marketing at Iowa State University; Soongi Kwon, a visiting professor of Korean Studies at Suzhou University in Suzhou Jiangsu, China; Sanggi Son, dean and professor at Daejin University in Suzhou Jiangsu, China; and David Griffith, professor of marketing at Michigan State University.
END
A team from the National Museum of Natural Sciences (CSIC) has analysed the impact of climate change on spotted hyena survival in Europe over 10,000 years ago. These changes played an important role, but the scientists say studies are still needed to look at the influence of human expansion and changes in herbivorous fauna on the definitive extinction of this species across the continent.
"Climate change in the past was not directly responsible for the extinction of the spotted hyena in southern Europe, but it was a factor in its disappearance", Sara Varela, lead author ...
GREENBELT, Md. -- New supercomputer simulations tracking the interactions of thousands of dust grains show what the solar system might look like to alien astronomers searching for planets. The models also provide a glimpse of how this view might have changed as our planetary system matured.
"The planets may be too dim to detect directly, but aliens studying the solar system could easily determine the presence of Neptune -- its gravity carves a little gap in the dust," said Marc Kuchner, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. who led ...
"A giant rhino with a ridiculously supersized head."
"Fifteen long, pointed sideways oriented eye horns: one over the nose, one atop each eye, one at the tip of each cheek bone, and ten across the rear margin of the bony frill."
"A horned face: large horn over the nose and short, blunt eye horns that project strongly to the side."
Such phrases have been used to describe two newly discovered species of dinosaurs with looks only a mother could love. Still, they are drawing the attention and inspiring the imagination of scientists and lay people alike.
Announced today ...
COLUMBUS, Ohio – While birds living in urban areas face more predators than do those in rural areas, that doesn't mean urban birds face more danger from nest robbers.
A six-year study conducted in 19 central Ohio forests from 2004 to 2009 found that, as expected, rural areas that had higher numbers of nest predators such as raccoons, domestic cats, and crows, also showed lower rates of nest survival.
But there was no relation between the number of predators and nest survival in more urbanized areas.
Researchers believe that's because nest predators in urban areas ...
WASHINGTON -- A concerted effort to boost research on women's health over the last two decades has lessened the burden of disease and reduced deaths among women due to cardiovascular disease, breast cancer, and cervical cancer, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine. The effort has yielded less but still significant progress in reducing the effects of depression, HIV/AIDS, and osteoporosis on women, added the committee that wrote the report.
However, several health issues important to women have seen little progress, including unintended pregnancy, autoimmune ...
WASHINGTON -- A decade-long, multibillion dollar effort to restore the Florida Everglades has made tangible albeit slow progress, but additional projects need completion before substantial benefits are seen, says a new congressionally mandated report from the National Research Council. Challenges in achieving targets for both water quality and water flow have become more apparent, requiring further scientific analysis to determine the repercussions of trading off one for the other. Although important scientific advances have been made, continued decline of some aspects ...
Treatment with vitamin C rapidly improves the emotional state of acutely hospitalized patients, according to a study carried out by researchers at Montreal's Jewish General Hospital (JGH) and the affiliated Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research (LDI).
In a double-blind clinical trial, patients admitted to the JGH were randomly assigned to receive either vitamin C or vitamin D supplements for seven to ten days. Patients administered vitamin C had a rapid and statistically and clinically significant improvement in mood state, but no significant change in mood occurred ...
New Haven, Conn.—Scientists have wondered for some time why certain seismic waves travel more quickly through the core-mantle boundary, a thin layer of the Earth's interior that lies between about 1675 and 1800 miles below the surface. Now a new study by Yale University and the University of California, Berkeley sheds light on the mystery by showing how this region behaves under the extreme conditions found so deep in the Earth. The findings, which appear in the Sept. 24 issue of the journal Science, have important implications for understanding how the Earth's internal ...
Psychologists have known for a long time that after you make a choice, you adjust your opinion to think better of the thing you chose. Now a new study has found that this is true even if you don't know the options that you're choosing between.
People change their minds about a choice after they make it. If you ask someone how he feels about Athens and Paris, he might rate them the same. But after you make him choose one as a vacation destination, he'll rate that city higher. This is thought to be a way to reduce the psychological tension that is created by rejecting ...
Across the globe, the diversity of plant and animal species generally increases from the North and South Poles towards the Equator but surprisingly that rule isn't true for soil bacteria, according to a new study by Queen's University biology professor Paul Grogan.
"It appears that the rules determining the patterns for plant and animal diversity are different than the rules for bacteria," says Professor Grogan.
The finding is important because one of the goals in ecology is to explain patterns in the distribution of species and understand the biological and environmental ...
