![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vlIghkgVzEiaS4dwiSLvSxuYKVV2XK42ZJTvXrXbbiUYfPdXB4lrY_Q-AJOHg6tnKvqW3V73kWQlqd_Juwi5e5ofVxMjE4t63EOeNa_Yc=s0-d){kind=small}
Public release date: 24-Jan-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Phil Ciciora
pciciora@illinois.edu
217-333-2177
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. A retailer's optimal store layout is the result of balancing the interests of two different types of markets consumers and suppliers, says new research co-written by a University of Illinois business professor.
According to Yunchuan "Frank" Liu, a retailer's strategic manipulation of store layout is driven by an incentive to balance the shopping process of "fit-uncertain consumers" and the pricing behavior of upstream suppliers.
"Retailers face two different kinds of markets the consumers who buy goods, and the manufacturers that supply goods," he said. "It's a very important variable for local retailers and marketing managers to play with in this era of increased competition with online retailers, and it has important implications for companies and consumers."
The study, which will appear in the journal Marketing Science, is the first paper to formally study the significance of store layouts, said Liu, who co-wrote the study with Zheyin (Jane) Gu, a professor of marketing at the State University of New York, Albany.
"If we look at the current retailing environment, local retailers are in intense competition with online retailers, which means real-world retailers really need to think about how they're going to differentiate themselves," Liu said.
Although consumers live in an information-rich environment, where they know just about everything reviews, price and quality about a product before they handle it, they know virtually nothing about the unique "fit" of the product until they walk into a store and handle the product, Liu says.
"For many products, consumers typically remain uncertain about a product's fit until physically inspecting it," he said. "That could mean how a shirt feels when you try it on, or what a certain size tablet feels like in the consumers' hands. And since the consumer has to travel to the store and compare the products, that is to the local retailer's advantage, because that's something that online retailers can't do."
Another way retailers can compete with online merchants is by making the physical act of shopping as convenient as possible for consumers. In a market characterized by what the researchers call "consumer-fit uncertainty," a retailer may design the layout of a store to facilitate the simultaneous inspection of products, Liu says.
"For basic goods like toothbrushes, the fit probability is really high, because to most consumers, a toothbrush is a toothbrush," he said. "In that case, the retailer should group all toothbrushes together in the same location, forcing the manufacturers to compete on price."
But making the consumer shopping experience as easy as possible may not be the best retail strategy for certain products, Liu says.
According to the research, sometimes retailers might want manufacturers to compete on location in the store, even if it's inconvenient for consumers, which may sound counterintuitive to marketing managers.
"Sometimes it's not in retailers' interests to make certain things convenient to consumers, because they have to consider the balance between the consumer market and the manufacturer market," Liu said. "By affecting consumers' fit inspection processes, the retailer's store layout design also influences pricing behaviors of upstream manufacturers."
Not only do marketing managers have to decide whether to group competing firms' products together or separately, they also must balance that strategy with consumers' perception of the store.
"Think about Bloomingdale's versus Sears high-end luxury items versus basic items," Liu said. "Sears puts all of a manufacturers' products together. If you're looking for a table at Sears, they're all stocked together. If you go to Bloomingdale's, you'll notice that they sell furniture by brands. If you go to this room, it has everything from one manufacturer. If you want to look at another set of table and chairs, you have to go to another room."
That's because for basic products, such as the table from Sears, the product's fit probability is very high, Liu says.
"But if you go to Bloomindale's, they have the high-end furniture and for high-end products, people have different tastes," he said. "So Sears wants manufacturers to compete on price, while Bloomingdale's wants manufacturers to compete for the best location in the store."
It also depends on the product itself, Liu says.
"Even within high-end stores, individual product strategies will be different," he said. "For some product categories, such as kitchenware, which is quite standard, even a high-end retailer will sell everything together."
Name-brand clothes, however, are usually sold by the brand.
"Macy's puts some goods from competing manufacturers together, but if you look at clothing jeans, shirts, sweaters they usually sell them by brand," he said. "Calvin Klein is here, but Ralph Lauren is way over there."
But for low-fit probability products such as shirts, where each shirt is different, "even if retailers put them all together, like toothbrushes, the price competition is not that intense, because consumers have different preferences for shirts than they do for toothbrushes," Liu says.
"Even if one shirt manufacturer is running a promotion with a lower price than the competition if that shirt doesn't fit me; if its material irritates my skin; if it doesn't have the color I like, it doesn't matter how low the price is, because I won't buy it," he said.
"In this case, if the retailer sells all of the products together, it doesn't intensify the competition from the manufacturers. So the retailer should put the products in different locations so the manufacturers have to compete on the locations rather than on prices."
Although many retailers also offer the price-matching policy with online retailers like Amazon.com, that's really not the smartest strategy, according to Liu.
"Retailers probably do not want to play the pricing game with online retailers," he said. "They have certain inherent advantages in their store, in that the consumer has to find the right 'fit' for certain products. That's the frontier on which they have the advantage. So they should not give ground by playing the pricing game."
###
Editor's note: To contact Yunchuan "Frank" Liu, call 217-244-2749; email liuf@illinois.edu.
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 24-Jan-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Phil Ciciora
pciciora@illinois.edu
217-333-2177
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. A retailer's optimal store layout is the result of balancing the interests of two different types of markets consumers and suppliers, says new research co-written by a University of Illinois business professor.
According to Yunchuan "Frank" Liu, a retailer's strategic manipulation of store layout is driven by an incentive to balance the shopping process of "fit-uncertain consumers" and the pricing behavior of upstream suppliers.
"Retailers face two different kinds of markets the consumers who buy goods, and the manufacturers that supply goods," he said. "It's a very important variable for local retailers and marketing managers to play with in this era of increased competition with online retailers, and it has important implications for companies and consumers."
The study, which will appear in the journal Marketing Science, is the first paper to formally study the significance of store layouts, said Liu, who co-wrote the study with Zheyin (Jane) Gu, a professor of marketing at the State University of New York, Albany.
"If we look at the current retailing environment, local retailers are in intense competition with online retailers, which means real-world retailers really need to think about how they're going to differentiate themselves," Liu said.
Although consumers live in an information-rich environment, where they know just about everything reviews, price and quality about a product before they handle it, they know virtually nothing about the unique "fit" of the product until they walk into a store and handle the product, Liu says.
"For many products, consumers typically remain uncertain about a product's fit until physically inspecting it," he said. "That could mean how a shirt feels when you try it on, or what a certain size tablet feels like in the consumers' hands. And since the consumer has to travel to the store and compare the products, that is to the local retailer's advantage, because that's something that online retailers can't do."
Another way retailers can compete with online merchants is by making the physical act of shopping as convenient as possible for consumers. In a market characterized by what the researchers call "consumer-fit uncertainty," a retailer may design the layout of a store to facilitate the simultaneous inspection of products, Liu says.
"For basic goods like toothbrushes, the fit probability is really high, because to most consumers, a toothbrush is a toothbrush," he said. "In that case, the retailer should group all toothbrushes together in the same location, forcing the manufacturers to compete on price."
But making the consumer shopping experience as easy as possible may not be the best retail strategy for certain products, Liu says.
According to the research, sometimes retailers might want manufacturers to compete on location in the store, even if it's inconvenient for consumers, which may sound counterintuitive to marketing managers.
"Sometimes it's not in retailers' interests to make certain things convenient to consumers, because they have to consider the balance between the consumer market and the manufacturer market," Liu said. "By affecting consumers' fit inspection processes, the retailer's store layout design also influences pricing behaviors of upstream manufacturers."
Not only do marketing managers have to decide whether to group competing firms' products together or separately, they also must balance that strategy with consumers' perception of the store.
"Think about Bloomingdale's versus Sears high-end luxury items versus basic items," Liu said. "Sears puts all of a manufacturers' products together. If you're looking for a table at Sears, they're all stocked together. If you go to Bloomingdale's, you'll notice that they sell furniture by brands. If you go to this room, it has everything from one manufacturer. If you want to look at another set of table and chairs, you have to go to another room."
That's because for basic products, such as the table from Sears, the product's fit probability is very high, Liu says.
"But if you go to Bloomindale's, they have the high-end furniture and for high-end products, people have different tastes," he said. "So Sears wants manufacturers to compete on price, while Bloomingdale's wants manufacturers to compete for the best location in the store."
It also depends on the product itself, Liu says.
"Even within high-end stores, individual product strategies will be different," he said. "For some product categories, such as kitchenware, which is quite standard, even a high-end retailer will sell everything together."
Name-brand clothes, however, are usually sold by the brand.
"Macy's puts some goods from competing manufacturers together, but if you look at clothing jeans, shirts, sweaters they usually sell them by brand," he said. "Calvin Klein is here, but Ralph Lauren is way over there."
But for low-fit probability products such as shirts, where each shirt is different, "even if retailers put them all together, like toothbrushes, the price competition is not that intense, because consumers have different preferences for shirts than they do for toothbrushes," Liu says.
"Even if one shirt manufacturer is running a promotion with a lower price than the competition if that shirt doesn't fit me; if its material irritates my skin; if it doesn't have the color I like, it doesn't matter how low the price is, because I won't buy it," he said.
"In this case, if the retailer sells all of the products together, it doesn't intensify the competition from the manufacturers. So the retailer should put the products in different locations so the manufacturers have to compete on the locations rather than on prices."
Although many retailers also offer the price-matching policy with online retailers like Amazon.com, that's really not the smartest strategy, according to Liu.
"Retailers probably do not want to play the pricing game with online retailers," he said. "They have certain inherent advantages in their store, in that the consumer has to find the right 'fit' for certain products. That's the frontier on which they have the advantage. So they should not give ground by playing the pricing game."
###
Editor's note: To contact Yunchuan "Frank" Liu, call 217-244-2749; email liuf@illinois.edu.
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-01/uoia-ssl012413.php
chardon high school shooting mark martin cleveland news daytona race the cutting edge fox 8 news indy 500
![[Slashdot]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vVPvokXIqrblMGLrDFHF97PtqqoCBQmdTHCRolSN3kw0wtoAOBBObkY5sMGdE-C2W2zLuZH5BrEFZ76YT6wSKQUU8=s0-d){kind=small}
![[Digg]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_u8vj1XYzBHWhHOwRW6Y-49tqfJ98CllBFGm3rLzxhjMyWrNnpDhrFwFwntS3zxg7THJXZFulKkw9L9RDYmrg=s0-d){kind=small}
![[Reddit]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tLtF7teLKEcL-AoyuS-HhehxsNpHQbnBm4uYO9pYgklspzwrjiznFHHRCIJ1VQKL1XNBCScLS31-ujRCMf2miU=s0-d){kind=small}
![[del.icio.us]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tuVhqaUReSufsnTZg2_RjMfh_-Iw7EOhLHiLkdtZn47mOXzWWR7UtijNpoM-BoyY7oAC07cCQbzU-2iWgKebJOymPMgp0JglOs0afVpwTrlDXfLZBIG7fc30c=s0-d){kind=small}
![[Facebook]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_s-JsohNiL-sbVYS0thhnMw-rtfYwkEnkuTZ7HksINzU6jUimOW7EWY96Or5-JnvDTa-BC99Q1vp7y429jdpzcGLuBVQBI=s0-d){kind=small}
![[Technorati]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_ug1e4jqXLruVDAc4OPSo3SxXHrYTPhoAKnlnXkwX16WLY1vAgRZGnrGC3UXaVA--Nug4_gQ_VMZNhmhBfNRdptdBBt0w=s0-d){kind=small}
![[StumbleUpon]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sk0dJB9ETKclSEDM8og2uPN1QcAfoiCe8kuxP8wmmTQgbmF_G-RNthnfEloC3hZ3ww4EGdtxL_KSrfGVfb6g8Javnrq7cOkw8=s0-d){kind=small}
Robert Christie,?senior vice president of corporate communications for The New York Times Company since 2010, is leaving the company. Christie came to the Times from Dow Jones & Company.
Well, this can't be a good sign. Samsung has told CNET that the company will not be launching its Windows RT tablet in the United States, citing a lack of demand and consumer confusion. After I spent an afternoon in my country's largest electronics retailer, it's hard not to agree with Samsung. 
7??Read More ? 47 Comment(s) 
After relying on third parties for several years - Internet Explorer, Netscape - Apple decided that it was time to take matters into its own hands. It was time Apple created its own browser (again). And so, Safari was born, and released unto the world ten years ago. These past few weeks, Don Melton, the project lead for Safari and WebKit, has been sharing a lot of interesting stories about the origins and development of Apple's browser. 
Nokia has just sent out a few preliminary comments about the company's performance during the fourth quarter of 2012. Nokia's figures are a good indicator for how well Windows Phone 8 is doing, and, in all honesty, I'm not exactly blown away. Apparently, neither was Nokia itself, since the company decided to redefine their Asha phones from feature phone to smartphone to prop up their smartphone sales figures. 
And so this situation is starting to get ridiculous - and consumers are, as usual, caught in the middle of it all. Google has just blocked Windows Phone devices from accessing Google Maps on their phones. In addition, it also seems Windows Phone users are now restricted to the basic HTML version of the mobile GMail website. While understandable from a defensive perspective - Microsoft's extortion scheme targeting Android device makers and all that - it's still a massive dick move that only hurts consumers. Update: the media attention has worked - Google is backpedalling, and will remove the redirect. "We periodically test Google Maps compatibility with mobile browsers to make sure we deliver the best experience for those users. In our last test, IE mobile still did not offer a good maps experience with no ability to pan or zoom and perform basic map functionality. As a result, we chose to continue to redirect IE mobile users to Google.com where they could at least make local searches. The Firefox mobile browser did offer a somewhat better user experience and that’s why there is no redirect for those users. Recent improvements to IE mobile and Google Maps now deliver a better experience and we are currently working to remove the redirect. We will continue to test Google Maps compatibility with other mobile browsers to ensure the best possible experience for users." 
Icaros Desktop, the popular distribution of the AROS Research Operating System, has recently released its version 1.5, a new milestone since it finally allows to run classic Amiga software and games on full screen or perfectly integrating them into the host AROS desktop. 
A blog post on the Free Software Foundation Europe site is making the rounds around the web. The blog post, written by Torsten Grote, claims that 'the Android SDK is now proprietary', because upon download, you have to agree to terms and conditions which are clearly not compatible with free and/or open source software. What Grote fails to mention - one, these terms have mostly always been here, and two, they only apply to the SDK binaries. The source is still freely available. 
Expected, but still insanely cool: Canonical has just announced Ubuntu for phones. This is a new mobile phone operating system, with its own user interface and development platform. It's built around Qt5 and QML, and the interface reminds me of MeeGo on the N9. It's supposed to be on the shelves in early 2014, but the developer preview is out today. 
I tend to believe that the best interfaces have already been made. Behaviourally, CDE is the best and most consistent interface ever made. It looked like ass, but it always did exactly as you told it to, and it never did anything unexpected. When it comes to looks, however, the gold standard comes from an entirely different corner - Apple's Platinum and QNX' PhotonUI. Between all the transparency, flat-because-it's-hip, and stitched leather violence of the past few years, one specific KDE theme stood alone in bringing the best of '90s UI design into the 21st century, and updating it to give everything else a run for its money. This is an ode to Christoph Feck's Skulpture. 
Last month, I explained why I use generic desktops and laptops running open source software. They're reliable and inexpensive. But this presumes you can fix them. I believe that even those with no hardware training (like me), can identify and fix most hardware problems. To prove it, here's a quick guide. Feel free to add whatever I've missed.