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Purpose – The study aims to explore how concept stores (theoretically) differ from other experience-based retail formats, and hence, how they (practically) contribute to a diversified retail store portfolio. Design/methodology/approach – Case study based on semi-structured, qualitative interviews with seven IKEA retail managers, three industry experts and 26 customers of IKEA concept stores in London and Stockholm. Findings – The concept store represents a conceptual departure from other experiential store formats. It is neither fully experiential in the sense that it is not only about marketing communications nor is it sales or profit focused. Its aim is to be an accessible touchpoint that reduces friction on a diversified customer journey with its value to the retail portfolio being that it attracts new and latent customers, mitigates existing inhibiting factors and drives them to other touchpoints. Research limitations/implications – Ideas about the different characteristics of new store formats and their potential to shape the customer experience are extended. New formats reflect innovation in retailing and are part of a retail portfolio which generates different customer expectations and determinants from traditional store formats which provide the customers’ existing reference point. Practical implications – The contributions of new formats should be evaluated in light of other existingformats in the portfolio and not isolated. This is particularly true when considering format cannibalisation and the potentially extended customer journey that arises when customers use traditional format stores and new concept format stores simultaneously. Originality/value – Previous research, using sales metrics and market-based results as performance determinants, suggests negative outcomes for format diversification. Our study suggests that the contributions of the concept store format should be viewed from an overall customer journey perspective and the “performance” of di, Funding sponsor: IKEA, Handelsrådet, Reema Singh, Marta Frasquet.

Purpose – The study aims to explore how concept stores (theoretically) differ from other experience-based retail formats, and hence, how they (practically) contribute to a diversified retail store portfolio. Design/methodology/approach – Case study based on semi-structured, qualitative interviews with seven IKEA retail managers, three industry experts and 26 customers of IKEA concept stores in London and Stockholm. Findings – The concept store represents a conceptual departure from other experiential store formats. It is neither fully experiential in the sense that it is not only about marketing communications nor is it sales or profit focused. Its aim is to be an accessible touchpoint that reduces friction on a diversified customer journey with its value to the retail portfolio being that it attracts new and latent customers, mitigates existing inhibiting factors and drives them to other touchpoints. Research limitations/implications – Ideas about the different characteristics of new store formats and their potential to shape the customer experience are extended. New formats reflect innovation in retailing and are part of a retail portfolio which generates different customer expectations and determinants from traditional store formats which provide the customers’ existing reference point. Practical implications – The contributions of new formats should be evaluated in light of other existingformats in the portfolio and not isolated. This is particularly true when considering format cannibalisation and the potentially extended customer journey that arises when customers use traditional format stores and new concept format stores simultaneously. Originality/value – Previous research, using sales metrics and market-based results as performance determinants, suggests negative outcomes for format diversification. Our study suggests that the contributions of the concept store format should be viewed from an overall customer journey perspective and the “performance” of di, Funding sponsor: IKEA, Handelsrådet, Reema Singh, Marta Frasquet.

Purpose – The study aims to explore how concept stores (theoretically) differ from other experience-based retail formats, and hence, how they (practically) contribute to a diversified retail store portfolio. Design/methodology/approach – Case study based on semi-structured, qualitative interviews with seven IKEA retail managers, three industry experts and 26 customers of IKEA concept stores in London and Stockholm. Findings – The concept store represents a conceptual departure from other experiential store formats. It is neither fully experiential in the sense that it is not only about marketing communications nor is it sales or profit focused. Its aim is to be an accessible touchpoint that reduces friction on a diversified customer journey with its value to the retail portfolio being that it attracts new and latent customers, mitigates existing inhibiting factors and drives them to other touchpoints. Research limitations/implications – Ideas about the different characteristics of new store formats and their potential to shape the customer experience are extended. New formats reflect innovation in retailing and are part of a retail portfolio which generates different customer expectations and determinants from traditional store formats which provide the customers’ existing reference point. Practical implications – The contributions of new formats should be evaluated in light of other existingformats in the portfolio and not isolated. This is particularly true when considering format cannibalisation and the potentially extended customer journey that arises when customers use traditional format stores and new concept format stores simultaneously. Originality/value – Previous research, using sales metrics and market-based results as performance determinants, suggests negative outcomes for format diversification. Our study suggests that the contributions of the concept store format should be viewed from an overall customer journey perspective and the “performance” of di, Funding sponsor: IKEA, Handelsrådet, Reema Singh, Marta Frasquet.

Purpose – The study aims to explore how concept stores (theoretically) differ from other experience-based retail formats, and hence, how they (practically) contribute to a diversified retail store portfolio. Design/methodology/approach – Case study based on semi-structured, qualitative interviews with seven IKEA retail managers, three industry experts and 26 customers of IKEA concept stores in London and Stockholm. Findings – The concept store represents a conceptual departure from other experiential store formats. It is neither fully experiential in the sense that it is not only about marketing communications nor is it sales or profit focused. Its aim is to be an accessible touchpoint that reduces friction on a diversified customer journey with its value to the retail portfolio being that it attracts new and latent customers, mitigates existing inhibiting factors and drives them to other touchpoints. Research limitations/implications – Ideas about the different characteristics of new store formats and their potential to shape the customer experience are extended. New formats reflect innovation in retailing and are part of a retail portfolio which generates different customer expectations and determinants from traditional store formats which provide the customers’ existing reference point. Practical implications – The contributions of new formats should be evaluated in light of other existingformats in the portfolio and not isolated. This is particularly true when considering format cannibalisation and the potentially extended customer journey that arises when customers use traditional format stores and new concept format stores simultaneously. Originality/value – Previous research, using sales metrics and market-based results as performance determinants, suggests negative outcomes for format diversification. Our study suggests that the contributions of the concept store format should be viewed from an overall customer journey perspective and the “performance” of di, Funding sponsor: IKEA, Handelsrådet, Reema Singh, Marta Frasquet.

Purpose – The study aims to explore how concept stores (theoretically) differ from other experience-based retail formats, and hence, how they (practically) contribute to a diversified retail store portfolio. Design/methodology/approach – Case study based on semi-structured, qualitative interviews with seven IKEA retail managers, three industry experts and 26 customers of IKEA concept stores in London and Stockholm. Findings – The concept store represents a conceptual departure from other experiential store formats. It is neither fully experiential in the sense that it is not only about marketing communications nor is it sales or profit focused. Its aim is to be an accessible touchpoint that reduces friction on a diversified customer journey with its value to the retail portfolio being that it attracts new and latent customers, mitigates existing inhibiting factors and drives them to other touchpoints. Research limitations/implications – Ideas about the different characteristics of new store formats and their potential to shape the customer experience are extended. New formats reflect innovation in retailing and are part of a retail portfolio which generates different customer expectations and determinants from traditional store formats which provide the customers’ existing reference point. Practical implications – The contributions of new formats should be evaluated in light of other existingformats in the portfolio and not isolated. This is particularly true when considering format cannibalisation and the potentially extended customer journey that arises when customers use traditional format stores and new concept format stores simultaneously. Originality/value – Previous research, using sales metrics and market-based results as performance determinants, suggests negative outcomes for format diversification. Our study suggests that the contributions of the concept store format should be viewed from an overall customer journey perspective and the “performance” of di, Funding sponsor: IKEA, Handelsrådet, Reema Singh, Marta Frasquet.

Purpose – The study aims to explore how concept stores (theoretically) differ from other experience-based retail formats, and hence, how they (practically) contribute to a diversified retail store portfolio. Design/methodology/approach – Case study based on semi-structured, qualitative interviews with seven IKEA retail managers, three industry experts and 26 customers of IKEA concept stores in London and Stockholm. Findings – The concept store represents a conceptual departure from other experiential store formats. It is neither fully experiential in the sense that it is not only about marketing communications nor is it sales or profit focused. Its aim is to be an accessible touchpoint that reduces friction on a diversified customer journey with its value to the retail portfolio being that it attracts new and latent customers, mitigates existing inhibiting factors and drives them to other touchpoints. Research limitations/implications – Ideas about the different characteristics of new store formats and their potential to shape the customer experience are extended. New formats reflect innovation in retailing and are part of a retail portfolio which generates different customer expectations and determinants from traditional store formats which provide the customers’ existing reference point. Practical implications – The contributions of new formats should be evaluated in light of other existingformats in the portfolio and not isolated. This is particularly true when considering format cannibalisation and the potentially extended customer journey that arises when customers use traditional format stores and new concept format stores simultaneously. Originality/value – Previous research, using sales metrics and market-based results as performance determinants, suggests negative outcomes for format diversification. Our study suggests that the contributions of the concept store format should be viewed from an overall customer journey perspective and the “performance” of di, Funding sponsor: IKEA, Handelsrådet, Reema Singh, Marta Frasquet.

The paper reports an interview-based study that considers market driving and market-driven activities within the disaggregated components of the business model. The empirical study is of IKEA in China over a 10 year period. Market orientation is considered as a position on a continuum rather than as binary positions. The components of the business model are developed from the Osterwalder and Pigneur structure. Over the study period, the balance between driven and driving orientations within components of the business model changed in multiple ways. This article's contribution is the illustration of disaggregating the market orientations of driven or driving activities and associating these with the particular components of the business model and so studying what happens to the driven-driving balance over time. The approach has wider applicability for attempts to understand the dynamics of international retailing.

The paper reports an interview-based study that considers market driving and market-driven activities within the disaggregated components of the business model. The empirical study is of IKEA in China over a 10 year period. Market orientation is considered as a position on a continuum rather than as binary positions. The components of the business model are developed from the Osterwalder and Pigneur structure. Over the study period, the balance between driven and driving orientations within components of the business model changed in multiple ways. This article's contribution is the illustration of disaggregating the market orientations of driven or driving activities and associating these with the particular components of the business model and so studying what happens to the driven-driving balance over time. The approach has wider applicability for attempts to understand the dynamics of international retailing.

The paper reports an interview-based study that considers market driving and market-driven activities within the disaggregated components of the business model. The empirical study is of IKEA in China over a 10 year period. Market orientation is considered as a position on a continuum rather than as binary positions. The components of the business model are developed from the Osterwalder and Pigneur structure. Over the study period, the balance between driven and driving orientations within components of the business model changed in multiple ways. This article's contribution is the illustration of disaggregating the market orientations of driven or driving activities and associating these with the particular components of the business model and so studying what happens to the driven-driving balance over time. The approach has wider applicability for attempts to understand the dynamics of international retailing.

The paper reports an interview-based study that considers market driving and market-driven activities within the disaggregated components of the business model. The empirical study is of IKEA in China over a 10 year period. Market orientation is considered as a position on a continuum rather than as binary positions. The components of the business model are developed from the Osterwalder and Pigneur structure. Over the study period, the balance between driven and driving orientations within components of the business model changed in multiple ways. This article's contribution is the illustration of disaggregating the market orientations of driven or driving activities and associating these with the particular components of the business model and so studying what happens to the driven-driving balance over time. The approach has wider applicability for attempts to understand the dynamics of international retailing.

The paper reports an interview-based study that considers market driving and market-driven activities within the disaggregated components of the business model. The empirical study is of IKEA in China over a 10 year period. Market orientation is considered as a position on a continuum rather than as binary positions. The components of the business model are developed from the Osterwalder and Pigneur structure. Over the study period, the balance between driven and driving orientations within components of the business model changed in multiple ways. This article's contribution is the illustration of disaggregating the market orientations of driven or driving activities and associating these with the particular components of the business model and so studying what happens to the driven-driving balance over time. The approach has wider applicability for attempts to understand the dynamics of international retailing.

The paper reports an interview-based study that considers market driving and market-driven activities within the disaggregated components of the business model. The empirical study is of IKEA in China over a 10 year period. Market orientation is considered as a position on a continuum rather than as binary positions. The components of the business model are developed from the Osterwalder and Pigneur structure. Over the study period, the balance between driven and driving orientations within components of the business model changed in multiple ways. This article's contribution is the illustration of disaggregating the market orientations of driven or driving activities and associating these with the particular components of the business model and so studying what happens to the driven-driving balance over time. The approach has wider applicability for attempts to understand the dynamics of international retailing.

The paper reports an interview-based study that considers market driving and market-driven activities within the disaggregated components of the business model. The empirical study is of IKEA in China over a 10 year period. Market orientation is considered as a position on a continuum rather than as binary positions. The components of the business model are developed from the Osterwalder and Pigneur structure. Over the study period, the balance between driven and driving orientations within components of the business model changed in multiple ways. This article's contribution is the illustration of disaggregating the market orientations of driven or driving activities and associating these with the particular components of the business model and so studying what happens to the driven-driving balance over time. The approach has wider applicability for attempts to understand the dynamics of international retailing.

Retailers are amongst the world's strongest brands, but little is known about retailer brand equity. In spite of their extensive use, we argue that current operational models are too abstract for understanding the uniqueness of the retail industry and too simplistic to understand the interrelationships among the dimensions in the retailer brand equity building process. This study contributes to the existing and largely generic retailer equity frameworks in three ways: first, by incorporating retail specific dimensions from the retailer image literature; second, by re-examining and developing the structures and relationships between the dimensions of retailer equity by testing alternative structures commonly used in the more general brand equity literature; and finally by creating a short and parsimonious scale for assessing retailer brandequity in different contexts. Three alternative models are compared and tested on six brands in both convenience and shopping goods categories, ranging from discount to middle range price levels. The outcome is an operational framework supporting the main building blocks of the conceptual brand resonance model presented in Keller (2001) with seven dimensions structured in a four-step sequence as awareness → pricing policy, customer service, product quality, physical store → retailer trust → retailer loyalty, thereby describing retailer brand equity as a four-step process. The extended, although parsimonious, 17-item retailer equity scale can be used by academics as well as practitioners to examine the underlying values of retailer brands and has the potential to incorporate additional dimensions and attributes to investigate specific retail contexts without creating lengthy questionnaires.

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the role of store brands as a time- and money-saving heuristic in the context of an omnipresent store brand hierarchy. Drawing on the work of Tversky and Kahneman (1982), it proposes that the store brand hierarchy is characterised by many of the traits of frequently used heuristics employed by grocery shoppers. Design/methodology/approach – Based on Chaiken’s (1980) model of information processing and Stigler’s (1961) perspective on the economics of information search, the study deductively establishes a model of store brand proneness to reveal the role of store brands as time- and money-saving heuristic. The model is tested on a sample of 535 US households using structural equation modelling and subsequent multigroup analysis based on two subsamples of households experiencing high financial pressure but who differ in terms of time pressure. Findings – The findings provide strong support for store brands as a time- and money-saving heuristic and as a substitute for price search among households experiencing financial and time pressures. Research limitations/implications – The main limitation is that the study is based on a sample of households located in one region of the US market. Practical implications – Retailers need to be aware that any extension of the store brand portfolio beyond the traditional multi-tiered price/quality hierarchy risks undermining what has emerged to be a valuable heuristic used by certain shoppers. Originality/value – This study extends our understanding of the role of store brands in the marketplace by going beyond their conceptualisation as a competitive device used by retailers to instead position them as a decision-making tool used by consumers. It also deepens our understanding of the boundary between rational search activities and the transition to the use of frequently flawed heuristics within the shopping process.