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Copyright of Management international / International Management / Gestiòn Internacional is the property of Management International and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose – This article aims to explore the effects of the massive arrival of foreign distribution concepts in emerging countries on the evolution of the local buyers' shopping practices. The confrontation of the latter, long accustomed to the traditional network, with the new retail outlets gives rise to the emergence of new modes of shopping and purchasing. Design/methodology/approach – The use of a qualitative approach, combining in-store observations of behaviours and in-depth interviews, highlighted rich and complex trends in consumption in an emerging country; Morocco for instance. Findings – The content analysis of collected data shows that the differences in social classes give place to varied shopping strategies and generate singular symbolic representations of shopping experiences. The research reveals also a hybridization of shopping practices where the consumers transpose some values and shopping behaviors inherited from the traditional trade into the modern distribution stores. Finally, the research also shows differences between global and local retail banners laying on their perceived images, store attendance and shopping practices which reflect their contrasted positioning strategies. Practical implications – The findings enable the retailers to adapt/shape their location strategy, assortment policy and positioning strategy to improve their store image and attractiveness and gain market power. The results have also implications on the public policy to manage the balance and the future of local traditional shops and modern retail stores. Originality/value – This paper points out the role of cultural anchorage in producing hybridized shopping practices that allows the domestic buyers to cope with the uncongruency between their inherited traditional values and those associated to the modern distribution. It also shows how these local customers use the modern retail stores as a scene of symbolic exhibition for their social status and invent hybrid shopping practices to cope with this incongruency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a research report in investigating the consumer choice based on efficient retailer assortment technique. The research showed that to reach their prime goal of building an efficient assortment retailers need, beside increasing the outlet's cost-efficiency, to evaluate shoppers' assortment perceptions so that what the store actually offers can be tailored to meet customers' needs and expectations. Based on findings, it was revealed that consumers' perceptions of the assortment range stems from the combination of few indicators, mainly the number of stock-keeping units proposed and the availability of the favorite brands. It was also demonstrated that consumers evaluation of the overall store assortment draws on the perceived choice within the product categories where they are highly sensitive to the assortment range.

In current highly competitive environments, improving consumers' loyalty to brands allows firms to secure a comfortable long-term position in the market-place. This article aims at placing the issue of brand loyalty within a larger perspective than a set of repetitive discrete transactions between consumers and brands. Two different approaches for analysing brand loyalty are then discussed: the downstream one, based on observing consistent purchases of a brand over a period of time and the upstream approach, which focuses on the motives that are behind a repeat purchasing of a brand. The relevance of the latter approach is then shown by highlighting the crucial role of the consumers' commitment to the brand in better understanding the loyalty phenomenon. Therefore, our article proposes an integrative conceptual framework of true brand loyalty including its main cognitive and affective causes and effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]