Omni-channel retailing (OCR) strategies have recently emerged as a powerful engine of growth in the retail industry. The goal is to provide consumers with a seamless and consistent shopping experience across different channels and devices. Success in implementing OCR strategies depends on sophisticated compromises between fulfilment responsiveness and product variety across different product types, consumer segments, and shopping occasions. Failures in OCR strategies to optimize the trade-offs between responsiveness and variety are rooted in a poor understanding of how OCR strategies should build on last-mile supply network (LMSN) distribution configurations. This book addresses this issue by developing a typology of LMSN distribution configurations in OCR. Typologies are useful for four reasons: (1) They provide a mechanism for incorporating holistic principles of inquiry into organizational research. (2) They explicitly define patterns of constructs that determine dependent variables while enabling researchers to move beyond traditional linear theories. (3) They provide a means to incorporate equifinality. (4) They establish connections between the findings of various studies. The existing literature covers a number of last-mile typological systems in the supply chain. However, these typologies do not provide a satisfactory characterization of various forms of LMSN distribution configurations in OCR and their unique structure, product/order and information flow, service architecture, and relational and governance aspects. To address these deficiencies in the literature, this typology updates the linearly "chain-centric" extended supply chain models developed previously and provides a framework that integrates multiple theoretical domains and terminologies that have been used disjointedly to describe the various forms of LMSN distribution configurations in OCR. After an introduction, Section 2 presents a review of the literature. Section 3 describes the methodology used to identify the different configuration dimensions and provides definitions of the terminologies. Section 4 describes the LMSN configuration-based typology while Section 5 presents LMSN evolution patterns through the discussion of example cases. Section 6 highlights key insights derived from the typology, elaborates on academic implications, and suggests some research extensions. Section 7 discusses the managerial implications and concludes.

Three early 2014 developments signal a new regulatory regime is on the way. The U.S. Department of Justice announced it will not interfere with marijuana retail sales as long as all state and Federal rules are followed and all taxes are paid. The U.S. Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued formal guidance to U.S. banks on how to do business with marijuana firms. The President of the United States mentioned marijuana and alcohol in the same sentence. An enormous, quasi-dormant underground economy is awakening and large components are coming to the surface. Taylor West, deputy director of the 440-member National Cannabis Industry Association, said, "There is a whole canopy of products that goes beyond plants." He cites cannabis-infused foods and drinks, cannabis oils, butters, tinctures, and salves. New regulatory demands will spark other opportunities such as laboratories to test for impurities and software systems to track product from seed-to-sale. But make no mistake about it: Some investors in some of the publicly-held cannabis-connected companies detailed at www.hempinsiders.com will lose money.

Along with fast-food workers, retail workers are capturing the attention of the public and the media with the Fight for $15. Like fast-food workers, retail workers are underpaid, and fewer than 5 percent of them belong to unions. In Hard Sell, Peter Ikeler traces the low-wage, largely nonunion character of U.S. retail through the history and ultimate failure of twentieth-century retail unionism. He asks pivotal questions about twenty-first-century capitalism: Does the nature of retail work make collective action unlikely? Can working conditions improve in the absence of a union? Is worker consciousness changing in ways that might encourage or further inhibit organizing? Ikeler conducted interviews at New York City locations of two iconic department stores-Macy's and Target. Much of the book's narrative unfolds from the perspectives of these workers in America's most unequal city.When he speaks to workers, Ikeler finds that the Macy's organization displays an adversarial relationship between workers and managers and that Target is infused with a "teamwork" message that enfolds both parties. Macy's workers identify more with their jobs and are more opposed to management, yet Target workers show greater solidarity. Both groups, however, are largely unhappy with the pay and precariousness of their jobs. Combined with workplace-generated feelings of unity and resistance, these grievances provide promising inroads to organizing that could help take the struggle against inequality beyond symbolic action to real economic power.

From Social to Sales: The Auto Dealer's Guide to New Media explores how auto dealers can use new media to increase online visibility and build a strong Web presence. This book provides strategic tips and practical examples specifically designed to familiarize auto dealers with social media channels.