Online shopping is undergoing significant changes around the globe, evolving in the food and non-food segments alike. Representing a vital distribution channel that reaches countless customers, sales from online shopping have long-since exceeded USD 1000 billion per year and are growing steadily. This book is intended for general readers and professionals interested in companies' strategic orientation in connection with their online format and building and strengthening customer loyalty. In this regard, their business strategies are not considered in their full scope and complexity; instead, the book focuses more narrowly on the relationship between business strategy, buying behavior and customer loyalty.

In the context of widespread precarity and ongoing crises, it is no surprise ruins have captured much attention in recent years. This book is about a new kind of space, one that is deeply troubling for consumer society: the retail ruin. Jacob C. Miller bridges human geography, archaeology and critical urban studies to offer a starting point for conceptualizing retail ruins. Drawing on fieldnotes and photographs, Miller crafts a hauntological approach informed by the theories of Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida to more recent thinking on assemblage, spectacle and the politics of urban space.

Shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2022 The world's retail sector has been devastated in recent years by two unstoppable forces: internet shopping and the Covid-19 lockdown. The result: huge numbers of prestigious brands have gone under, or are now a shadow of their former selves, and large parts of the world economy have fallen into a recession, with reduced employment and incomes across large parts of society. High streets and shopping malls lie half-empty, causing a vacuum at the heart of our communities and societies, and many discretionary products have simply become too expensive for people to buy on a regular basis. There is now an urgent need to regenerate our local shopping areas, so how can retailers and brands respond to this crisis? Fortunately, new shoots of recovery are emerging from the wreckage of the old order - new brands, new ways of providing value, and new and innovative methods of creating interest to draw in consumers, all of which have the potential to kick-start the retail economy. Retail Recovery offers a comprehensive analysis of these new forces that are changing the way in which we browse for and buy products, and how we experience and engage with the brands themselves. It includes in-depth interviews with some of the most innovative players in the UK, Europe and North America, in the hope of drawing out key learning points for the rest of the industry. It also provides essential guidelines for governments, as they strive to rebuild and reinforce the retail spaces within our communities, allowing them to create a more effective economic lifeline for retailers, shoppers, retail workers, manufacturers and distributors.

The retail market in the UK is worth more than £400 billion annually and employs over 3 million workers, while in the US 29 million people create over USD $4 trillion of revenue through the industry. Despite the challenge to establish stores and big-box retailers, there's a rapid increase in the number of retail start-ups and consistent growth in the independent sector. From beard shops and barbers, through cafes and coffee shops, to 'retailment' concept stores and boutique consumer-focused experiences, the specialist retail sector is booming.

The Retail Start-Up Book provides clear guidance and advice on how to develop a winning retail strategy that seamlessly merges online, offline and digital tactics. Introducing the science of shopping and how to understand customer behaviours and needs, it explores the essential steps of developing a business plan, marketing and promoting a business and advising on buying and visual merchandising. Building on years of retail experience nationally and internationally, in large groups and with independent retailers, The Retail Start-Up Book meticulously provide invaluable practical insights to help new retailers hit the floor running, or more established organizations grow their business and nurture their profits.

The book is a fully annotated translation of al-Shayzari's Nihayat al-Rutba fi Talab al-Hisba (The Utmost Degree in the Pursuit of Hisba), a manual written in the 12th century AD for the practical use of the Islamic inspector of markets. It is the earliest extant book of its kind to appear in the Islamic East. Dr Buckley's introduction deals with the historical development of the Islamic market inspector, the author of the manual and the text itself. A useful Appendix contains translations of official diplomas of investiture, along with an abbreviated translation of al-Ghazali's treatise of isba. Within the main text, individual chapters deal with such as confectioners, perfumers, money-changers, slave traders and physicians. The book therefore provides a thorough examination of the market inspector and his role, and an unparalleled insight into the inhabitants of a medieval Muslim market.

Fashion Fibers: Designing for Sustainability is an accessible reference tool for fashion students and designers who want to learn how to make decisions to enhance the sustainability potential in common fibers used in the fashion industry. Drawing upon the cradle to cradle philosophy and industry expertise, the book introduces readers to the fundamentals of fiber production and the product lifecycle. It features a fiber-by-fiber guide to natural fibers including cotton, hemp, silk, manufactured fibers including polyester, modal, azlon, then covers processing and promoting recycled fibers that are designed to be "circular". Each chapters investigates six main areas of potential impact in fiber cultivation, production, and processing-including chemical use, water, fair labor, energy use, consumer use/washing and biodegradability and recyclability. Readers will learn about the sustainability benefits and environmental impacts at each stage of the lifecycle, optimizing sustainability benefits, availability, product applications, and marketing and innovation opportunities that lead to more sustainable fashion. Features - Future Fibers sections highlight emerging fiber technologies and innovations such as new virgin-quality apparel fibers that have been recycled from post-consumer textile waste - Emphasizes application through examples and images of product end use - Discusses closed loop material systems that enable the recycling of fibers - Innovation Exercises offer readers practice designing or merchandising fashion products to optimize sustainability benefits - Foreword by Lynda Grose, Designer and Educator, California College of the Arts, US STUDIO RESOURCES - Study smarter with self-quizzes featuring scored results and personalized study tips - Review concepts with flashcards of terms and definitions - Enhance your knowledge with real-world case studies

From data collection to evaluation and visualization of prediction results, this book provides a comprehensive overview of the process of predicting demand for retailers. Each step is illustrated with the relevant code and implementation details to demystify how historical data can be leveraged to predict future demand. The tools and methods presented can be applied to most retail settings, both online and brick-and-mortar, such as fashion, electronics, groceries, and furniture. This book is intended to help students in business analytics and data scientists better master how to leverage data for predicting demand in retail applications. It can also be used as a guide for supply chain practitioners who are interested in predicting demand. It enables readers to understand how to leverage data to predict future demand, how to clean and pre-process the data to make it suitable for predictive analytics, what the common caveats are in terms of implementation and how to assess prediction accuracy.

Featured in The New York Times, Bloomberg, and Vox, The Shopping Revolution is "a brisk and thought-provoking anatomy of shopping in the 21st century" (Kirkus Reviews). The retail industry was already in the midst of unparalleled disruption. Then came COVID-19. In a fully updated and expanded edition of The Shopping Revolution: How Retailers Succeed in an Era of Endless Disruption Accelerated by COVID-19, Wharton professor Barbara E. Kahn, a foremost retail expert, examines the companies that have been most successful during a tsunami of change in the industry. She offers fresh insights into what we can learn from these companies' ascendance and continued transformation in the face of unprecedented challenges. Kahn, also the author of Global Brand Power: Leveraging Branding for Long-Term Growth, examines:In a brand-new chapter, how companies in China, like Alibaba, JD.com, and Pinduoduo have changed the game;How Amazon became the retailer of choice for a large portion of the US population, and how other companies have chosen to work with them or have to compete against them; How Walmart beat out other grocers in the late 1990s to become the leader in food retailing, and how they must pivot to hold their leadership position today; How Warby Parker dared to compete against Luxottica in the lucrative eyewear business, and what that can tell start-ups about how to carve out a niche against a Goliath; How Sephora drew away customers from once-dominant department stores to become the go-to retailers for beauty products. Kahn argues we are just witnessing the start of the radical changes in retail that have been hastened by the pandemic and will revolutionize shopping in every way. Building on these insights, Kahn offers a framework that any company can use to create a competitive strategy to survive and thrive in today's-and tomorrow's-retail environment.

This book intersects the distributed ledger technology (DLT) community with the international security community. Given the increasing application of blockchain technology in the fields of business and international development, there is a growing body of study on other use cases. For instance, can blockchain have a significant role in preserving and improving international security? This book explores this question in the context of preventing the proliferation of some of the most dangerous materials in the world-items that if not secured can lend to the development of weapons of mass destruction. It considers how blockchain can increase efficiencies in the global trade of nuclear and chemical materials and technology, thereby increasing assurances related to compliance with international nonproliferation and disarmament treaties.

This book shows stationary retail a way to reinvent itself after Corona, in order to be able to survive against the strong competition of online retail. The focus is on the central issues that will shape the retail of the future. For example, brick-and-mortar retail in particular must now work with intelligent systems based on data and adopt or even surpass methods that the large online marketplaces have been using successfully for a very long time. In this regard, artificial intelligence also plays a major role in retail. This is not just about automation and robots taking over tasks, but also about instruments and machines being able to learn and draw conclusions themselves in all retail functions. This is becoming increasingly difficult because our shopping and search behavior is constantly changing. Therefore, a customer should receive intelligent recommendations in the store, which are also based on his already known interests and behavior patterns. Gerrit Heinemann shows how intelligent action can save stationary retail in city centres and shopping centres. The content - From stationary Retail to intelligent Retail - Threats to the stationary retail trade - Basic requirements and manifestations of intelligent Retail - Examples of intelligent retail of the future - Risks for intelligent Retail

This textbook covers the basics of business-to-business (B2B) eCommerce, where similar principles of customer targeting can be observed as in B2C eCommerce. Gerrit Heinemann highlights the specifics and business models of B2B eCommerce, analyzes the digital challenges and shows the consequences and opportunities for online sales in B2B. Recognised best-practice examples illustrate how successful B2B eCommerce can work and which risks have to be considered.

This book demonstrates the flow of the international trade of secondhand goods and examines the socio-economic background and mechanisms of the trade. It highlights the actors involved in the trade of secondhand goods and how traditionally secondhand good have largely been traded through social or ethnic networks in order to effectively transfer quality and market information. The development of information technology and emergence of new information platforms have changed these business models. The policies and regulations relating to the trade of secondhand goods are explored, alongside the negative impact of these trades, and the growing awareness of the circular economy. This book illustrates how importing countries as well as international institutions have developed regulations in order to balance these two issues. It will relevant to students and economists interested in development economics and economics geography.

The global retail industry is in the early stages of an era of profound and unprecedented, change. This book is intended to serve as a wide-ranging, robust, and practical guide to leaders of enterprises tasked with both understanding and delivering success in the new landscape of retailing. Part 1 describes the major directions and drivers of change that define the new retail landscape. Accelerating changes in technology, the rise to international prominence of internet enabled shoppers, and the rapid emergence of entirely new retail enterprises and business models are combining to re-shape the very fundamentals of the retail industry. No longer are shops central or even necessary to the business of retailing. No longer is choice for the shopper limited to the neighbourhood, town, or even country in which they live. No longer is the act of retailing solely the preserve of traditional retail enterprises as internet-enabled businesses, technology, logistics, suppliers, and financial services enterprises all seek direct relationships with the shopper. The new landscape of retailing is an unforgiving one. Success can be achieved more quickly than ever before, but failure is equally rapid. New opportunities are profound, but so too are the challenges. Part 2 of this book discusses the structures, skills, and capabilities that retail enterprises and their leaders will need if they are to be successful. This second edition presents more than 25 detailed case studies of innovative and successful enterprises alongside more than one hundred smaller examples to illustrate the themes discussed. A new afterword also presents ten central areas business leaders must focus on in order to build organizational resilienc in the wake of COVID-19 and the profound uncertainties retail enterprises now face. Frameworks and practical guidance are offered to help readers contextualise the nature of change occurring on a global scale, and identify the capabilities, skills, and perspectives that will be needed at both an enterprise and a personal leadership level.

This book evaluates the institutional environments of China and the United States, and the West more broadly, and how they affect their trading relationship, with specific emphasis on intellectual property theft and other allegations of unfair competition. The economic and political characteristics of the two countries affect the balance of power in their trading relationship, with ramifications far beyond jobs and output. The major theme is China's ability to free ride on Western institutions through intellectual property theft and extortion. This free riding is far more than just infringing patents and reaping profits; it creates a combination of incentives for political pressures in the West that diminish the free market and liberal Western values. The result is the classic result of free riding - underprovision, or degeneration, of the Western institutions that made the West prosperous and free. At the same time, China's economic might, military prowess, and global soft power increase, often with deleterious effects for freedom and free markets. This book is distinctive because it integrates public choice ideas about economic institutions, state action, and strategic behavior into international trade. It also takes account of the economic characteristics of China and the West and explains why they present a situation that is fundamentally different from other trade disputes. Institutions and political influence are central to this book's analysis of trade, which can be more dangerous and more disguised than the welfare gains from trade. Providing a concise and lucid distillation of pressing issues, this book is critical reading for scholars studying trade with China and its effects on both global and Western innovation, economic output, soft power, and freedom more broadly.

Examine select retail business scenarios to learn basic mathematics, as well as probability and statistics required to analyze big data. This book focuses on useful and imperative applied analytics needed to build a retail business and explains mathematical concepts essential for decision making and communication in retail business environments. Everyone is a buyer or seller of products these days whether through a physical department store, Amazon, or their own business website. This book is a step-by-step guide to understanding and managing the mechanics of markups, markdowns, and basic statistics, math and computers that will help in your retail business. You'll tackle what to do with data once it is has accumulated and see how to arrange the data using descriptive statistics, primarily means, median, and mode, and then how to read the corresponding charts and graphs. Analytics for Retail is your path to creating visual representations that powerfully communicate information and drive decisions. What You'll Learn Review standard statistical concepts to enhance your understanding of retail data Understand the concepts of markups, markdowns and profit margins, and probability Conduct an A/B testing email campaign with all the relevant analytics calculated and explained Who This Book Is For This is a primer book for anyone in the field of retail that needs to learn or refresh their skills or for a reader who wants to move in their company to a more analytical position.

Wachsende Komplexitat pragt die Unternehmenswelt seit Jahren auf fast allen Ebenen. Die Autoren beschreiben einen praxiserprobten, ganzheitlichen Ansatz, um Komplexitat in Unternehmen beherrschbar zu machen und Wettbewerbsvorteile zu generieren. Dafur verbinden sie Methoden aus Wissensmanagement, Kundenbeziehungsmanagement (CRM) und Change Management mithilfe von wissensbasierten Softwarelosungen. Der Band bietet Managern und Projektleitern einen Handlungsleitfaden zum Aufbau von Mehrwerten fur unterschiedliche interne und externe Zielgruppen."

This book highlights the major institutional changes in the development of the Japanese retail industry after the bubble economy. The Japanese retail structure has been transformed from an abundance of small retail stores to chain stores by notable institutional changes with continuous variations in the post-1990s. It provides an insight into the impact of retail density on the household economy in the stagnant economy of Japan. The issues highlighted in this book include the background of the advent of 100-yen retail stores and strategic approach of the stores during the stagnant economy, a comparative analysis of Japanese 100-yen shops and dollar stores in United States, employment compliance of 100-yen shops and dollar stores in developing countries, factors that contributed to change the Japanese distribution channels after the 1990s, and determinants of retail density in Japan. The stagnant economy in the post-bubble period, along with changes in the large-scale retail store law, led consumers to shift from the most popular department stores to supermarkets and the cheapest retail alternatives. With its recent data and theories, this research work will be of interest to business and economics students and researchers in Japanese retailing and relevant areas.

This book answers the question of how to manage service robots in brick-and-mortar dominated retail service systems to allow for key stakeholders' adoption and to foster value co-creation. It starts by demonstrating the scientific relevance of the topic as well as deriving a set of promising research questions. After introducing service-dominant logic as a theoretical research lens and elucidating service systems along with their underlying concept of value co-creation as relevant key concepts, five studies are presented. The authors findings show that understanding and differentiating between consensus, shared and idiosyncratic drivers of and barriers to the adoption of service robots in retail service systems by all key stakeholders, i.e. customers, frontstage employees, and retail managers, is crucial to be able to fully cope with the complexity inherent in the adoption of service robots in service organizations. Moreover, the designed and evaluated artifact fosters a paradigm shift from a one-time technology introduction to a continuous technology management approach including iterations of experimenting, piloting, and implementing.

This book, by one of China's leading economists, explores the past and present of the RMB-the people's currency-as it is poised to compete with the dollar as the international reserve currency. Exchange rate movement and its pass-through to changes in domestic prices have been topics of wide concern among economists. However, relatively few studies have empirically investigated the relationship between exchange rate movements and China's international trade.This book fills this gap, using the general equilibrium theory of the western economic science norm systems, integrating the leading heterogeneous firm theory of international trade, attempting to set up a theoretical structural model for further prediction, and applying the data from sample cases to examine the structural model. This book will be of interest to economists, financiers, and China watchers.

This book puts the trade war between the United States and China in historical context. Exploring the dynamics of isolation and internal reform from a Chinese perspective, the author draws upon valuable insights from China's years of isolation prior to the famous Nixon-Mao summit. Advocating internal reform as a more productive strategy than conflict with other powers, this powerful argument for globalization with Chinese characteristics will be of interest to scholars of China, economists, and political scientists.

This book revisits the long contested negotiation between the Thatcher administration and Nissan for the latter's first green-field plant in Europe. From the very beginning, the plant took Britain's EC/EU membership and tariff-free access to the single market as a token. A considerable amount of aid including component supplies was provided to attract Japanese investment and to prevent its transfer to the continent. The successful launch of Sunderland highlighted improved Anglo-Japanese relations and put an end to the Japan-EC/EU trade conflict. But the price was paid by Nissan's slump and fall, and by trade unions in both countries failing to keep counterchecks on management. Brexit and the fall of Carlos Ghosn were a double blow to Anglo-Japanese relations which are in a state of drift and need redefinition.

The author shows how the societies of West Africa were transformed by the slave trade. The growth of the Atlantic trade stimulated the development of slavery within the region, with slaves working in the river and coasting trades or producing surplus grain to feed slaves in transit. A few held pivotal positions in the political structure of the coastal kingdoms of Senegambia. This local slave system had far-reaching consequences, leading to religious protest and slave rebellions. The changes in agricultural production fostered an ecological crisis.

This book explores opportunities for diversifying modern Kazakhstan's economy, which is still heavily dependent on its natural resources, as well as looking at economic opportunities for the whole Central Asian region arising from the Chinese government's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The book is comprised of four parts. Part 1 explores the first main theme of the book: development of the economy based on the resource sector with the example of Kazakhstan. Part 2 examines opportunities for diversification arising from BRI: a rise of transport and communication industries alongside the new Belt and Road economic route. Part 3 explores the view from China on the perspectives of regional development, not least the economic reasons for the launch of this programme, investments and planned effects. Part 4 discusses other internal sources for diversification of the economy in Kazakhstan based on development of local industry in the oil and gas sector, small- and medium-sized enterprises and tertiary sector of the economy. This book will be of value for students, academics, policy-makers, and practitioners focused on economic development and business in the Central Asian region, as well as those who are working on the design of instruments for economic development in their own countries.

This book offers a collection of distinguished contributions that identify current growth accelerators in India, and suggest policies and strategies to make India's growth more sustainable and inclusive. The papers are divided into three sections, the first of which focuses on issues related to industrial growth in India. The discussions include India's industrial development (manufacturing, construction and mining); role of manufacturing; global value chains; and of environment in industrial development. In turn, section II deals with issues related to trade and FDI as accelerators of India's growth. The respective chapters explore the changing patterns of trade, impacts of technology, and spill-over effects of FDI, to name but a few. Lastly, the third section discusses employment-related issues like measurement of labour input, the dichotomy of the Indian labour market, the nature of firms and employment generation, and impacts of technology on employment. Given its scope and focus, the book offers an invaluable resource for researchers and policymakers alike.

Futures markets offer numerous advantages in the marketing of agricultural commodities, and in this context, the book examines the major factors and issues that determine the participation of India's farmers in the futures markets. These include the efficiency of the futures markets in price discovery, the convergence of spot and futures prices, the dissemination of spot price information, and the socio-economic and exchange-related issues affecting farmer participation. It also examines the factors affecting the demand and supply of participation, and the access to futures trading services. The purpose is to identify different factors that can enhance or constrain farmer participation in the futures markets, which may include market characteristics, institutional features, socio-economic issues, and behavioural aspects of farmer participation. A number of organizations related to rural development, as well as farmer producer companies have sought to facilitate farmer participation in the forward/futures market through offering aggregation and other trading services, and the book also examines these efforts towards the exchange-traded derivative markets and the direct and indirect benefits that accrue. The book also studies the efficiency of futures markets in price discovery and price dissemination applying co-integration tests, and error correction and volatility models, using available data of wheat, rapeseed-mustard, cotton, guar seed, castor, cumin and coriander futures contracts traded in the largest agricultural commodity exchanges in India. Besides, case studies are used to examine and understand the institutional roles of aggregators in aggregation efforts towards the forward/futures market. This book covers several states and locations in India to enhance the representation and validity of the findings. It also examines representative farmer organizations which have obtained institutional membership in the forward or futures markets, and identifies areas of further research. In the current scenario, the book would be of immense importance and relevance to governments, commodity exchanges/markets, aggregators, many private and development organizations, as well as interested researchers and students.