The Interrelationship between Culture and Capital Structure:Evidence from International Retailers

The present study investigates the influence of cultural factors in 2022 on the capital structure of global retailers.There are sixteen retailers from eight countries in the sample.In recent times,numerous academicians have taken an interest in examining the capital structure and business model of retailers,owing to their swift and consistent growth.However,the fact that the majority of research originates from the retailers’host country gives rise to debate regarding the applicability of the capital structure of said retailers to countries with distinct cultural environments.Consequently,academics have begun to investigate whether the capital structure of multinational retailers is impacted by the diversity of national cultures.

Customer Segment Prediction on Retail Transactional Data Using K-Means and Markov Model

Retailing is a dynamic business domain where commodities and goods are sold in small quantities directly to the customers.It deals with the end user customers of a supply-chain network and therefore has to accommodate the needs and desires of a large group of customers over varied utilities.The volume and volatility of the business makes it one of the prospectivefields for analytical study and data modeling.This is also why customer segmentation drives a key role in multiple retail business decisions such as marketing budgeting,customer targeting,customized offers,value proposition etc.The segmentation could be on various aspects such as demographics,historic behavior or preferences based on the use cases.In this paper,historic retail transactional data is used to segment the custo-mers using K-Means clustering and the results are utilized to arrive at a transition matrix which is used to predict the cluster movements over the time period using Markov Model algorithm.This helps in calculating the futuristic value a segment or a customer brings to the business.Strategic marketing designs and budgeting can be implemented using these results.The study is specifically useful for large scale marketing in domains such as e-commerce,insurance or retailers to segment,profile and measure the customer lifecycle value over a short period of time.

Optimization of Electricity Purchase and Sales Strategies of Electricity Retailers under the Condition of Limited Clean Energy Consumption

In the process of my country’s energy transition,the clean energy of hydropower,wind power and photovoltaic power generation has ushered in great development,but due to the randomness and volatility of its output,it has caused a certain waste of clean energy power generation resources.Regarding the purchase and sale of electricity by electricity retailers under the condition of limited clean energy consumption,this paper establishes a quantitative model of clean energy restricted electricity fromthe perspective of power system supply and demand balance.Then it analyzes the source-charge dual uncertain factors in the electricity retailer purchasing and selling scenarios in the mid-to long-term electricity market and the day-ahead market.Through the multi-scenario analysis method,the uncertain clean energy consumption and the user’s power demand are combined to form the electricity retailer’s electricity purchase and sales scene,and the typical scene is obtained by using the hierarchical clustering algorithm.This paper establishes a electricity retailer’s risk decisionmodel for purchasing and selling electricity in themid-and long-term market and reduce-abandonment market,and takes the maximum profit expectation of the electricity retailer frompurchasing and selling electricity as the objective function.At the same time,in themediumand longterm electricity market and the day-ahead market,the electricity retailer’s purchase cost,electricity sales income,deviation assessment cost and electricity purchase and sale risk are considered.The molecular results show that electricity retailers can obtain considerable profits in the reduce-abandonment market by optimizing their own electricity purchase and sales strategies,on the premise of balancing profits and risks.

More and More Retail Brands Integrate ESG into Development

Recently, Savills and the U.S. Green Building Council released Sustainable Retail-Staying on Track(hereinafter the report), which pointed out that the ranking of the 20-city retailer index in 2022 changed the most in the past five years, but that Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and Chengdu are still among the top four retailers in 2022. The sustainable retail index of coastal cities including Ningbo, Qingdao and Xiamen has greatly improved.

Clothing Sales Forecast Considering Weather Information: An Empirical Study in Brick-and-Mortar Stores by Machine-Learning

Reliable sales forecasts are important to the garment industry. In recent years, the global climate is warming, the weather changes frequently, and clothing sales are affected by weather fluctuations. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether weather data can improve the accuracy of product sales and to establish a corresponding clothing sales forecasting model. This model uses the basic attributes of clothing product data, historical sales data, and weather data. It is based on a random forest, XGB, and GBDT adopting a stacking strategy. We found that weather information is not useful for basic clothing sales forecasts, but it did improve the accuracy of seasonal clothing sales forecasts. The MSE of the dresses, down jackets, and shirts are reduced by 86.03%, 80.14%, and 41.49% on average. In addition, we found that the stacking strategy model outperformed the voting strategy model, with an average MSE reduction of 49.28%. Clothing managers can use this model to forecast their sales when they make sales plans based on weather information.

Assessment of the Retail Food Environment Using Integrated GIS and Modified Measures in Wuhan, China

The retail food environment (RFE) has a significant impact on people’s dietary behavior and diet-related outcomes. Although RFE research has received a lot of attention, there are very few studies that shed light on the foodscape and assessment methodologies in the China context. Based on open data obtained from Dianping.com and AutoNavi map, we classified all food outlets into six types. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) techniques were employed to create two network buffer areas (1-km and 3-km) and calculate the absolute measures and relative measures (i.e., mRFEI and Rmix). We modified the calculation of relative measures by adding items and assigning weights. The mean mRFEI using the 1-km and 3-km buffer sizes across the communities were 10.45 and 20.12, respectively, while the mean mRmix of the two buffer sizes were 20.97 and 58.04, indicating that residents in Wuhan have better access to fresh and nutritious food within 3-km network buffers. Residents in urban areas are more likely to be exposed to an unhealthy food environment than those in rural areas. Residents in Xinzhou and Qiaokou districts are more likely to be subjected to unfavorable neighborhood RFE. The open data-driven methods for assessing RFE in Wuhan, China may guide community-level food policy interventions and promote active living by shifting built environments to increase residents’ access to healthy food.

EVENTS CALENDAR

China Sees Rising Retail Sales in Q1 China’s retail sales of consumer goods,a major indicator of the country’s consumption strength,climbed 4.7 percent year on year in the first quarter of 2024.The figure was slightly lower than the 5.5 percent rise registered during the January-February period,according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics(NBS).

The impact of FinTech start-ups on incumbent retail banks’share prices

Background:This study aims to clarify the role of FinTech digital banking start-ups in the financial industry.We examine the impact of the funding of such start-ups on the stock returns of 47 incumbent US retail banks for 2010 to 2016.Methods:To capture the importance of FinTech start-ups,we use data on both the dollar-volume of funding and number of deals.We relate these to the stock returns with panel data regression methods.Results:Our results indicate a positive relationship exists between the growth in FinTech funding or deals and the contemporaneous stock returns of incumbent retail banks.Conclusions:Although these results suggest complementarity between FinTech and traditional banking,we note that our results at the banking industry level are not statistically significant,and that the coefficient signs for about one-third of the banks are negative,but not statistically significant.Since the FinTech industry is young and our sample period short,we cannot rule out that our findings are spurious.

Retail二次物流配送系统在运输环节的应用及实践

为提高市场响应速度、扩大市场竞争优势、降低物流成本,借助信息技术对成品油物流供应链进行优化被埃克森美孚、BP、道达尔、雪佛龙等许多全球著名石油公司所采用,并在全球范围内迅速推广和使用。二次配送是成品油销售供应链中的重要环节,是经营的核心。二次配送优化,可以优化并有效降低加油站库存;建立销售预测体系并预测未来数天加油站销售量;建立油品补货模型计算不同车辆送货窗口;建立优化调度模型,优化调度运输,提高运输资源利用率,二次配送优化在运输环节意义重大。

Wal-Mart's Corporate Culture and the Suggestions for China's Retailing Industry in Culture-Building

With sales at a quarter of a trillion and over 1.3 million employees,Wal-Mart has been the biggest retailing success ever before.A lot of Wal-Mart’s success was attributed to the strong and pervasive culture at the company.China’s retailing industry should really learn something about corporate culture-building from this excellent enterprise,so that one day it would become a strong competitor both home and abroad in retailing industry.

Licensed Pharmacists in Pharmaceutical Retail Enterprises in China: Problems and Countermeasures

Objective To analyze the status and problems of licensed pharmacists in pharmaceutical retail enterprises in China, and to put forward suggestions for improving licensed pharmacists’ abilities. Methods Literature review and questionnaire survey were used to analyze the basic status of licensed pharmacists in pharmaceutical retail enterprises and fishbone diagram was used to find out the problems. Results and Conclusion Pharmaceutical retail enterprises have the following problems when they employ pharmacists, such as lack of assessment system, too general incentive policies. The causes of problems lie in four aspects, including system, environment, pharmacy and pharmacists. As to the above problems, the government should make policies to encourage and regulate enterprises to explore remote prescription service through Internet. Furthermore, pharmaceutical retail enterprises can take the advantage of Internet to develop a comprehensive performance appraisal system for licensed pharmacists. The assessment information platform will reflect the true level of pharmacists and enhance their professional value.

AN APPROACH TO RETAIL COMMERCE LOCATION OF GUANGZHOU URBAN AREA

Proceeding from the commercial function of Guangzhou urban area, this paper expounds the principles and requirements for choosing commercial location, puts forward the bases to determine the limits of commercial centres. Thirty major commercial centres, in Guangzhou urban area are classified by means of cluster analysis. The function, size, hierarchy and interconnection of commercial centres of different groups are studied. The paper emphatically analyzes the major characteristics and formation factors of the commercial location of Guangzhou urban area. Finally, to counter some problems in existence, some suggestions are put forward in order to improve the commercial location of Guangzhou urban area.

Role of 3PL in retail sector in China——Case study:Tesco and LianHua

The role of 3PL in retail sector are explored and analyzed from the view of retailing and 3PL industry. Through the use of literature, market data and other relative information, the problems on both sides are identified by revealing the current application of 3PL in retail sector and the partnership between the retailers and 3PL providers is analyzed. A case study is also introduced in order to identify the difference between west and china on successful 3PL solution for retailers and specify the key fa...

Evaluation of retail pharmacists’’ perception on patient safety

Patient safety has become a focus of clinical care and research in recent years. However, the potential for medical care to cause harm has been appreciated throughout the history of medicine (1)The safety culture of an organization is the product of individual and group values, attitudes, perceptions, competencies, and patterns of behavior that determine the commitment to, and the style and proficiency of, an organization’s health and safety management.

Identifying the Geography and Determinants of O2O Online Retailers in Megacity in Central China:A Case Study of Zhengzhou City

In recent years,O2O e-commerce,represented by online group-buying,has developed vigorously,which had significant impacts on urban commercial space.Zhengzhou City is a rising national central city in China,and its e-commerce development level is ahead,but relevant researches are rare.Therefore,the data of online retailers of Meituan.com was collected and combined with Baidu map and Baidu heat map data.Then,we adopted the methods such as spatial statistics and geodetector to explore the geography and determinants of O2O online retailers in Zhengzhou urban area.The main conclusions are 1)The spatial development of O2O online retailers is characterized by significant global high-value agglomeration.2)The agglomeration areas of different types of O2O online retailers are different.Most of them are concentrated in the old urban area within the Third Ring Road of Zhengzhou City,forming five comprehensive agglomeration areas.3)The areas with the high e-commerce development level are mainly concentrated in the northeast and southwest of the x-shaped region formed by the intersection of Lianyungang-Lanzhou and Beijing-Guangzhou railways.Erqi Square and Guomao 360 Plaza are at the highest development level,followed by Zhongyuan Wanda Plaza and Daxue Middle Road.The development level at other areas is relatively low.4)Zhengzhou’s O2O commercial pattern is highly dependent on physical business.The population distribution,especially the population distribution during the nightlife period,plays a vital role in its spatial development,followed by accessibility.The influences of physical distance are slightly larger than that of time cost,but the difference between them is little.In addition,travelling costs have the least impact.This paper could provide certain references for urban commercial planning.

Decision-Making of a Single Supplier and Multiple Loss-Averse Retailers under Partial Trade Credit

Under partial trade credit,suppliers usually require retailers to pay a fraction of the purchase cost immediately when ordering and the remaining payment is deferred at the end of the sales period.Considering a supply chain consisting of a risk-neutral supplier and multiple loss-averse retailers,we develop models under partial trade credit.We analyze the optimal decisions of a supplier and retailers under decentralized decision-making.The study shows that there is a unique Nash equilibrium among the retailers,and the optimal total order quantity of retailers increases as the delayed payment ratio increases and as the degree of retailers'competition increases,but decreases with an increase in the loss aversion.Numerical studies are conducted to demonstrate the solution procedures and the effects of the parameters on decisions and profits.

Research on Development Rule of Retail Store in China's Fashion Market

Retail store is one of key contents of fashion marketing management. From the point of theory of three spaces in store, Shanghai - China's most important fashion retailing market, is taken as a research sample. Store types, transform rule and relative factors of China's fashion retailing market are discussed. Some problems,such as agreement of store quality and brand target, are analyzed. Finally, five basic conclusions are drawn:first, development of store has been simultaneous with the development of fashion retailing market; second,development speed of store is restrained by region economy objectively; third, the effective means of upgrading marketing level of fashion brand presupposes improving the whole quality of store; fourth, the model of store is index reflecting competitive ability of fashion brand; fifth, there is obvious difference between domestic fashion store and that of international important area.

Explainable Artificial Intelligence Solution for Online Retail

Artificial intelligence(AI)and machine learning(ML)help in making predictions and businesses to make key decisions that are beneficial for them.In the case of the online shopping business,it’s very important to find trends in the data and get knowledge of features that helps drive the success of the business.In this research,a dataset of 12,330 records of customers has been analyzedwho visited an online shoppingwebsite over a period of one year.The main objective of this research is to find features that are relevant in terms of correctly predicting the purchasing decisions made by visiting customers and build ML models which could make correct predictions on unseen data in the future.The permutation feature importance approach has been used to get the importance of features according to the output variable(Revenue).Five ML models i.e.,decision tree(DT),random forest(RF),extra tree(ET)classifier,Neural networks(NN),and Logistic regression(LR)have been used to make predictions on the unseen data in the future.The performance of each model has been discussed in detail using performance measurement techniques such as accuracy score,precision,recall,F1 score,and ROC-AUC curve.RF model is the bestmodel among all five chosen based on accuracy score of 90%and F1 score of 79%followed by extra tree classifier.Hence,our study indicates that RF model can be used by online retailing businesses for predicting consumer buying behaviour.Our research also reveals the importance of page value as a key feature for capturing online purchasing trends.This may give a clue to future businesses who can focus on this specific feature and can find key factors behind page value success which in turn will help the online shopping business.

Structure and Performance of the Retail Outlets of Honey in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

The study aimed at analyzing the most important factors affecting the retail marketing of honey in Saudi Arabia. Cross sectional survey was employed using field interview (direct contact) with a random sample of 343 retail outlets represented all its forms and patterns in seven major cities in Saudi Arabia. Measurements like market share, Gini coefficient and Herfindahl Hirschman Index (HHI) were used to estimate the indicators of market structure and its performance. The result showed that the structure of honey retail market is generally closer to pure competition with a small concentration in some areas. Gini coefficients of concentration, as well as the values of the Herfindahl Hirschman Index (HHI) were relatively low for retailers. The average marketing margin was about SAR 6.4/Kg for local honey while the marketing margin of imported honey was about SAR 113/Kg. The high profit margin variation between local and imported honey is due to the high marketing costs, lower supplied quantity and higher demand for local honey. The estimated cost of marketing of onekilogram of honey was about 8 SAR at the retail level. From retailers’ point of view, low quality, lack of marketing services, improper display, high rental property, lack of knowledge and experience of the consumer about properties and quality characteristics honey, high prices and shortage of some varieties of honey in some specific season are the most important problems of honey marketing in the Saudi market. Setting priorities between different brands of honey plays a noticeable role in marketing. Some honey producers and traders were very concerned about unfair competition of honey market through high promotion as a brand based on their long history in the production and supply of high-quality varieties of honey from specific and well-known varieties. Hence, intensive awareness creation effort through training, exhibition, media and advertisement are required to improve the perception of consumers towards the local honey.

Retail Seafood Waste Prevention: Reducing Retail and Consumer Fresh-Fish Waste by Cooking Directly from Frozen

More than 30% of fish caught from the world’s oceans are never eaten by consumers adding a significant but unnecessary strain to the sustainability of global fisheries. Although a lot of this loss occurs at sea, in developed countries, a significant amount happens at retail stores and in households. People can help with this problem if they find and use new ways to interact with their retailers and with the way they store and cook seafood at home. Consumers can primarily purchase seafood that has never been frozen, was previously frozen, or is still frozen. Nearly all retail waste occurs when consumers do not buy seafood within a few days after it is in the unfrozen, display cases, forcing the stores to dispose of the fish in landfills or sewage plants. An estimated 220 million 4-ounce meal portions of the most popular seafood in the United States including shrimp, salmon, and cod meet this fate. This number can be reduced to the direct extent consumers can be persuaded to buy and cook from frozen. Retailers are motivated to sell more frozen seafood because profit margins are reported to be higher and labor and disposal costs are lower. Many stores also benefit from their brand’s sustainability image, and contributions to corporate, national, and international waste reduction goals. Their challenge has been to educate and encourage consumers to choose frozen before fresh. Taste-testing evidence gathered in this study demonstrated that consumers could adopt easy, new culinary skills to cook seafood from frozen that tastes just as good as what they are used to. Our studies also highlighted other consumer benefits, including: less fish handling required, simple preparation, easier meal planning, water savings, and higher levels of food safety. Based on these results it will be beneficial for stores to commit resources to consumer education and promote more frozen seafood sales in other ways that satisfy their management goals. Increasing consumer adoption can drive changes at the store level that will provide measurable contributions to seafood waste reduction.