published_or_final_version / Real Estate and Construction / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Salladsbarer i livsmedelsbutiker är något som ökat avsevärt i Sverige de senaste åren. Även i andra länder är det populärt, och främsta anledningen till detta är bekvämligheten och strävan efter ett hälsosammare matval. Syftet med detta examensarbete var att undersöka risker och rutiner kopplade till livsmedelsbutikernas salladsbarer, samt att ge en bild av konsumenternas attityd till den nya trenden. Informationsförordningen är en sammanslagning av två EU-direktiv, som ingående beskriver regler om hur livsmedel ska märkas. I december år 2014 utökades informationsförordningen med fler krav från EU. De nya kraven innebar t.ex. att allergener och infrysningsdatum för kött och fisk skulle märkas tydligare. Det är enligt denna förordning viktigt att butikspersonalen arbetar med tydliga regler och rutiner för att upprätthålla de krav som ställs på salladsbaren. Genom en kvalitativ och en kvantitativ undersökning har data, rörande butikspersonalens kunskaper samt konsumentens attityd gentemot salladsbaren, samlats in. I den kvalitativa undersökningen deltog sju personer från olika kedjor inom livsmedelsbranschen, vars ansvarsområde är salladsbaren i deras egen hembutik. Totalt intervjuades, i enkätform, femtiofem konsumenter i livsmedelsbutikerna. Frågorna innehöll bl.a. tycke och förtroende till salladsbar, samt tillsatser i mat. Resultatet av undersökningen visar att personalen har en god kunskap om rutiner och risker kopplade till salladsbaren. Konsumenterna i studien visar ett lägre förtroende till livsmedelsbutikernas, och salladsbarens produktsäkerhet. Majoriteten av respondenterna var utan allergi till något livsmedelsinnehåll, men uppskattade inte tillsatser. Slutsatsen av denna undersökning visade på en god kunskap hos personalen, men ett lägre förtroende hos konsumenten till butikens produktsäkerhet. Detta resultat som är inte generaliserbart p.g.a. de få deltagarna. / Salad bars in Swedish grocery stores have increased in frequently in the last few years. Many other countries have also followed the new hot trend, and the main reason of this increase is the convenience and the pursuit of a healthy meal. The purpose of this study was to examine the risks and routines of the salad bars in Swedish grocery stores, and look into the customer’s attitude against the concept. The Regulation of Information merges two EU directives, and includes rules on how the foods must be handled. In December 2014 the Regulation of Information increased with more claim from the EU. The new claims implied for example that allergens and the date of freezing, for meat and fish, must be labeled more legible. According to this Regulation, the staff in grocery stores must clearly show that the rules are being followed, with help of logs and rules of hygiene. The results of the study show that the staff has a good knowledge regarding routines and risks connected to the salad bar. The consumers in the study show a relatively low confidence in food stores' products. The majority has no form of food allergy, but did not appreciate additives in the food. The conclusion of the study shows that the staff has good knowledge in product safety, but unfortunately the customers’ don´t think so. The result isn’t generalizable – you´ll need more participants in the study to generalize.

RFID technologies are being recently adopted in the retail space tracking consumer in-store movements. The RFID-collected data are location sensitive and constantly updated as a consumer moves inside a store. By capturing the entire shopping process including the movement path rather than analyzing merely the shopping basket at check-out, the RFID-collected data provide unique and exciting opportunities to study consumer purchase behavior and thus lead to actionable marketing applications.This dissertation research focuses on (a) advancing the representation and management of the RFID-collected shopping path data; (b) analyzing, modeling and predicting customer shopping activities with a spatial pattern discovery approach and a dynamic probabilistic modeling based methodology to enable advanced spatial business intelligence. The spatial pattern discovery approach identifies similar consumers based on a similarity metric between consumer shopping paths. The direct applications of this approach include a novel consumer segmentation methodology and an in-store real-time product recommendation algorithm. A hierarchical decision-theoretic model based on dynamic Bayesian networks (DBN) is developed to model consumer in-store shopping activities. This model can be used to predict a shopper's purchase goal in real time, infer her shopping actions, and estimate the exact product she is viewing at a time. We develop an approximate inference algorithm based on particle filters and a learning procedure based on the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm to perform filtering and prediction for the network model. The developed models are tested on a real RFID-collected shopping trip dataset with promising results in terms of prediction accuracies of consumer purchase interests.This dissertation contributes to the marketing and information systems literature in several areas. First, it provides empirical insights about the correlation between spatial movement patterns and consumer purchase interests. Such correlation is demonstrated with in-store shopping data, but can be generalized to other marketing contexts such as store visit decisions by consumers and location and category management decisions by a retailer. Second, our study shows the possibility of utilizing consumer in-store movement to predict consumer purchase. The predictive models we developed have the potential to become the base of an intelligent shopping environment where store managers customize marketing efforts to provide location-aware recommendations to consumers as they travel through the store.

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Trots allt jämställdhetsarbete i dagens samhälle innehar män fortfarande en större andel chefspositioner än kvinnor. Det finns många teorier som försöker förklara varför det förhåller sig så. Syftet med denna uppsats är att förklara eventuella skillnader i rekryterares attityder till kvinnors och mäns förutsättningar att nå chefspositioner inom dagligvaruhandeln. Vi har genomfört intervjuer med rekryteringsansvariga i tre dagligvarubutiker i Skåne. Resultaten från dessa har sedan jämförts med befintliga teorier och tidigare undersökningar i ämnet chefsrekrytering. Vi har kommit fram till att det finns hinder för kvinnor att nå chefspositioner i de organisationer vi undersökt. Dessa hinder verkar främst ligga i rekryterarnas attityder. Vi har funnit faktorer som verkar missgynnande för jämställdheten, men också sådant som verkar gynnande. / Even though the society of today promotes gender equality, men still hold a greater proportion of managerial positions than women do. There are many theories aiming to explain why things are this way. The purpose of this paper is to explain potential differences in recruiters’ attitudes towards the conditions of men and women reaching managerial positions in food stores. We have interviewed the recruitment managers in three food stores in southern Sweden. We then compared the results from the interviews with existing theories and previous studies in the subject. We found that barriers to women reaching managerial positions in the organizations exist. These barriers appear to be found in the attitudes of the recruiters. We have found things that appear to disadvantage gender equality, but also things that seem favourable.

Megastores are the latest phenomenon in the retail industry's evolution. This new form of retailing can be categorized by three main retail types: category killers, superstores and membership clubs. The arrival of megastores into British Columbia brings with it a variety of issues including economic, environmental, employment, aesthetic, social and planning. North American examples described in current literature detail these issues but do not directly address the role of the planner vis a vis megastores. Given that megastores are changing the retail geography and community development patterns of British Columbia, planners must have a comprehensive knowledge of their quantitative and qualitative impacts. To assist in an understanding of these impacts, two British Columbian megastore host communities are considered - Prince George and Courtenay. These case studies are assessed according to impacts delineated from the North American examples to determine the applicability of other research findings. Findings from this thesis show that megastores will become an important issue for British Columbia's planners and decision-makers in the years to come. The short history of megastores in the evolution of retailing make it difficult to evaluate their impacts. While some of the impacts found in the literature hold true for the British Columbian case studies, others do not. This divergence be attributable to the focus of available literature or the difference in exposure time to the megastore phenomenon. Further observation, research and analysis will be required to provide municipality specific data on which elected officials can base decisions.

In antebellum Upcounty Georgia, the Southern yeomanry developed a society independent of the planter class. Many of the studies of the pre-Civil War Southern yeomanry describe a class that is living within the cracks of a planter-dominated society, using, and subject to those institutions that served the planter class. Yet in Forsyth County, a yeomanry-dominated society created and nurtured institutions that met their class needs, not parasitically using those developed by the planter class for their own needs.

Fast fashion retailers have faced a difficulty in translating in-store experiences to online experiences. Although online shopping is increasing, the in-store shopping is still very important for a superior shopping experience. Technology has had a major impact in making multichanneling retail more consistent, although there are gaps that technology can not fill. This study attempted to measure how consistent the customer experiences were online and in-store. Shopping experiences were measured with different concepts such as: flow, usability, interactivity, atmospherics and tactility. These concepts were measured separately in-store and online, in order to be compared. The purpose was to find out which concept is inconsistent so the authors could make recommendations for improvement to fast fashion retailers. The research approach was a mixed method approach and the chosen research design was cross sectional, using quantitative research to corroborate qualitative research findings. The results from a quantitative questionnaire of 263 experienced fast fashion consumers in Sweden show that the consistency varies between the concepts. The qualitative study was done at two occasions on a sample of six interviewees in each focus group, and gave a deeper understanding for why the shopping experience was or wasn't consistent. The qualitative results varied amongst the individuals and show that reasons for being inconsistent are intrusive salesmen, insufficient size measuring tools, long queues, lack of tactility and the most interesting of all: making better return and ordering policies. The future lies in making it easier to order online, in order for the consumer to be able to experience the product in real life, through staff-free fitting rooms and showrooms and such, rather than making the experience better online. The future seems to lie in solving the reverse of the start point of this study, namely translating online to in-store experiences.

The study Demographics of Central Indiana Wal-Mart and Target Stores for Analysis of Intended Consumers and Store Locations sought to answer whether or not each store chose locations based upon their demographic needs. Through the use of flow charts a methodology was derived and then completed using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Business Analyst software from ESRI. Data for income, age, education, distance, drive time, market penetration, city demographics and businesses were broken down into customer profiles, market analysis and proximity analysis categories. These were used to compile maps and graphs for final analysis. The data from the maps and graphs were then compared from one store to another and a conclusion was made about whether or not each store did a good job of locating near its average intended potential customers. / Department of Geography

Background: It is a known phenomenon that when external shopping malls arise next to cities the business of the city centres can be affected. This situation occurs since many years and in various places in the world, even Sweden. Purpose: The purpose of this research is to examine what factors are important to the consumers when they are shopping in general, and then to evaluate how these factors influence consumer satisfaction with regard to shopping malls and city centres.   Methodology: The research is based on a cross-sectional design with a quantitative strategy. The data collection is conducted through an internet based questionnaire with a snowball sampling approach.   Conclusion: The results are that, for consumers, store variety, atmosphere and service quality are quite important aspects when shopping. They also shows that store variety influences consumer satisfaction in both the shopping mall and the city centre. Finally, convenience influences satisfaction in the city centre and the social aspect influences customer satisfaction in shopping malls.