Since 2000, Transport Department has been implementing pedestrian schemes in Hong Kong to provide a comfortable environment for pedestrians. Many studies have indicated that the retail environment in pedestrian streets would be enhanced. This study was conducted to understand the theoretical concepts about the effects of pedestrian streets to retailing. The distribution of different types of retailers in pedestrian streets and the nearby streets was investigated and the reasons and possible effects of the above findings were also examined. Field survey on business inventory in Mong Kok, Causweay Bay and Sheung Shui was conducted. Descriptive statistics was then used to explain the results and chi-square test was devoted to examining whether types of retailers depend on street types. This study showed that types of retailers depend on street types and provided evidence to support pervious researches that specific retailers including chain stores, merchandise retailing or clothing, jewellery and watches shops tended to located in pedestrian streets while some businesses including independent shops or shops selling low-end products were not. The impacts of implementing pedestrian schemes on the types of retailers were discussed. Since more visitors are willing to shop in pedestrian streets due to pleasant environment, retail turnover would usually increase and some investors may want to open shops in the streets to make profits. As a result, property owners would feel more confident to increase the rent of shop to gain more money as the demand of the limited rental street space increases. Those privileged businesses, which can afford higher rent, can open shops in pedestrian streets so the portion of underprivileged businesses in these streets is lower due to unaffordable rent. The study also indicated few more reasons to explain the distribution of retailers’ types. Accessibility is one the factors that affect the attractiveness of pedestrian streets, which also impact the retailers’ types. National economic trend and local factors would increase the portion of specific shops while market economy policy from the Government encourage distributing of retailers’ types using market principle. For the economic implications, privileged businesses would dominate pedestrian streets and affect economic diversity and businesses in pedestrian streets would be affected by economic trend. Moreover, property owners can make more money as rents go up. For social implications, products available in pedestrian streets become tourists-oriented and may not meet the local needs and local identity would gradually disappear. Finally, the study suggested the Government could provide space for independent retailers to continue their businesses and encourage underprivileged businesses to enhance their competiveness. Besides, in the policy point of view, the Government should assess the impacts on the distribution of retailers before implementing pedestrian schemes. / published_or_final_version / Urban Planning and Design / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

Shopping is a daily necessary activity to most of the people in Hong Kong. From the old days when people went shopping in the bazaars to the recent days when most people go shopping in shopping centres, the dominant mode of shopping changed. The effects brought by different kinds of shopping facilities to people are worth studying. It is not difficult to observe the trend that old retail developments in old districts are mainly shopping streets while new retail developments in new towns are mainly shopping centres. Some voices from the public are pushing the retaining of old street shops and old street cultures despite the property developers tend to build shopping centres in their new projects. The benefits from shopping streets and shopping centres to shoppers and developers have been studied in this dissertation by empirical and conceptual background study, survey to shoppers and shop operators and information provided by property agents and employees of private developers. From socialization point of view, the comprehensive tenant mix and comfortable shopping environment in shopping centres attract shoppers to stay longer in shopping centres than in shopping streets which increase the chance of interaction among shoppers thus improve their level of social lives. However, the stability of shops and shop operators in shops at shopping streets is beneficial to building up community strength within the neighbourhood. The relationships among shoppers and shop operators and among shop operators in shopping streets are stronger than that in shopping centres. For the benefits other than socialization aspect, shops in shopping streets provide cheaper goods due to the relatively lower rents and lower overhead costs in shopping streets while shopping centres provide better accessibility and better facilities due to their better management. For the benefits to developers, developing shopping centres is beneficial to them in the ways of increasing their rental income when leasing retail premises and boosting the selling prices of residential properties where shopping centre is a bundle of the development. In some of the projects of official organizations, such as Urban Renewal Authority, we can see that benefits from these two shopping facilities can be merged together. For example, the design of shopping streets and the buildings around and setting up greenery areas along shopping streets can improve the air-conditioning problem and improve the attractiveness of staying to shoppers. Private developers also introduced old shops to their shopping centres. Product prices of old shops remain the same in shopping centre as in shopping streets. However, the relationship among shoppers and shop operators cannot be copied easily even if the old shop signs are the same. Time is needed for building the strength within a community. / published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

To survive and thrive in the customer-oriented global market, retail companies have to make persistent efforts to provide customers with satisfactory shopping experience enriched by leisure process, interaction for merchandise information and personalised assistance. In traditional retail stores, customers’ needs cannot be fully satisfied due to difficulties in locating target products, out-of-stocks, a lack of professional assistance for product selection, and long waiting for payments. The relative visibility and traceability of individual items provided by the radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is helpful for enhancement of customer shopping experience (CSE). However, current RFID applications for retail business tend to be limited to inventory control and replenishment, with few implementations for CSE enhancement based on collection and analysis of real-time RFID data. To mitigate these limitations, this research project develops RFID applications for real-time collection and analysis of customer shopping behaviour (CSB) data in retail stores. Artificial intelligence (AI) is incorporated for data analysis to facilitate business decision-making and proactive individual marketing. Accordingly, an item-level RFID-based customer shopping experience enhancement (IRCSEE) system is developed to provide customers with leisure shopping process, interaction for merchandise information and personalised guidance for enhancement of CSE in apparel retail stores. The IRCSEE system incorporates RFID hardware devices installed in an apparel retail store to interrogate RFID-tagged apparel items to obtain data for subsequent sales processing and analysis. It is characterised with a programmable data format for unique identification of individual apparel items, together with a suite of software modules to control the RFID hardware devices at different locations of the apparel retail store for real-time collection of product information and CSB data. Moreover, an innovative fuzzy screening (FS) algorithm of AI techniques is developed to analyse the RFID-collected CSB data and the corresponding product information for generation of apparel collocation recommendations to provide customers with intelligent and personalised assistances in product selection. The algorithm considers not only the static fashion expertise, but also the dynamic customer preferences for collocation, such that the recommendations are more effective and adaptive for enhancement of CSE in the fast-changing apparel retail industry. The IRCSEE system is validated in an emulated RFID-based apparel retail store. Experimental results demonstrate that with appropriate RFID hardware settings, the proposed system is effective to help enhance CSE in apparel retail stores by providing customers with leisure shopping process, interaction for merchandise information and personalised apparel collocations. Furthermore, the approaches for collecting real-time CSB by RFID technology and analysing such data by AI techniques can be conveniently adapted for many other products to improve retail business management in general. / published_or_final_version / Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Architecture

Η εργασία αναφέρεται στις καταναλωτικές συνήθειες των Ελλήνων σε σχέση με τα εκπτωτικά καταστήματα. Το συμπέρασμα από την έρευνα αγοράς είναι ότι ο Έλληνας ψάχνει την καλύτερη ποιότητα στην χαμηλότερη τιμή, ανεξαρτήτου φύλου, ηλικίας και μορφωτικού επιπέδου. / -

This thesis investigated the retail market for ethno-cultural vegetable in the GTA and Guelph focusing on Chinese, South Asian and Afro- Caribbean. Price structure and marketing strategies were studied using survey data. Both qualitative and quantitative data was collected on a bi-weekly basis over three seasons in ethnic and mainstream stores. Analysis using SPSS revealed vegetable prices were not always lower in mainstream stores. The study showed that ethno-cultural vegetable pricing was controlled by the cheaper mainstream stores with some ethnic stores having to adjust their prices to meet those of the lower mainstream stores. The quality of ethno-cultural vegetables was also found to be poor across stores with poorest qualities in ethnic stores, a fact attributed to poor facilities. Finally ethnic stores were better stocked with ethno-cultural vegetables. Ethnic stores are important in the supply of ethno-cultural vegetables but are not well organised to face the retail competition hence the need to improve. / The University of Guelph, Ontario Graduate Scholarship in Science and Technology (OGSST), OMAFRA (Agri-Food and Rural Link, and OMAFRA's New Directions Research Program) and the family of J. Alden and Isobelle McLean.

Tyrimo aktualumas. Ekonominiai, kultūriniai, edukaciniai ir kt. pokyčiai mūsų visuomenėje sudaro galimybes vaikams žymiai jaunesniame amžiuje tapti vartotojais ir išbandyti pirkimo procesą, tačiau dėl fizinio ir protinio nesubrendimo jiems būtina ypatinga suaugusiųjų apsauga bei priežiūra. Todėl vaikui dažnai neleidžiama būti savarankišku veikloje, tiesiogiai susijusioje su juo – apsipirkimu žaislų parduotuvėje. Labai dažnai vaiko ir suaugusiųjų norai žaislų parduotuvėse nesutampa, o dažnai suaugę į juos net neatsižvelgia. Vadovavimasis stereotipine nuostata, kad mažas vaikas dar negali žinoti, kas jam ge­riau, leidžia suaugusiems iš vaikų perimti ir vaiko apsisprendimo ir dalyvavimo teisę, o toks tėvų elgesys pažeidžia vaiko teises. Nemenką vaidmenį renkantis žaislą vaidina kita suaugusiųjų grupė - pardavėjos. Dažnai pardavėjai nelinkę ,,veltis“ į suaugusiojo ir vaiko konfliktus, barnius, manydami, kad jų bendravimo jie nepakeis ir kad tai neįeina į jų pareigas. Kita vertus, tam, kad pardavėjos galėtų padėti tėvams susitarti su savo vaikais, gebėtų juos konsultuoti, o su vaikais dirbti kaip su specifine klientų grupe, joms reikia turėti specialių žinių ir įgūdžių. Jos taip pat turėtų būti susipažinusios ir su Vaiko teisių konvencija, kad savo darbe nepažeistų vaiko teisių. Tačiau kaip rodo patirtis, vadovybė neorganizuoja tokių kursų arba organizuoja retai. Kiek teko pastebėti, net ir pačios žaislų parduotuvės nėra parengtos tam, kad vaikai galėtų jaustis kaip pagrindiniai... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The relevance of the research: The economical, cultural, educational and other changes in our society have formed posibilities for children to become young consumers and try the process of purchasing considerably earlier. Because of their physical and mental immaturity, children require close supervision and protection from their parents. Hense, children are often not allowed to be independant in terms of toy-shopping activities. Frequenlty desires of children and parents in a toy store do not match, nor adults pay attention to wishes of their children. Stereotype that a young child does not know what is best for him allows adults to take over rights of decision and participation from the child. This violates the rights of children. Shop-assistants also make impact in shopping decisions. They are not willing to interfere in children and adults’ conflicts, because assistants presume, it would not change communication between kids and their parents. Nevertheless, conflict solving is not involved in their work duties. On the other hand, shop assistants would need special skills and knowladge to be able to serve children – a specific type of clients. Shop-assistants should also be introduced with “Children Rights Convention”, as they would not violate children rights in the work. But the practice shows that store managers do not organise that kind of classes or do, but very rarely. According to observations, even the toy shops are not adjusted for their main clients. Children do... [to full text]

Title: Food waste from grocery stores in Umeå- the potential for taking care of and reducing the amount of food waste. Author: Helene Myhrberg Abstract Food waste from grocery stores is an increasing problem in Sweden, and amounts to roughly 67 000 ton per year. This has consequences both for sustainability in general, but also for achieving the targets stipulated by the EU. Given this, it should be relevant for the society that grocery stores both decrease the amount of food waste but also develop better ways of dealing with food waste. Although there exist methods for this, the practicability of such measures are unknown. In this thesis I assess these issues by conducting interviews with owners and employees at five grocery stores in Umeå, asking them how they think about these questions. In particular, I focus on how to take care of and prepare food waste for anaerobic digestion and how to decrease volumes of food waste. In essence, I find that both the knowledge of, and interest in, these issues vary substantially between grocery stores. Further, for these measures to be feasible, it requires the process to be both economically efficient while not requiring too much time of work. With this in mind, it seems necessary to have a facility that can take care of both packed and unpackaged food waste, making it as cheap and simple as possible for the grocery stores. For reducing volumes of waste, most grocery stores agrees on better planning as the way to go. Key words: food waste, grocery stores, anaerobic digestion, decreasing of food waste.

This study researches the topic customer service of convenience sores. Two objectives are set, namely to measure the customer service levels of convenience stores, and then to determine if any differences exist between customer perceptions and customer expectations. The literature review covers two models of service quality, namely the Kano model and the SERVQUAL model. Both the Kano model and the SERVQUAL model are client service models that currently exist in practice. The Kano model provides insights into the dynamics of customer preferences and their needs, which ensures the delivery of successful products and services. The SERVQUAL method is a technique that can be used for performing a gap analysis of an organisation's service quality performance against customer service quality needs. Because of SERVQUAL's strong empirically based methodology and popularity amongst services organisations who aims to improve their service quality, SERVQUAL is the research methodology of choice. The empirical research was done by collecting primary data from a selected group, using the SERVQUAL questionnaire to measure customer expectation and customer perception. The sample size is 65 respondents, and they all responded by completing the structured SERVQUAL questionnaires. A seven-point Likert scale was used in the questionnaire. A "1" was labelled as "strongly disagree" while a "7" was labelled as "strongly agree". The reliability of the data was confirmed by means of Cronbach alpha and a-values of 0.879 (customers' perceptions) and 0.906 (customers' expectations) showed satisfactory reliability. Descriptive statistical analysis was used to calculate mean values of the criteria while principle factor analyses were employed to extract factors from both groups of data. The factors pertaining to the perceived service has been identified as Employee Mind-Set (explaining the variance of 29.72%), Excellent Service (19.14%) and Display (8.92%). Regarding the factor analysis of the expected levels of service, the factors identified are: Employee Mindset (35.78%), Service Reputation (25.22%) and Transactions (5.90%). From the research it became evident that the three major recommendations to managers of convenience stores who aims to improve their service quality are managerial actions focussed at: *Internal training. *Induction programmes *Surveys (further research and monitoring). / Thesis (M.B.A.)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

Since the retail industry is marked by intense competition, retailers must examine the factors influencing the buying behaviour of their targeted consumers and ensure that they formulate a retail strategy that contributes to a pleasant consumer retail experience. Consumers' total retail experience is determined by numerous store attributes that interact, implying that apparel retailers (and stores selling casual wear in particular) should be concerned with store attributes that are important to their target market as well as their satisfaction with the current store attributes they offer. In view of the fact that consumers evaluate store attributes when making store selections, it is imperative that stores selling casual wear must be familiar with consumer behaviour, specifically the consumer decision-making process, as this process guides consumers to determine if, what, when, where, how, from who and how often to purchase products and services. Consumers enter into a retail experience with a set of expectations of what they would like to happen and what store attributes should be present. Consumer expectations influence the manner in which store attributes and other stimuli from the retail environment are interpreted. Evidently, an attractive store environment can be perceived as unsatisfactory if it fails to meet consumers' desired level of expectations. Thus, expectations influence consumers' satisfaction with the retail experience as well as store attributes offered by the store, which in turn affects consumers' overall satisfaction and store selection choices. The primary objective of this study was to determine the importance of, and satisfaction with, store attributes to black Generation Y consumers when selecting a store selling casual wear. An interviewer-administrated questionnaire was developed to determine which store attributes are important to black Generation Y consumers when selecting a store selling casual wear and how satisfied they were with the store attributes offered by the store they most often buy their casual wear from. Respondents between the ages of 16 and 24 were intercepted at a mall in Soweto by means of a non-probability convenience sample. In total, 261 respondents participated in this study. Results indicated that nine reliable Importance factors when determining which factors black Generation Y respondents consider when selecting a store selling casual wear could be identified, namely Service provided by salespeople; Check-out points, dressing rooms, store hours and proximity to store; Display of casual wear and in-store advertising; Store appearance, styles, sizes and quality of casual wear; Physical facilities to enhance shopping convenience; Offering of cell phones and accessories; Music played; Price of casual wear; and Alteration of clothing and lay-buy services. Further analysis indicated that respondents were less satisfied with Store appearance, styles, sizes and quality of casual wear than the importance of this factor to them. Results also indicated• that practically significant differences exist between various demographic variables of respondents and the importance of, and satisfaction with, store attributes offered by stores selling casual wear. It is recommended that stores selling casual wear who target black Generation Y consumers focus on the above-mentioned Importance factors and ensure that these stores attributes form part of their retail and marketing strategies. Stores selling casual wear should furthermore focus on improving customer satisfaction on those store attributes that are important to their customers. It is also recommended that stores selling casual wear conduct research to determine whether differences exist pertaining to their customers' demographic profile and their satisfaction levels with store attributes. Based on these results, customers can be grouped accordingly to identify strategies for improving customer satisfaction with store attributes. Recommendations for future research include comparison studies among different black cultures in South Africa to determine whether consumers differ regarding store attributes that are important to them in store selection as well as their satisfaction with a store delivering on those store attributes. Similar studies could be conducted among different population groups, age groups, income levels and geographic regions, as well as between consumers in developed and developing countries. It is also worthwhile to consider duplicating the study for other product categories to determine which attributes black generation Y consumers consider important when buying other products. / Thesis (M.Com. (Business Management)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2010.