Healthy food store availability is by no means equitable, that is supermarkets and supercenters are not located nearby for certain populations. Shopping at healthy food stores is important, as dietary intake is associated with adverse health outcomes, which disproportionally affects racial and ethnic minorities. Yet rural areas and disadvantaged neighborhoods—low income or predominantly racial/ethnic minority compositions—have few healthy food store options available near home. Thus residents must use more resources to access them or make do with what is available close by. However, little is known about the characteristics associated with shopping at healthy food stores or shopping near home. Thus the purpose of this study was to examine predictors of shopping at healthy food stores and shopping within increasing distances from home. This study used data from the USDA’s National Household Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey (FoodAPS) which asked about household food purchasing behaviors. The FoodAPS data set was used to conduct a secondary data analysis of US households (N = 4,826) that was a nationally representative sample. A series of multilevel logistic regression models were conducted to examine the four research questions guiding this study. The four questions examined predictors of: (1) shopping at a healthy food store, (2) shopping at a healthy food store among rural and suburban respondents, (3) shopping within increasing distances from home, and (4) shopping within increasing distances from home among healthy food store shoppers. Results indicated that Hispanic/Latino and other racial/ethnic minority, the distance of travel to the store, and the number of food stores available within 5.0 miles were negatively associated with shopping at a healthy food store. In addition, among rural and urban/suburban respondents had differing predictors of shopping at a healthy food store. Predictors of shopping within increasing distances from home included car to store and living in rural areas. Respondents who used a car as the transportation to the store were less likely to shop within 2.0 miles of home or less. Not surprisingly, rural respondents were also less likely to shop within 5.0 miles of home or less. Several control variables were significant predictors of shopping within increasing distances from home which were unexpected. Results in some instances were surprising and contradictory to findings from past studies. Thus these results are discussed and are compared and contrasted with past studies. The results of this study have practice implications for social workers. Social work practitioners working with individuals can advocate for improving client access in their communities by improving and introducing programming whose goal is to connect people to food resources. Social workers engaged in policy efforts can work at the local, state, and national levels by working in multidisciplinary groups to improve existing programs and prioritize funding that improves issues of equality. While this study examined predictors among a nationally representative sample, it is important for future research to look at differences specifically among age groups, racial and ethnic minorities, and rural residents.

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.

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.

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Les distributeurs se caractérisent désormais comme de véritables marques qui cherchent à construire leur capital pour délivrer davantage de valeur aux consommateurs et ainsi tenter de les satisfaire, de les fidéliser et finalement d'améliorer leur performance. Si de nombreuses recherches académiques et managériales insistent sur la pertinence pour les entreprises de développer leur capital-marque, d'autres investigations rappellent la complexité dune telle tâche et les nombreuses difficultés afférentes à la mesure. Le distributeur n'échappe pas à cette complexité, pis encore, les spécificités de la distribution et les comportements des consommateurs dans ce secteur requièrent davantage de précaution dans l'application du concept aux firmes de distribution. L'objectif de ce travail porte donc sur la définition, la conceptualisation et la mesure du capital-marque du distributeur. Pour ce faire, une analyse qualitative exploratoire est tout d'abord menée afin de compléter la revue de littérature, d'explorer les perceptions et comportements des consommateurs et de faire émerger les variables d'action du distributeur grâce auxquelles il peut générer de la valeur. Afin de pallier aux insuffisances théoriques et de proposer un outil opérationnel aux managers, un cadre conceptuel du capital-marque adapté au distributeur est ensuite construit sur la complémentarité des apports de la littérature et de l'étude exploratoire. Puis le test empirique de ce modèle, par l'usage d'un questionnaire administré auprès de 313 consommateurs et d'une analyse avec l'approche PLS, permet de confirmer le cadre conceptuel défini. Enfin, la discussion des résultats suggèrent que les distributeurs peuvent construire leur marque sur huit dimensions distinctes qu'elles soient relatives aux produits vendus, aux points de vente ou aux expériences de magasinage des consommateurs. Plus spécifiquement, l'apparence du magasin et la qualité des produits contribuent le plus fortement à la création de valeur / Nowadays, retailers must be considered as real and unique brands that wish to build their equity. By enhancing the value offered to consumers, they can retain and attract them and consequently, increase their own performance. However, the brand equity measure is complex and many specificities arise from the retail area that clearly call for a specific conceptualization. The aim of this research is to define, conceptualize and measure the equity of the retailer as a brand. In that respect, an exploratory qualitative research is conducted to firstly, obtain a better understanding of consumers' perceptions and behaviors and secondly, to identify the variables the retailer can leverage to build its equity. Then, a new conceptual framework is established. It includes eight variables related to the product assortment, the outlet or the consumer experience. The model is estimated by using a survey based upon 313 consumer responses and the PLS path modeling approach. The results provide evidence that retailers can build their equity on these eight dimensions. More specifically, the outlet interior appearance and the product quality are the two main drivers of retailer brand equity