Research

Web data collected via web scraping and application programming interfaces (APIs) has opened many new avenues for retail innovations and research opportunities. Yet, despite the abundance of online data on retailers, brands, products, and consumers, its use in retailing research remains limited. To spur the increased use of web data, we aim to achieve three goals. First, we review existing retailing applications using web data. Second, we demystify the use of web data by discussing its value in the context of existing retail data sets and to-be-constructed primary web datasets. Third, we provide a hands-on guide to help retailing researchers incorporate web data collection into their research routines. Our paper is accompanied by a mock-up digital retail store (music-to-scrape.org) that researchers and students can use to learn to collect web data using web scraping and APIs.

Soda taxes are an increasingly popular policy tool that discourages purchases of sugar-sweetened beverages. This study analyzes how emphasis on marketing conduct elements and their effectiveness might change after soda tax introductions. Prior studies on the effect of soda taxes focus on price increases but neglect other, relevant marketing conduct tools, i.e., promotional frequency, promotional discount depth, and feature promotion frequency. This study documents the changes to marketing conduct elements and their effectiveness due to the introduction of soda tax across more than 200 retail stores in five markets. Findings related to price changes are consistent with prior literature; in addition, the study reveals a substantial, hitherto overlooked decrease in promotional frequency (-2%), promotional depth (-12%), and feature promotion frequency (-14%) compared with matched control markets, exacerbating the tax’s negative sales effect. Introducing a soda tax also considerably influences the marketing conduct’s effectiveness, such that consumers become less sensitive to changes in regular price, feature promotions, and the depth of the promotional discount but respond more to the presence of promotions. Importantly, marketing conduct and effectiveness changes do not align (e.g., while consumers become more sensitive to promotion frequency, managers often reduce them), a relevant insight for policymaking.

Firms increasingly face decisions about eliminating or downsizing channels that are costly or less efficient. Firms can employ several channel migration strategies to steer customers toward alternative channels. In this study, the authors focus on three different channel migration strategies: (1) forced migration, eliminating the phone channel; (2) reinforced migration, making the phone channel less visible; and (3) voluntary migration, giving consumers complete freedom to choose a channel. The authors investigate customers’ responses to these migration strategies in a contractual setting with a large-scale European insurance services provider. The results reveal that while reinforced channel migration does not lead to higher churn rates relative to voluntary migration, forced channel migration increases the average churn by 11.27 percentage points in absolute terms, representing a relative increase of 47%. The results suggest that reducing the visibility of a channel may provide benefits (fewer expenses) without affecting churn, whereas eliminating the channel provides more cost benefits (no channel expenses) while increasing churn. To help managers understand which approach (reinforced migration vs. forced migration) is preferable for a firm, the authors provide calculations showing that reinforced channel migration delivers higher customer lifetime value.

Increased consumer demand for healthier product options and looming regulation have prompted many consumer goods brands to adjust the amount of sugar content in their product lines, including adding products with reduced sugar content or smaller package sizes. Even as brands adopt such practices, little guidance exists for how they should do so to protect or enhance their brand performance. This paper studies whether and when sugar reduction strategies affect sales. The analysis of almost 130,000 product additions by nearly 80 brands over 11 years in the U.S. soda category shows that, on average, sugar content reductions perform comparable to similar, non-reduced products, while smaller package sizes perform better. Importantly, these effects depend substantially on product labeling, branding, and packaging decisions. By accounting for these contingent effects, this study establishes win–win conditions, in which brands realize higher volume sales while category-level sugar sales decrease. In doing so, our study sheds light on how marketing can bridge brands’ sales objective with society’s health focus—doing well and doing good simultaneously.

A growing interest in the study of discourses has spread in management research, but so far, it has mostly relied on in-depth qualitative analyses of textual material. With the increasing availability of large textual data, several challenges arise. This paper offers a mixed-methods approach to integrate critical discourse analysis with structural topic modeling to turn these challenges into valuable opportunities. We argue that combining both approaches overcomes their limitations and provides great potential for exploring phenomena that matter in our mediatized society. Based on an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design, we develop a stepwise model that provides practical and theoretical guidance to conduct a critical analysis of large textual data. Our illustrative example focuses on the discursive legitimation struggles around the tobacco industry. We demonstrate how an integrated mixed-methods approach allows capturing the breadth and depth of discourses used by different actors in the tobacco debates.

In response to pressure to defend their stand sales against discounters, grocery retailers started engaging in retailer-themed super saver events: promotional events (1) specific to the retailer, in which they (2) mass advertise (3) unusually deep, immediate deals (4) across a broad range of categories (5) under a common savings theme and deal format. Given these characteristics, such events are expected to generate higher awareness and interest than typical day-to-day promotions, thereby enhancing visits and purchases during the event but also reducing them before and after. The authors evaluate these effects by analyzing 44 retailer-themed super saver events operated by the largest Dutch grocery retailers over four years. They find a substantial increase in visits and total purchases during the event, especially among nonprimary customers and hard-discount shoppers. The larger part of this lift stems from the use of an overarching event theme. Consumers buy less in anticipation of the event and visit the store more often afterward, but for smaller baskets—typically leading to a null effect in terms of profit. Finally, our results suggest that rather than the deal depth or advertising budget, the number of items and media resonance of the theme are key drivers of event success.

Even in the digital age, feature promotions continue to receive significant investments from CPG manufacturers and retailers. Whether this is money well spent depends on consumers' (heterogeneous) tendency to switch brands or stores in response to features. This study proposes a ‘Mixed-pattern Random-effects Nested Logit’ (MRNL) model to analyse the effect of feature promotions in a multi-retailer multi-brand setting. Across 16 different CPG categories, our results reveal that in all cases a mixture of choice patterns prevails: about half of households exhibit a brand focus (i.e. rather substitute between stores offering that brand), the remaining half show evidence of a store focus (i.e. rather substitute brand offers within a visited store). We find that the size of the promotion lift and its underlying sources differ substantially between patterns. Brand-focused consumers are generally more responsive to feature ads than store-focused consumers – especially in low-concentration categories; while they imply much stronger cannibalization for the manufacturer, and much weaker cannibalization for the retailer. It follows that retailers reap much higher benefits in the brand-focused segment, while manufacturers may not prefer that segment in terms of net gains and must be wary of subsidizing those consumers. We identify household and category characteristics that underlie the choice patterns and offer opportunities for targeting.

Featured price cuts are a popular tool among brand manufacturers and retailers. However, there is increasing concern about the net sales and revenue gains from these promotions, because retailers and manufacturers may simply be subsidizing consumers who shop around. Thus, the (co-)occurrence of a brand's promotions across retailers has been placed high on the promotion-planning agenda. This article examines the mechanisms underlying out-of-phase versus in-phase schedules and empirically demonstrates their sales and revenue implications in four product categories, covering purchases of a national panel of households across eight years. The results reveal that calendar effects primarily materialize in categories in which the chosen retailer is driven by brand promotions. In those categories, alternating the timing of featured price cuts across chains substantially increases the manufacturer and retailers' immediate sales lift. However, with regard to net gains, striving for out-of-phase promotions—the dominant approach among chains—is not necessarily the best practice, because retailers observe the revenue advantage diminish, and manufacturers may even earn less.