Michael A. Levin Blog

A blog devoted to my Marketing courses

Michael A. Levin Blog - A blog devoted to my Marketing courses

Grocery Home Delivery – Failures

Jim Lukens publishes a weekly email that highlights a specific idea for grocers. Many of his ideas can be adapted for other retailers to incorporate. Recently, Lukens distributed two emails that cover failures and successes related to grocers’ home delivery efforts. He has graciously allowed me to repost both emails here. Today, Lukens looks at failures. On Thursday, he will cover successes.
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Big Box Retailers Go on a Diet

Cabela’s, Rona, and Walmart have become the latest retailers to move from big box to small box outlets. Cabela’s wants to move into smaller markets. Rona’s customers no longer prefer the big box format’s vastness. Walmart continues to introduce its Neighborhood Market format to urban markets that have resisted the retailer’s larger footprints. Regardless of reason, the store’s financial performance remains paramount.

Penny’s Long Road to a Vacant Middle

In “The Concept of the Big Middle,” Levy, Grewal, Peterson, and Connolly (2005) argue for a normative view of the retail market that treats the competitive environment as dynamic. In this view, most retailers exist in a big middle where respective retail managers attempts to maintain or improve the retailer’s price advantage and/or innovative advantage. This big middle, though, shifts as the competitive environment adapts to new retailers that are more innovative or lower priced compared to the retailers in the existing big middle. Retailers that thrived in the big middle yesterday could find themselves outside the big middle today and could be forced to exit the market tomorrow. Nowhere is this shift evident than among retailers that traditionally anchor shopping malls.
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