Store & Product Challenges in Grocery Retailing
(A2025-126068)

AUTHORS

Lina Altenburg, Erasmus University Rotterdam; bernadette van ewijk, university of amsterdam business school; Melle Klein Goldewijk, Tilburg; Greta Siracusa, LIUC - Università Cattaneo

ABSTRACT

Retailers are constantly facing challenges that require them to reassess and rethink their store and product strategies. A societally relevant challenge is to understand how the online vs. offline channel usage by consumers impacts the purchases of healthy products. Another managerial challenge is how to attractively position a store. For instance, how does a change in the store’s pricing strategy or how do changes in the store’s environment impacts its performance? This special session presents state-of-the-art research that discusses product- and store-related challenges in grocery retailing. The first paper (“Location, location, location! The overall impact of a policy intervention restricting the placement of unhealthy food and drink products in retail stores”, van Ewijk and Lamey) focuses on the introduction of a regulatory policy in the UK that restricts the placement of unhealthy products in prominent supermarket locations, such as checkouts, store entrances, and end-of-aisle displays. It assesses the overall effects and potential unintended consequences of such an intervention, by analyzing both consumer responses (i.e., calories purchased), as well as the reactions of brand manufacturers and retailers (e.g., offering deeper discounts on unhealthy products). The second paper (“The impact of online grocery shopping on the healthiness of households’ food purchases”, Klein Goldewijk et al.) investigates how online grocery shopping impacts the healthiness of households’ grocery purchases. Using household purchase data across offline and online channels and detailed data on the nutritional quality of purchases, this study shows how the nutritional density (e.g., calory-, fat-, and sugar density) of households’ purchases changes once they start to shop online. The third paper (“Pricing strategy transformation in grocery retail: effects of shifting from Hi-Lo to EDLP on category sales and consumer behavior”, Siracusa and Breugelmans) investigates what happens when a retailer shifts from the traditional Hi-Lo pricing strategy to an Every Day Low Pricing approach. By exploiting a quasi-experiment, the paper uses SKU-level scanner data and customer loyalty data to show how the pricing transformation impacts category sales and shifts in customer’s purchasing behavior. The fourth paper (“The impact of store location factors on grocery store performance”, Altenburg et al.) quantifies the impact of store location factors on store performance. The analysis includes a comprehensive set of store location factors across four dimensions (Socio-demographics, Ease of accessibility, Competitors and Magnets) that are operationalized from two angles (walking distance and driving distance). The results reveal that all but two store location factors explain store performance and the effects differ per dimension and angle.