Service Management: Operations, Strategy, Information Technology

Taking time to identify expected products and waiting for the checkout in a retail store are common scenes we all encounter in our daily lives. The realization of automatic product recognition has great significance for both economic and social progress because it is more reliable than manual operation and time-saving. Product recognition via images is a challenging task in the field of computer vision. It receives increasing consideration due to the great application prospect, such as automatic checkout, stock tracking, planogram compliance, and visually impaired assistance. In recent years, deep learning enjoys a flourishing evolution with tremendous achievements in image classification and object detection. This article aims to present a comprehensive literature review of recent research on deep learning-based retail product recognition. More specifically, this paper reviews the key challenges of deep learning for retail product recognition and discusses potential techniques that can be helpful for the research of the topic. Next, we provide the details of public datasets which could be used for deep learning. Finally, we conclude the current progress and point new perspectives to the research of related fields.

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Deep Learning for Retail Product Recognition: Challenges and Techniques.

The Great Leap

PurposeGiven the importance of frugal innovation for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in developing countries, this study aims to explore the role of IT resources on frugal innovation through the mediating roles of knowledge sources and to what extent the relationship between sources of knowledge and frugal innovation is strengthened or weakened under the moderating effects of market turbulence.Design/methodology/approachThis is an empirical study. Data were gathered from 355 SME employees of Pakistan through a questionnaire survey; the variance-based PLS-SEM approach was used to analyze the data.FindingsFindings reveal the significant impacts of IT resources on different aspects of frugal innovation, namely, frugal functionality (FF), frugal cost (FC) and frugal ecosystem (FE). Moreover, the paper highlights the mediating roles of sources of knowledge in the relationship between IT resources and frugal innovation in frugal functionality and frugal cost. Findings also revealed that the moderation of market turbulence strengthens the effects of sources of knowledge on frugal functionality and ecosystem, but surprisingly weakens the relationship between sources of knowledge and frugal cost.Research limitations/implicationsTo bring a deeper understanding of the significant role of IT and knowledge sources, future research should examine the potential moderating role of environmental factors or perceived organizational support or mediating role of knowledge management processes in the relationship between IT resources and frugal innovation.Practical implicationsThe paper provides a valuable understanding and novel approach for directors of SMEs in developing countries to improve their frugal innovation capability through IT and knowledge resources.Originality/valueThis study contributes to bridging research gaps in the literature and advances how IT resources, directly and indirectly, help firms improve frugal innovation capability via mediating roles of sources of knowledge.

Stimulating frugal innovation via information technology resources, knowledge sources and market turbulence: a mediation-moderation approach

Healthy food sales have increased in recent decades. Retailers are widening their marketing management approach, including the use of social media to communicate with consumers and to promote healthy food. The purpose of this paper is to investigate European retailers’ social media communication content used to promote healthy food products, by analysing retailers’ Twitter messages and accounts characteristics, retailers’ Twitter messages content on healthy food and retailers’ Twitter accounts orientation on healthy food.,Data include approximately 74,000 tweets sent in 2016 from 90 corporate and brand accounts. The tweets were sent by the top 36 European retailers. Data elaboration includes quantitative content analysis of Twitter messages, which is used to identify healthy food categories’ occurrences and co-occurrences. Then, multiple multivariate-linear regression analyses explore the relation between retailers’ characteristics and healthy food messaging and between the overall content of retailer accounts and a healthy food focus.,The vast majority of retailers’ tweets on healthy food issues mainly address general health and sustainability issues. Tweets about food health and nutrition refer to food types, meals or consumer segments. Tweets about food sustainability refer to general issues. Analysis of retailer accounts shows that the larger the retailer is, the lower the relevance of healthy food. Retailers with high numbers of tweets and followers tend to decrease their attention to healthy food promotion. Compared to retailers with lower revenues, retailers with higher revenues tend to send a higher number of tweets that focus on healthy food but the incidence is lower compared to the overall accounts’ messaging.,As the study focuses on a single category of food products, further research into other categories of retail products may contribute to a wider perspective. Future research may include graphical content/emoticons and extend the analysis to other social media platforms. Finally, social media data allow studies to cover a wide geographical area. However, in order to also value non-English written messaging, this research introduces some approximations in language interpretation.,The research provides insights into how retailers use social media and provides an overview of how retailers manage their social media communication in one of the most promising food product categories. Retailers manage social media communication content cautiously to minimise controversial issues. This study provides insights into the need to more effectively target the increasing number of social media users.,The research approach and findings of this study extend prior research on retailers’ communication management by improving the understanding of retailers’ use of social media and marketing communication content for their key products, focusing on healthy food.

Food retailing marketing management: social media communication for healthy food

Retailers have installed self-service technologies such as self-checkout that aim to improve the efficiency of checkout operations and minimize customers’ waiting experiences that reduce customer satisfaction. Customers’ expectation for self-checkout should influence their evaluation of checkout operations for existing checkout options when the new service is installed at the checkout. This study investigates how expectations about self-checkout affects perceptions of waiting in terms of social injustice, unattractiveness, and undistraction as well as customer satisfaction when retailers change checkout operations through installing self-service technologies. The results from an online survey in Japan revealed that social injustice has a stronger negative impact on satisfaction when customers have low expectations for self-checkout. In contrast, unattractiveness and undistraction tend to affect satisfaction negatively when expectation is high. This study clarifies the mechanism of how installing self-serv...

Waiting in Exit-Stage Operations: Expectation for Self-Checkout Systems and Overall Satisfaction

Information technology use in retail chains: Impact on the standardisation of pricing and promotion strategies and performance

Increasing energy consumption is associated with major negative impacts on the climate. The Japanese government has sought to promote home energy management systems (HEMS) in private households as a measure to enhance energy security in the country. Reports suggest that while potential users appreciate the need for using HEMS, the actual adoption of HEMS in the country has remained low, suggesting a gap in consumer intention and its actual implementation. High upfront investment, high switching/operating costs and the perceived technological complexity are reported as inhibiting the adoption of HEMS in Japan. The objective of this chapter is to investigate whether and in what respects frugal innovations might help in overcoming barriers for the adoption of HEMS. Frugal innovations offer affordable excellence for significantly lowered prices, are focused on core functionalities, and enable optimized performance levels. Frugal solutions may enhance the consumer perception of benefits of HEMS, while reducing negative perceptions regarding high technological complexity or expensiveness. Although frugal innovation could help in solving the attitude-behaviour gap, to date, there is little research to argue the effect of frugal innovation on consumers’ decision making process. This research contributes to the innovation adoption or resistance literatures by applying frugal innovation, which allows innovation researchers and managers to understand the mechanism of the innovation diffusion more effectively.

Potential role of frugal innovation for diffusing energy management systems in Japan

The intermediating role of big data analytics capability between responsive and proactive market orientations and firm performance in the retail industry

Waiting in line to check out of a store or from a service provider is a necessary but undesirable experience for consumers. It remains a serious problem for retailers and service providers even though scanning technology and self-checkout systems have been increasingly introduced. Prior studies on this problem have emphasized that wait time leads to negative customer evaluation of service delivery. However, the accumulation of empirical research on this problem is not extensive. Thus, this study aims to develop useful measurements for investigating customers’ perceptions of waiting and service management.

Fumikazu Morimura

Papers

Waiting in Exit-Stage Operations: Expectation for Self-Checkout Systems and Overall Satisfaction

Information technology use in retail chains: Impact on the standardisation of pricing and promotion strategies and performance

Potential role of frugal innovation for diffusing energy management systems in Japan

The intermediating role of big data analytics capability between responsive and proactive market orientations and firm performance in the retail industry

Waiting for Checkout: Toward an Understanding of Customers’ Perceptions