Emerald

Prioritizing should be a company’s No. 1 virtue. In the absence of priority, companies flounder, and employees become distracted. This inevitably leads to missed deadlines, over‐extended budgets, and a resulting output different from what was originally intended. This is excruciatingly evident when implementing an information technology (IT) strategy. Few industries can compete with the heap of wasteful, incomplete, and underutilized projects IT has amassed over the past two decades. The core of the problem is not the technology, but a failure clearly to define priorities at all levels in a company.

The objective of this research was to assess whether the open‐to‐buy (OTB) system allows retail buyers to attain sales and profit objectives and thus obtain the bonuses available for budget attainment. The research used data from both Australia and New Zealand together with specific information from a major department store. Concludes with a recommendation that the traditional OTB system is in need of a major review and outlines specific recommendations.

Despite the high level of investment in information systems by many retailers, senior management expectations are frequently not being met. The value of the information now available to the business seems not to be readily translated into commercial advantage. The challenge is to recognise that the value of information depends on the way that decisions are taken and the next level of return from systems investment may require cultural changes in how decisions are taken within the business. This in turn will require extension to existing retail systems architecture and a proposed model is presented. Senior management backing is often cited as a key success factor for operational systems; for senior management systems, however, the level of involvement and commitment will need to be proportionately greater.

Investigates retailers′ relative influence on consumers′ sequential decision‐making process of forming evoked sets and then making purchase decisions from the evoked sets. Describes a study in which consumers report on 23 durable goods grouped into three product categories. Evoked set sizes were smaller than those for previously studied convenience goods but larger than those suggested by recent reports on consumer durable purchases. The findings indicate that the influence of the retailer is higher in evoked set development than in the final purchase stage of consumer decision making and that the influence of the retailer on product choice varies significantly across different categories of durable products.

Presents a report of the study about shoplifting problems in retail clothing outlets which was carried out during the autumn of 1993, with the primary purpose of examining managers′ attitudes towards shoplifting in some detail and the secondary purpose of identifying coping strategies that can be used by retailing managers to deal with shoplifting. Investigates four crucial issues: layout design, magnitude of the problem, prosecution efforts and detection and prevention considerations. Includes recommendations and implications based on a survey taken to help retailers with their shoplifting problems.

Looks at the development of Carrefour‐Primodès and Wal‐Mart, the world current leaders in terms of turnover and employment. Presents seven issues of particular interest to leading managers and researchers and examines how these are dealt with by the two leaders. Concludes that Wal‐Mart and Carrefour present two different models which stand in opposition on many points, and questions whether a convergence of the two will not result in a perfect model.

The International Chilled Food Fair (ICFF) was held at the NEC Birmingham from 15–17 May. It attracted 460 exhibitors and 13,377 visitors. Of those visitors, 19 per cent were of managerial status, 12 per cent were directors, and 76 per cent of all visitors had purchasing power within their organisation; for example 46 per cent had budgets of over £500,000