The Effects of Retail Banner Standardization on the Performance of Global Retailers

Pravin Nath, Ahmet H. Kirca, Saejoon Kim and Trina Larsen Andras

Journal of Retailing, 2019, vol. 95, issue 3, 30-46

Abstract: Global retailers often face an important decision about the extent to which they should standardize or adapt their retail banners, a choice that the authors refer to as retail banner standardization (RBS). Drawing on the international marketing and retailing literatures, this study investigates how RBS affects the performance of global retailers in a longitudinal sample of 69 global retailers from multiple countries and sectors, across ten years. Findings indicate that the role of banner standardization in the successful performance of global retailers depends on retailer and market-level characteristics. Specifically, the results demonstrate that RBS improves retailer profitability as retailers increase their global penetration and emphasize status-based differentiation. Findings also suggest that banner standardization has stronger effects on profitability as retailers increase their focus on emerging markets and e-commerce. However, the authors also find that while RBS increases profits at low levels of global diversity, this effect becomes non-significant as retailers expand to highly diverse foreign markets. As such, the study provides important implications for global retailers while also filling the gap in banner/brand standardization/adaptation research that lies at the intersection of retailing and international marketing.

Keywords: Global branding; Standardization/adaptation; Retail internationalization; Profitability; Emerging markets; E-commerce (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jouret:v:95:y:2019:i:3:p:30-46

DOI: 10.1016/j.jretai.2019.04.002

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