A Multi-research-method approach to studying environmental sustainability in retail operations

Ailie K.Y. Tang, Kee-hung Lai and T.C.E. Cheng

International Journal of Production Economics, 2016, vol. 171, issue P3, 394-404

Abstract: Retailers increasingly incorporate environmental protection measures to improve their value chain operations. Although environmental sustainability in operations management has been widely examined in the manufacturing context, its adoption in the retail industry is largely recent. In this study we explore, through both qualitative and quantitative approaches in the real retail context, what green practices retailers have put in place to meet the needs of diverse stakeholders and examine whether or not such practices improve retailers׳ financial performance. Undertaking this study in two phases, we first conducted a secondary data analysis of 345 publicly traded retailers in Japan to identify the green retail operations (GROs) that retailers have adopted. We presented empirical evidence on the performance impact of GROs adoption and analyzed changes in the performance before and after GROs adoption as measured by return-on-assets (ROA). In the second phase, we carried out an empirical study with survey data collected from 141 retailers in Hong Kong to validate the measurement of GROs and examined the financial implications of GROs adoption. We conclude that there is a positive impact of GROs adoption on firms’ financial performance in the retail industry.

Keywords: Green retailing; Corporate social responsibility; Environmental sustainability; Financial performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925527315003862
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:proeco:v:171:y:2016:i:p3:p:394-404

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2015.09.042

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Production Economics is currently edited by Stefan Minner

More articles in International Journal of Production Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().