Buyer–seller relationships for promotional support in the apparel sector

Abstract

Promotional supports provided by manufacturers are important to many retailers. With the intense competition for customers and heightened concern for profit margins, retailers’ cooperation is critical in the promotional process so that promotional services mutually benefit both manufacturers and retailers. The purpose of this study was to define promotional support categories offered to apparel retailers from manufacturers, to identify the retailer's perceptions of the offering frequency and importance of the promotional support, and to investigate the relationship between offering frequency and perceptions of importance. A descriptive research design was developed to survey 100 large retail organizations in the USA. Results indicated that monetary support was regarded as the promotional support offered the most and perceived by retailers to be the most important. Findings reveal an overall consistency between apparel retail buyers’ importance perception and manufacturers’ offering frequency of promotional support. A positive and significant correlation was found between items the buyers perceived as important and the frequency of offerings of these items. Indications were that manufacturers recognize their customers’ needs by matching the frequency of support offerings with which they offer the promotional support with the importance perception of buyers toward the promotional support. Future studies should identify and examine additional promotional support items. Also, examining the interrelationships among organizational variables, as well as combined effects on apparel retail buyers’ buying decision‐making using a global model, needs to be investigated.

The decision-making process of luxury fashion retail buyers in Greece

“…These unique characteristics of luxury fashion products combined with the increasing economic significance of the sector globally provide justification for research into the decision-making process of luxury fashion retail buyers, which is central to the success or failure of the retail store. Existing literature is focused on the grocery (Sternquist and Chen, 2006;Johansson and Burt, 2004) and mid-market fashion sectors (Bruce and Daly, 2006;Goworek, 2010) in large companies such as department store chains (Fairhurst and Fiorito, 1990;Entwistle, 2006;Stone and Cassill, 1989;Wall et al, 1994) and large retail chains (Goworek, 2010;da Silva et al, 2002;Kincade et al, 2002;Wall et al, 1994;Stone and Cassill, 1989;Banting and Blenkhorn, 1988). Previous literature has focused on US apparel retailers and there is a lack of research on whether Sheth's (1981) model equally applies to European apparel retailers.…”

“…The nature of fashion retail buying Retail buying can be defined as the decision-making process by which individuals in an organisation establish end consumer requirements for products and subsequently identify, evaluate and select among alternative brands and suppliers (Kincade et al, 2002). For a fashion retail brand, buyers select own-label product from a range of garment suppliers, while for independent fashion retailers, buyers select branded product from range of fashion brands.…”

“…In terms of exploring the decision-making process of retail buyers, Sheth's (1981) model of merchandise buying behaviour has been commonly applied in fashion retail buying research (Dandeo et al, 2004;Fiorito, 1990;Fairhurst and Fiorito, 1990) as it is a broad model based on research from more than one retailer or product category (Hansen and Skytte, 1998). Although Kincade et al (2002), Ettenson and Wagner (1986) 88 JFMM 18,1 and Francis and Brown (1985) applied Sheth's (1973) earlier model of industrial buyer behaviour to fashion retail buying, Fairhurst and Fiorito (1990) considered it inappropriate for fashion retail buying due to the incommensurable differences between industrial and retail buying, in terms of autonomous vs joint decision making and the purchase of finished goods rather than components. Hansen and Skytte (1998) used Sheth's model in their literature review of retail buyer behaviour, proposing that retail buying should be treated as a special case of organisational buying as a result of these differentiating characteristics.…”

“…The appropriate selection of merchandise is crucial to maximising sales and therefore the role of the fashion retail buyer is understood to be strategic (Sheth et al, 2009;Diamond and Pintel, 2014;Entwistle, 2006;Choi and Gaskill, 2000;Wall et al, 1994;Fiorito, 1990;Arbuthnot et al, 1993;Ettenson and Wagner, 1986;Martin, 1973). However, the specific practices of fashion buying in terms of the decision-making approaches used by buyers to select merchandise have largely been unaddressed in academic research (Entwistle, 2006;Kincade et al, 2002), with Ettenson and Wagner, 1986, p. 42) questioning whether this was due to "the buying of fashion merchandise [being] popularly regarded as a mysterious, intuitive process". The purpose of this paper is therefore to extend the body of knowledge on retail buying behaviour by first, exploring how retail buyers in independent luxury fashion resellers rationalise their decision making when selecting brands and collections, and second, assessing whether Sheth's (1981) model of merchandise buying behaviour is applicable to the context of luxury retail fashion buying.…”

Competition and Coordination in a Fashion Supply Chain with Wholesale Pricing Schemes

“…Next, we briefly review several papers concerning the coordination of fashion supply chains. Kincade et al (2002) conducted a survey and revealed that the benefits of retailers in the apparel industry are greatly related to the financial promotional support from manufacturers. Motivated by a real case in the apparel industry, Eppen and Iyer (1997) developed a stochastic dynamic programming model to investigate a backup agreement for a fashion supply chain involving a catalog company and a manufacturer.…”