In 2009 we posted the first part of an assessment of grocery home delivery. Given the barnstorming results of the online grocery services of the major UK supermarket retailers over Christmas, we thought we should post the second part of the assessment: a blow-by-blow account of the service provided by each. For the record, Tesco [...]

As a social science researcher myself, I always feel duty bound to undertake email surveys. This can be a tiresome duty. This is partly because, as a result, I am exposed to the all the vicissitudes of bad practice in design and administration, ludicrous questioning and all the obsessions of anxious clients that the industry [...]

Received wisdom would have us believe that if there is a type of retailing that is surviving if not thriving in the economic downturn, it is Internet-based retailing. In the UK, headlines have consistently suggested that savvy consumers have abandoned the High Street and taken to the Internet in their droves to take advantage of [...]

Retail is problematic as a field of study. Characterised as simply ‘selling stuff’, retail lacks the glamour of the high tech industries or the worthiness of public service. Retail is never considered blue-chip and is not usually a popular career choice among recent graduates. With very few retailers appearing in the ranks of popular employers  [...]

I recently led a discussion with European colleagues on the prospects for DIY and home improvement retailing. Apart from the opportunity of reviewing some of the demand side data, we also considered both operational and strategic responses to the economic downturn in different North American and European markets. What was particularly interesting was that I [...]

Some interesting data just published by the Department of Transport on internet-related purchasing and trips in the UK. This confirms that internet-based ordering has increased over the 6 years since the last National Transport Survey Omnibus, (not really a surprise!) but also contains some confirmatory evidence on the size of the UK domestic e-commerce market [...]

Following the demise of both Woolworths and MFI, if we are to believe UK insolvency specialist Begbies Traynor, there is considerably more pain to come. The firm has 323 UK retailers on its “critical watch list”, (defined as having a 70 per cent chance or more of failing). In the Times recently, retail consultancy OC&C [...]

Following the success of Oxford University’s trials of iTunes U, we are experimenting with new methods of sharing our research, insights and analysis. We’ve already provided links to a number of OXIRM presentations in the innovative Slideshare service in other blog posts (see here for example). But downloaders seem more interested in my presentation on [...]

I recently gave a presentation on the nature of retail brands in the virtual world, Second Life, at a conference in Zagreb hosted by the European Association for Education and Research in Commercial Distribution. Apart from giving some insights into how much attention I pay to my avatar’s clothes compared to those in my first [...]

The Oxford Institute of Retail Management was commissioned by NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) to examine innovation in the retail sector, as part of a broader government investigation into innovation in services. The Government’s over-arching paper on Supporting Innovation in Services was published in September, alongside research reports produced on [...]