Journal of Retailing, 900 Oval Dr (2026)

07/09/2026

New research in the Journal of Retailing

“Beyond the Receipt: Risk Reduction and Locus of Attribution in Grocery Returns”
Authors: Boram Lim, Lauren Min, and Kissan Joseph

It turns out processing a product return isn't just a loss—it can actually drive your next big sales lift.

🛒 When shoppers are reminded that the return option exists following return incidence, it lowers their perceived risk, encouraging variety-seeking consumers and budget buyers to explore new products and build larger baskets.

🥬 However, the post-return spending surge drops when consumers return perishable foods or return items quickly, likely because they blame the retailer for the issue.

📉 Finally, while a first return creates a positive spillover effect, subsequent returns eventually create a negative cumulative impact on spending.

💡 Counterintuitive but true: product returns drive future sales, especially for variety seekers and low-spenders.

Read this open-access article at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022435926000904

26/08/2026

Two new open-access meta-analyses in the Journal of Retailing examine a shared question:

How does retailing effectiveness vary across the customer journey?

🔹 Testing the effects of augmented and virtual reality attributes on the customer journey in online retailing: A meta-analysis

Authors: Minghao Li, Ruolan Chen, Markus Blut, Ruizhi Yuan, and Bo Huang

Based on 1,626 effect sizes from 126 independent samples (N = 36,386), the study shows that different AR/VR attributes matter at different stages of the customer journey:

• Immersion is most strongly associated with prepurchase outcomes

• Vividness is most strongly associated with purchase outcomes

• Presence and interactivity are especially important for post-purchase outcomes

The study also identifies important customer, product, retailer, interface, and time-related boundary conditions.

Read the full article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022435926000801

🔹 Understanding Loyalty Program Effectiveness across the Customer Journey: A Meta-Analysis

Authors:Ruolan Chen, Heiner Evanschitzky, and Markus Blut

Drawing on 434 effect sizes from 78 independent samples, this study finds that loyalty program membership is positively associated with outcomes throughout the customer journey, with the strongest effects occurring at the purchase stage.

Importantly, loyalty program design and product type shape effectiveness differently across journey stages—and some moderators even reverse their effects depending on the stage examined.

Read the full article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022435926000758

Together, these studies highlight an important takeaway: Retail strategies should not be evaluated as having one uniform effect. Their value depends on where customers are in the journey and the specific outcomes retailers seek to influence.

24/08/2026

📱 Is your favorite social media creator really an influencer—or are they a salesperson? When does an influencer become a seller?

New research in the Journal of Retailing, “Influselling as a New Retail Format: How Influencer Culture Transforms Buyer-Seller Relationships,” by Claudia Gonzalez-Arcos, PhD, Alison M Joubert, and Jenna Drenten, Ph.D., examines how influencer culture is reshaping retail exchange.

🛍️ The authors identify a distinct retail format they call “influselling.” Unlike traditional influencer marketing, influselling makes the seller’s ongoing relationship with their audience the central mechanism of exchange.

💬 Market knowledge emerges continuously through platform engagement, while customer journeys unfold through persistent interactions across social media.

✨ At the same time, sellers weave products into their identities, lifestyles, and personal narratives—turning authenticity into a powerful sales technology.

💡 These findings have important implications for retailers managing customer relationships, seller training, platform strategy, and brand governance.

They also raise questions for regulators and consumer advocates because consumers may struggle to distinguish influselling from conventional influencer marketing.

📖 Read the full article in the Journal of Retailing: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022435926000771

19/08/2026

💬 A little rudeness might be selling more than you think.

This week, we’re highlighting new Journal of Retailing research on frontline employees and incivility—and how these interactions can shape both employee behavior and retail outcomes.
We’ve all heard the anecdote: the “difficult” frontline employee who somehow outsells everyone on the team. New research suggests this isn’t just an anecdote—it’s a pattern worth understanding.

📌 In “How Frontline Incivility Shapes Transactional and Relational Selling in Retail,” Volkan Yeniaras, Fulya Acikgoz, Nesenur Altinigne, and Meric Cemali draw on three experiments and a field study involving more than 1,500 retail frontline employees (FLEs).

📈 They find that low levels of FLE incivility—brief, brusque, task-focused interactions rather than warm, relationship-building ones—are actually associated with more transactional selling (think upselling) than either fully courteous or overtly hostile behavior.

🤝 But that same directness comes at a cost: relational selling—like cross-selling, which depends on trust and rapport—declines as incivility rises.

⚙️ Context matters too. When companies evaluate FLEs on outcomes rather than process, this transactional edge gets amplified; when they monitor how the sale happens, it doesn’t.

💡 The takeaway for sales leaders isn’t “tolerate rudeness”—it’s that civility and performance aren’t a simple trade-off. The right interpersonal style depends on what you’re actually trying to sell, and how you’re managing for it.

📖 Read the full article in the Journal of Retailing: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022435926000795

17/08/2026

Customer incivility is an unfortunate reality for many frontline employees. Yet we often assume that rude, disrespectful, or unfriendly customer behavior inevitably leads to poorer employee performance and organizational outcomes.

New research published in the Journal of Retailing challenges this conventional view.

In “Challenge or Hindrance? How Frontline Employees Appraise and Respond to Customer Incivility,” Phyra Sok, Peter Danaher, Keo Mony Sok, Tracey Danaher, and Devin Bin show that the same uncivil customer behavior can be appraised as either a challenge or a hindrance, leading to fundamentally different employee responses.

🚀 When employees perceive customer incivility as a challenge, they are more likely to engage in proactive work behaviors that ultimately enhance their performance.
⚠️ Conversely, when the same experience is perceived as a hindrance, it is more likely to trigger counterproductive work behaviors that undermine service performance.
🧠 Importantly, the study also finds that both individual resources, such as empathy and grit, and organizational resources, such as employee bonuses, shape how these appraisals translate into employee behavior.
💡 These findings suggest that organizations should move beyond simply trying to eliminate customer incivility—which is often impossible—and instead invest in helping employees develop the psychological and organizational resources needed to respond constructively when difficult customer interactions occur.

📖 Read the full article at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022435926000813

14/08/2026

📢 New Journal of Retailing Editorial Is Out Now

We are pleased to welcome our new Editors-in-Chief: Breugelmans, Hardesty, and Roggeveen, and we extend our sincere thanks to Gielens for four years of outstanding leadership as Editor-in-Chief.

In their first editorial, the new editorial team outlines their vision for JR, including the journal’s broad scope across retailing contexts and research approaches, as well as several important submission updates:

• 50-page manuscript limit
• 40-page limit for web appendices
• Authors may propose reviewers in their cover letter
• New AI policy for authors and reviewers

🔗 Read the full editorial: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022435926000746

12/08/2026

🌐 Navigating Coopetition: An Analysis of IoT Platform Openness and Product Embedding 🌐

❓As e-tailers build smart-home and Internet of Things ecosystems, should they develop their own connected products, open their platforms to manufacturers, or pursue both strategies at once?

📊Recent research examines how e-tailers balance platform openness, product embedding, and competition with manufacturers. The findings show that:
✔️E-tailers may strategically rely on manufacturers to create IoT value rather than investing in their own smart products.
✔️Greater cross-selling opportunities make opening an IoT platform to outside manufacturers more attractive.
✔️When IoT functionality creates substantial value, e-tailers have stronger incentives to favor their own products and pursue exclusivity.
✔️Well-designed platform access fees can generate mutually beneficial outcomes for e-tailers, manufacturers, and consumers.

🔁These findings provide important guidance for e-tailers designing smart ecosystems, manufacturers seeking access to IoT platforms, and policymakers evaluating self-preferencing in digital markets. Platform openness is not simply a choice between access and exclusion—it depends on how IoT value, cross-selling opportunities, and access fees interact.

Read the full paper here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022435926000710

Out now: “Navigating Coopetition: An Analysis of IoT Platform Openness and Product Embedding,” by Shuang D**g, Yingchen Yan, and Zhongfeng Qin of Beihang University.

10/08/2026

🤖 Consumer Perception of Price Dispersion by Artificial Intelligence 🤖

❓Artificial intelligence is increasingly moving beyond recommending products and setting prices—it is becoming the negotiation partner itself. But how do consumers respond when they negotiate with AI rather than a human?

📊Across six studies, recent research examines consumer negotiations in resale markets and finds that:
✔️AI negotiators are perceived to make more consistent—and less dispersed—price offers than human negotiators.
✔️Consumers with lower confidence in their negotiation abilities are more likely to prefer negotiating with AI.
✔️This preference is driven by the expectation that AI’s narrower range of offers reduces the risk of receiving an unfavorable outcome.
✔️As a result, AI’s more consistent pricing can feel safer and more appealing, even when consumers are acting as sellers rather than buyers.

🔁These findings extend research on AI pricing beyond traditional concerns about fairness and price discrimination. They show that perceived price dispersion is also an important driver of consumer preferences.

As AI-powered negotiation becomes more common in resale marketplaces, product trade-in programs, and other retail settings, understanding these perceptions will be increasingly important for retailers designing AI-enabled customer experiences.

Read the full paper here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022435926000709

Out now: “Consumer Perception of Price Dispersion by Artificial Intelligence,” by Xuying (Marion) Leo and Young Eun Huh.

05/08/2026

🌱 Quantifying and Steering the Added Value of Sustainability Claims on FMCG Product Packaging 🌱

❓What makes a sustainability claim on product packaging truly effective? Should brands emphasize positive environmental contributions, highlight the harm being prevented, or combine several claims at once?

📊Recent research quantifies how different sustainability claims influence consumer choice and finds that:
✔️Negatively framed claims that emphasize harm prevention are generally more persuasive than positively framed claims.
✔️Adding multiple sustainability claims can increase consumer response, but the incremental benefits diminish as more claims are added.
✔️A small number of highly relevant claims is often more effective than overwhelming consumers with numerous sustainability messages.

🔁These findings provide practical guidance for FMCG companies seeking to improve sustainability communication through packaging. More claims are not necessarily better—careful claim selection, framing, and prioritization can help firms communicate environmental benefits more effectively and support consumer decision-making.

How do you think sustainability messages on packaging can best influence consumer choices?

Read the full paper here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022435926000722

Out now: “Quantifying and Steering the Added Value of Sustainability Claims on FMCG Product Packaging,” by Dr. Lukas Schnabl, Christina Antonie Reh, Dr. Anna-Karina Schmitz, and Christian Schlereth.

03/08/2026

🌟 Once Upon a Product: Online Product Descriptions and Product-Level Narratives 🌟

❓Online product pages often rely on feature lists to persuade consumers. But can telling a story make a standard product feel personally tailored to the shopper?

📊Across four studies, including a longitudinal choice experiment, recent research finds that:
✔️Narrative product descriptions increase purchase intentions by transporting consumers into the story.
✔️This narrative transportation creates Narrative-Induced Customization—the perception that a standard product has been tailored to the individual consumer.
✔️Product images can also function as narratives, extending the effect beyond written descriptions.
✔️Third-person protagonists are often more effective than second-person narratives that directly address the consumer as “you.”

🔁These findings are especially relevant as generative AI makes it easier to create product content at scale. Rather than using AI only to generate feature lists or optimize keywords, retailers can use storytelling to help consumers imagine how a product fits into their lives.

The findings show that online product descriptions are more than informational content—they are strategic marketing tools that can shape how consumers experience a product before they ever own it.

Read the full paper here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022435926000734

Out now: “Once Upon a Product: Online Product Descriptions and Product-Level Narratives,” by Christian Barney Neuman, Joel Collier, and Michael Breazeale.

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