Modernizing retailers in emerging markets : investigating externally-focused and internally-focused approaches
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- In the retail sector globally, millions of traditional stand-alone shops — such as the Kiranas of India, Tienditas of Mexico and Xiao Mai Bu of China — co-exist alongside modern organized retail chains and compete with them to serve end-customers. In this dissertation, I study the impact of business modernization on the sales performance of these traditional retailers. I define modernization as adopting physical structures and tangible practices ubiquitous in organized retail chains(for example, exterior signage with store name and logo, or a database to record product-level information). To address this research question, I implement a randomized field experiment in Mexico City with 1148 traditional retail firms. The sample is randomized into three groups: 385 firms that are externally modernized in ways that are visible to customers; 383 firms that are internally modernized in ways that are not visible to customers; and 380 firms form a control group. I find a significant and persistent main effect of modernization on sales: firms in both treatment groups increase monthly sales by 15% to 19%, even 24 months after study recruitment. In terms of novel mechanism evidence, I find that externally-modernizing firms improve their store-level branding, while internally-modernizing firms strengthen their product management. These results have important implications for multinational managers who distribute products through traditional retail channels, and for policymakers interested in improving firm performance in the retail sector of emerging markets.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2021; ©2021 |
| Publication date | 2021; 2021 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Kankanhalli, Shreya Atreyi |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Anderson, Stephen J |
| Degree supervisor | Narayanan, Sridhar, 1970- |
| Thesis advisor | Anderson, Stephen J |
| Thesis advisor | Narayanan, Sridhar, 1970- |
| Thesis advisor | Hartmann, Wesley R. (Wesley Robert), 1973- |
| Thesis advisor | Sahni, Navdeep |
| Degree committee member | Hartmann, Wesley R. (Wesley Robert), 1973- |
| Degree committee member | Sahni, Navdeep |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Graduate School of Business |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Shreya Atreyi Kankanhalli. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Graduate School of Business. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2021. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/zr044nv4423 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2021 by Shreya Atreyi Kankanhalli
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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