Sustainability-oriented innovation in retailing

Abstract

Sustainability-oriented innovation in services has recently been raising interest among academics and professionals. The present research has a dual objective. The first is to develop a scale that captures the notion of sustainability-oriented innovation in retailing (SOI-r) from the consumer's perspective. A sequential process is carried out to purge and retain 17 items which synergistically measure SOI-r. We use quantitative research, adopting an exploratory-descriptive approach on a total sample of 510 customers of commercial food establishments. The principal axis factor analysis shows six factors: product innovation, marketing innovation, relational innovation, economic sustainability, social sustainability, and environmental sustainability. The second objective is to develop an index using importance-performance map analysis, which allows analysis of the level of development of the six dimensions identified in SOI-r and areas for their improvement. The results are compared across food retail formats (hypermarkets, supermarkets, and discount stores) and recommendations are made at a strategic level.