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Journal of Retailing

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The Journal of Retailing is devoted to advancing the state of knowledge and its application with respect to all aspects of retailing, its management, evolution, and current theory.

23/09/2026

🖼️ New in the Journal of Retailing: Too Much of a Good Thing: Promotional Visuals and Their Effect on Buying Intentions of Experiences

More pictures should make an experience easier to sell, right? This research suggests that this intuitive strategy can backfire.

🔹 Across five studies, in settings ranging from hotel bookings and a bike retailer newsletter to a zoo trailer, consumers showed lower buying intentions after extensive rather than limited visual exposure.
🎥 The effect also extended from images to video and to choices between travel options.
🔄 Importantly, more is not always worse: when additional images showed genuinely different aspects of the experience, the negative effect disappeared and even reversed.
💡 The implication for marketers is therefore not simply to use fewer images. Instead, each additional visual should add something new rather than repeat what consumers have already seen.
✨ When it comes to promoting experiences, more visual content is only better when it keeps adding value.

Read the new article by Anouk Festjens, Caroline Goukens, Dr. Kimberley van der Heijden, and David Gal at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022435926000928

21/09/2026

📚 The September 2026 issue of the Journal of Retailing is now available!

This issue brings together new research on algorithms and consumer manipulation, payment options, NFTs, shopping malls, authenticity, luxury, promotions, pricing, variety seeking, packaging, and service recovery.

The issue also opens with “Words from the new editors-in-chief” by Els Breugelmans, David Hardesty, and Anne Roggeveen.

📖 Explore the full September 2026 issue here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-retailing/vol/102/issue/3

16/09/2026

New in the Journal of Retailing: Employee Unionization at a Customer Firm Lowers the Trade Credit It Receives from Suppliers

Employee unionization at a customer firm raises its suppliers' uncertainty about the firm's likelihood and timeliness of trade credit payments.

💰 This uncertainty translates into two supplier decisions: a reduction in (1) the trade credit the firm receives from its suppliers and (2) the number of suppliers who disclose the name of the firm as its “major” customer.
🔎 Furthermore, the study shows that three pre-unionization signals (product-market scope, product-market fluidity, and prior sales growth) differentially shape suppliers’ responses to a customer firm’s unionization.
📊 The authors test their hypotheses empirically using 1,378 employee union elections conducted by the U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for 909 U.S. public firms from 1977 to 2021. Local and global discontinuity regressions support their claims.

Read the new article by Aoran Hong, Vivek Astvansh, and Beibei Wang in the Journal of Retailing at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022435926000916

14/09/2026

📱 New in the Journal of Retailing
Beyond Installation: How Pre-adoption Advertising Drives Post-Adoption Retail App Usage

Retailers spent roughly $78 billion on app-install advertising in 2025, generating some 32 billion downloads. Yet a quarter of apps are opened only once, and 30-day retention sits near 6%. That gap matters, because retail apps make money through what people do after installing, not through install counts.

🔍 In this new Journal of Retailing article, Ammara Mahmood, Stefan Bernritter, and Caroline Wiertz ask a question the field has mostly skipped: Does the advertising that brought someone to the app store still matter once the app is on their phone?

Across eleven studies with more than 11,000 participants—including field data from a Dutch marketplace app, a critical-incident study spanning 26 app categories, and incentive-compatible experiments—the answer is yes.

📈 Users who saw an ad before installing opened the app about 8% more often afterward, spent more screen time in it, chose longer subscription plans, and put more of their own money behind it. The gap widened after the campaign ended rather than fading.

🧠 The mechanism is cognitive dissonance. A remembered ad gives new users a ready justification for the download—“I saw this advertised, so it was a sensible choice”—which quiets the post-install doubt that otherwise leads to abandonment.
💡 Three conditions shape how strong the effect is: functional, feature-first ad copy outperforms lifestyle imagery; the effect is stronger for consumers with a high need for control; and it weakens in crowded, highly competitive categories, where attractive rejected alternatives keep the doubt alive.

🎯 For practice, the takeaway is that install campaigns should be judged on what users do after the download, not on install volume alone. Pre-adoption advertising works as a quality filter, buying a smaller but considerably stickier user base.

Read the new open-access article in the Journal of Retailing at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022435926000825

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

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