| dc.description.abstract | Fast and complex changes in the retail landscape cause retailers to struggle and some even to close their doors. To survive, brick-and-mortar retailers are innovating their services to create a memorable customer experience. Understanding the innovation decision process is complex since the service innovation options are plentiful and retailers are known to have an unstructured approach to innovation. Up to date, retail innovation literature is limited, fragmented and does not incorporate service innovation literature. This research uses prior conditions from Rogers’ innovation-decision model to select factors previously identified in both retail and service innovation literature, thereby bridging the literature strands. Even though retailers often adopt technologies, they also innovate themselves. Therefore, this research uses the synthesis perspective on innovation and enriches Rogers’ model meant for the adoption of technological innovations with factors from service innovation literature. Qualitative analysis of interviews with representatives from fashion retailers’ headquarters in the Netherlands show that previous practice and felt needs or problems barely influence the decision process, retailers learn from their cycles of search and change, rely on knowledge from their own manufacturing operations and retailer conferences, imitate other retailers and ultimately base their decision on personal preferences and gut feeling. Using the interviews enabled the identification of thirteen common innovations that have been implemented in the last five years. This research used the service blueprinting technique to create a visual rendering of a generic service process and underlying organization structure of Dutch fashion stores. The service blueprint was used to analyse the effect of the innovations on the service. Results show that typical innovations are not complex and do not have a large impact on the service, are part of the omnichannel trend, and concern innovations in the collection. Finally, the interview data enabled Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), an analysis which links causal combinations of factors to specific innovations - making this the first study to do so on a large-scale. Results from the QCA show that whereas experimentation is necessary for multiple innovations, an interaction between organisational learning without the capability to sense opportunities leads to the implementation of more practical yet simple innovations, and the distinction between large, innovative firms as opposed to small non-innovative firms causes retailers to implement either technological innovations or innovations that have been on the market for a while, respectively. The popularity of three industry trends outweighs the influence of factors on the decision.
Keywords: Innovation – decision-making - service innovation – service blueprint - retail – fashion – synthesis perspective – prior conditions | |
| dc.subject.keywords | Innovation, decision-making, service innovation, service blueprint, retail, fashion, synthesis perspective, prior conditions | |
