Retail store formats, competition and shopper behavior: A Systematic review

This study presents a systematic review of literature covering 178 articles relating to physical store-based grocery retail formats. The research questions for the review were based on drivers of consumer choice and response to marketing activities across store formats, competitive effects and conduct in the context of format evolution, and the interplay of retail formats with societal stakeholders and environmental context over time. The review reveals substantial evidence on drivers of shopper choice among formats including intrinsic household characteristics, time value factors, shopping goals and motivations, and actionable retailer factors such as location, assortment, pricing, promotion. The evidence is scarcer where such marketing activities are difficult to vary. There is limited consensus that inter-format competition is more intense than intra-format. The modernization of formats globally was found to change the way they compete and how consumers behave toward them. There is evidence of substantial impact of entry of new formats, but less guidance for incumbent retailers on how they should respond. Several gaps were identified, and research directions included a typology for format types, the role of technology, a call for more causal evidence, and deepening the empirical base for intra-versus inter-format competition and drivers of format choice.Crown Copyright (c) 2022 Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of New York University. All rights reserved.