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Towards modeling the retailer as a brand: A social construction of the grocery store from the customer standpoint

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Abstract

As a highly customer-sensitive business, retailing is one of the most socially active industries. Nevertheless, when addressing retailers as brands, the retailing literature has failed to account for their unique social orientation, exposing a gap in the literature. This article utilizes the sociological view of brands to socially construct a conceptual retail brand model from the customer standpoint. An ethnographic study of grocery retailing revealed that the store has, metaphorically, a tree-shaped culture, which can organically model the interplay between building the retailer brand as a culture and the phases constituting the social-self concept.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Business Administration Program, Trent University, 1600 Westbank Drive, Peterborough, K9J 7B8, Ontario, Canada

    Ayman El-Amir & Steve Burt

Authors
  1. Ayman El-Amir
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  2. Steve Burt
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ayman El-Amir.

Additional information

1focusses his research interests on the social construction of contemporary consumption as well as the adoption of a critical perspective to analyze the ideological assumptions that underpin marketing activities, particularly in relation to branding and retailing issues. He also has a special interest in the application of the interpretive methods of inquiry in marketing research.

2focusses his primary research interests in the field of comparative and international retailing and retail branding. He is particularly interested in the wider ‘holistic' conceptualization of the retailer as a brand – encompassing elements of corporate, store, service and item branding. His research has been supported by a range of government agencies as well as commercial enterprises including UK and European retailers.

Appendix

Appendix

Grounded Theory – Analytical Terminology and Procedures

Coding structure

Phenomena: are central ideas in the data represented as concepts, they answer the question what is going on here? (Pre-set as culture in this study)

Categories: are concepts that stand for phenomena. (Pre-set in this study as the four cultural categories of Hofstede et al (1990) – symbols; heroes; rituals; values)

Concepts: are labeled phenomena; an abstract representation of an event, object, or action/interaction that the researcher identifies as being significant in the data.

Properties: are general or specific characteristics or attributes of a category, the delineation of which defines and gives a category meaning.

Dimensions: are the range along which the general properties of a category vary, giving specification to a category and variation to the theory.

Sub-categories: are concepts that pertain to a category, giving it further clarification and specification, and answering questions like who how, where, how come, with what results and why.

Coding systems

Open coding: is the analytical process through which concepts are identified and their properties and dimensions are discovered in data.

Axial coding: is the process of relating categories to their sub-categories, termed axial because coding occurs around the axis of the category, linking categories at the level of dimensions and properties.

Selective coding: is the process of integrating and refining theory.

Source: Strauss and Corbin36 (p. 61, 96 and 116).

See Figure A1.

Figure A1
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Grounded theory analytical procedure.

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El-Amir, A., Burt, S. Towards modeling the retailer as a brand: A social construction of the grocery store from the customer standpoint. J Brand Manag 17, 429–445 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/bm.2009.36

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