Consumer acceptance and market success: Wal‐Mart in the UK and Germany
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose This paper aims to explore Wal‐Mart's varying performance in Europe and eventual exit from the German market by singling out the role of consumer acceptance of Wal‐Mart's market propositions. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses the macro‐constructs of institutional theory to interpret and conceptualise micro‐level consumer data. Data were collected via telephone surveys in two regional German and UK markets in 2002/2003. Salient patronage norms in each market were established and Wal‐Mart's as well as its competitors' performance on those norms were assessed. Findings In the German context, the institutional theory approach to explaining Wal‐Mart's problems clearly foreshadows market failure and exit. In UK market, no clear pattern between retailers adhering to salient patronage norms, patronage behaviour and market position could be established. The constructs of institutional theory were more likely to predict and explain market failure than success. Research limitations/implications Research in two regional markets limits the applicability of findings. Nevertheless, some key issues seem to indicate overall market performance. The telephone survey approach carries inherent problems, which however have only marginally impacted on the relevance of the findings. Originality/value The use of institutional theory constructs adds a further dimension to the discussion of international retailer success/failure and can constitute a valuable tool in the repertoire of the divestment and failure literature.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".