Recently, many suburban residents in Japan are facing problems when shopping for groceries. The two primary causes of these problems are store closure and an aging population. For example, when all ...stores in an area close, residents may be forced to travel further to other stores or remaining small stores might not be adequate for people’s grocery needs. Moreover, elderly residents of an area will not be able to use a car and their moving range become narrow and they will have difficulties with shopping groceries.In these areas, new stores seldom open, so creating shopping support services (e.g. a delivery or local chauffeur service operated by the residential association) is important to solve these problems. When a local government selects a suitable support service, it is indispensable to examine whether the service can alleviate people’s dissatisfaction with the difficulties in getting groceries. This study aims to examine the desirable direction of shopping support services in Koma-Musashidai District in Hidaka City, Saitama, Japan, based on an analysis of customer store choice and store dissatisfaction. In this study, “desirable services” refers to services which can improve people’s grocery shopping experience . The researchers conducted a questionnaire survey on customer shopping behavior of people in November 2015. Respondents (N=611) were either householders or their spouses. First, we analyzed the relationship between people’s store choice and customer-based evaluations of the stores. From this, we summarized the problems people experience with grocery shopping. Results showed that people’s store choice depended on their personal characteristics (e.g. age, family structure) and their mode of transport. Results also showed that people’s store evaluation could be classified into two factors: quality and accessibility. People who drove used higher quality stores located farther from the district. People who could neither use a car nor travel far easily tended to choose a smaller, nearer store (Store A) with lower perceived quality. Residents’ inconvenience when shopping was found to be related to low accessibility and poor store evaluations, especially regarding groceries sold. Based on these findings, we analyzed the need for the existing delivery service and local chauffeur service. Results suggested that if a customer of Store A used a delivery service more than once a week, their inconvenience was ameliorated. Even the chauffeur service, though limited, could get rid of people’s dissatisfaction with Store A’s accessibility. In addition, if the moving ranges were extended and people could reach higher quality stores, it would help resolve the dissatisfaction with accessibility. Even if expanding the service area was difficult, the result of this analysis suggested that delivery service, strengthened cooperation with the current residential organization, and relatives living near respondents could play important roles in resolving people’s dissatisfaction. As the number of children in the district living with or near a respondent is increasing, this could alleviate dissatisfaction because the child could take the respondent to a higher quality store that is farther away. Findings of this study are applicable to those on other similar suburban residential areas in Japan. To resolve the problems related to grocery shopping in these areas, it is important to pay attention not only to store distance but also to various other sources of dissatisfaction (e.g. quality of items, stock and availability, etc.). In addition, it is necessary to provide better shopping environments by not only opening new stores but also improving existing shopping support services.
In order to solve the food desert problem, which is becoming a serious problem among mainly in rural areas of Japan, many studies based on RP data have been made on (1) the number of people in food ...desert and (2) the demand for shopping support services. With RP data, SP data is also often used in decision making for policies and measures. However, there are few studies which focus on the demand for shopping support services based on SP data (i.e. potential demand). This study aims to clarify the factors which influence on potential demand for shopping support services, in order to obtain fundamental knowledge to develop an estimation model for evaluating potential demand for them. The results demonstrate that people in food desert with low physical ability or poor shopping convenience can be assumed to use shopping support services by improving or newly introducing shopping support services.
This paper develops
ReceiptLogService Platform
, which enables consumers to using their personal purchase receipts, store their receipt logs, and to use the data for various consumer services. The ...proposed platform consists of three components:
receipt scanner
,
ReceiptLog DB
, and
ReceiptLog API
. The receipt scanner digitizes daily receipts, and the ReceiptLog DB manages the scanned data. The ReceiptLog API provides the receipt log as a service. The API consists of the BasicAPI, which provides fundamental access for the receipt log, whereas the MiningAPI performs a statistical analysis of the receipt log. These APIs are published as Web services, and can used by multiple applications and services for various purposes. We also conduct an experimental evaluation with actual subjects, to confirm the usefulness of services with receipt log.
The growth of e-commerce has caused problems with personalized recommendations. Although several attempts have made to improve or automate the retrieval and filtering of such information, no generic ...framework links the semantic context of online shopping with shoppers’ purchases in order to improve the efficiency of online shopping support. Through the application of knowledge-modeling, this paper selects a college population to empirically investigate and establish the relationship between e-marketing terms and shoppers’ buying behavior. General online shopping and the online book purchases are selected to validate the generic framework. Two hypotheses are tested: (1) e-marketing terms are important in influencing shoppers’ decisions; and (2) shoppers behave differently with respect to different types of buys. Experimental results indicate that shoppers perceive the importance of e-marketing terms differently whilst shopping online. Six types of shoppers’ are classified: (1) general-purpose, (2) security-concerned, (3) value, (4) fashionable, (5) time-sensitive, and (6) service-oriented. Results and future research opportunities are discussed. This paper serves as a basis for improving online information search for shopping purposes.
The expanding assortment of products and devices available on the market is associated with dynamic technological development. Consequently, the number of parameters taken into account during ...purchasing decisions is also growing. It causes the choice of the product to be purchased, a multidimensional problem that is difficult to solve and requires a consumer to consider many criteria. The presented paper proposes an approach incorporating multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods, which may serve as a helpful instrument in consumer choice support systems during purchases made on e-commerce websites. The research includes applying an approach to solve a multi-criteria monitor selection problem based on four MCDM meth-ods. Two of them, Characteristic Objects METhod (COMET) and Stable Preference Ordering Towards Ideal Solution (SPOTIS) method, are new methods that are rank reversal free. Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to the Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and Vlse Kriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR), on the other hand, are methods that are well known and have been widely used for many years and were used as reference methods. The obtained results prove that the final rankings depend on the algorithm of the MCDM method used and confirm the need for benchmarking in investigations of multi-criteria problems. The received outcomes indicate that the proposed approach seems to be a promising solution for consumer decision support systems.
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