Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Death Of Malls: The Rise Of E-Commerce And Digitally Native Brands, Alexis Montgomery

Theses

Since the mid-2000s, malls and retail brick and mortar stores have been on the decline. Stores not making enough revenue in-person; the rise of online shopping and e-commerce, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the rise of digitally native brands have contributed to this. This research aims to figure out how the current consumer atmosphere, as well as how the rise of e-commerce and digital marketing, will impact the mall of the future. This research aims to discover how local malls are faring, if stores are truly closing and if national retail brands are pulling out of malls. This research also aims …

The Making Of Everyday Hollywood: 1930s Film Influence On Everyday Women’S Fashion In Nebraska, Anna Naomi Kuhlman

Department of Textiles, Merchandising, and Fashion Design: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This research examines the influence of film fashions on middle-class, Nebraskan women’s dress during the Great Depression (1932-1940). The Great Depression challenged the middle class: while standards of living remained high, the economic means to achieve those standards diminished. Despite the crisis, women strove to keep up with current fashion trends. While previous literature has examined how Hollywood directly affected trends and styles of the 1930s in major American metropolitan contexts, the manifestation of trends in the dress of middle to lower socio-economic classes in Middle America remains under-examined. Against the backdrop of Depression-era hardships specific to Nebraska’s agricultural economy, …

The Effects Of Covid-19 On China’S Luxury Retail Market, Shirlysia D. Daniel

Honors College Theses

The Coronavirus outbreak that occurred in 2020 negatively impacted the world globally. China handled the pandemic better than other countries due to their experience with prior virus outbreaks, SARS and MERS. It is important to research how the Coronavirus outbreak affected and is still affecting China’s economy, as it is a leading role in other countries’ economies as well. Before Covid-19, Chinese consumers made up one-third of global spending on luxury goods. Global luxury spending decreased drastically as many were impacted financially, emotionally, and physically. However, China’s success during the pandemic has been predicted to be the largest luxury retail …

Retail Tales And Tribulations: Transmedia Brands, Consumer Products, And The Significance Of Shop Talk, Avi Santo

Communication & Theatre Arts Faculty Publications

This article challenges media studies scholars to pay closer attention to retail spaces as sites that mediate how entertainment franchises engage consumers. Examining retail through a media industries lens, it argues that retail is a site of struggle among retailers and brand owners over how brand stories are told, if at all. The article explores both the storytelling devices used in telling Frozen and Sesame Street stories at Target and how shop talk among retailers, brand owners, and manufacturers shapes the kinds of stories that entertainment properties can tell at retail, especially as those stories intersect with retail imaginings of …

An Investigation Of Web Atmospherics In Online Luxury Branding, Emilie E. Jones

Honors College Theses

Having an online presence for a retail store has transitioned from serving as simply a new avenue through which a profit can be made, to a tool that can be harnessed to express a brand’s personality. So how do luxury brands manage to maintain a high-end, exclusive status on the highly available landscape of the internet? The intention of this research is to identify whether luxury brands are currently taking advantage of differential web atmospherics cues, in a way that significantly sets them apart from non-luxury brand websites. To do this, we measured elements including screen space, reduction of elements, …

Strategies Retailers Use To Build Brand Loyalty And Improve Customer Experience, Mekus Samuel

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The use of strategy to build brand loyalty and improve customer experience by retail managers is essential in driving sales revenue and increasing profitability. Retail managers should perceive customer experience strategy as a tool for product differentiation, which could be leveraged to attain benefits, such as, repeat business, positive word of mouth, increased sales, and the competitive advantage. Some retail managers may not fully comprehend customer experience strategy, and may solely focus on individual facets such as, customer service and employee training. This qualitative multiple case study explored the strategies retail managers used to build brand loyalty and improve customer …

The Sixty-Six Percent, Natalie Abruzzo

Capstones

The Sixty-Six Percent represent the percentage of women in the U.S. who are overweight. They are regarded as full-figured or “plus” size in the world of women’s apparel. Even though more than half of American women wear a “plus” size - size 14 and up - designs for these women account for a fraction of women’s apparel - Only 37% of women's wear is plus-size.

The Sixty-Six Percent is coming at an important time in a broader conversation about de-stigmatizing what it means to be a plus-size woman in America. Fat shaming has become taboo and mainstream media as well …

The Psychological Effects Of Perceived Scarcity On Consumers’ Buying Behavior, Shipra Gupta

College of Business: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This research seeks to provide an understanding of consumers’ psychological responses to the scarcity environments that are strategically created by retailers. A mixed method design provides both qualitative and statistical understanding of this phenomenon. The findings across four studies define a new construct that captures consumers’ understanding of the product shortage that is strategically created by the retailer, differentiates it from scarcity situations where the retailer does not necessary limit the supply of the product, and suggests that consumers react differently in the varied conditions. The study suggests that strategically controlled environments, by creating product uncertainty, are able to motivate …

Retail Visual Assistant Digital Artefact, Neville Knott

Dissertations

Window display, store layout and visual merchandising are defined as the ability to attract and sell to the consumer silently. One of the biggest challenges facing small retail businesses in towns and villages around the globe is how to compete against large multinationals in the visual layout and presentation of their merchandise and shops. One of the key advantages that large retail units have over small ones is professionally merchandised stock incorporated into a strategic spatial layout. The cost of employing a full- or part-time design expert within the field of visual merchandising is not viable for smaller shops, resulting …

E. A. Smith Grain Company Records, Zach S. Henderson Library Special Collections

Finding Aids

This collection consists chiefly of the records of the E.A. Smith Grain Company from 1919-1960. Records include bound account books, receipts documenting business transactions, and financial activities of the company and others.

Find this collection in the University Libraries' catalog

Freidheim Family Papers - Accession 159, Freidheim Family

Manuscript Collection

The Freidheim Family Papers consist of family histories, correspondence, financial records, wills, land deeds, and newspaper clippings, relating to the Rock Hill, South Carolina family. There is much material concerning the financial affairs and estate of Arnold Freidheim and his brother, Julius Freidheim, owners of Freidheim’s Department Store, and the heirs to their estates, which included the members of the Marshall Family. Also included are the executors annual reports concerning actions taken in carrying out the terms of the Freidheim’s will and a genealogy of the John Clawson Family.

Advertisement For Cutler's Women's Store In Old Town, Wlbz Radio

WLBZ Radio Station Records

An advertisement for Cutler's Women's Store in Old Town, Maine, promising the latest in spring fashions in 1955.

Bangor Radio Value Days Window Shopping, Wlbz Radio

WLBZ Radio Station Records

Irving Hunter makes his way around downtown Bangor, Maine, to describe items in store windows that will be on sale for Bangor Radio Value Days. He mentions several of the participating businesses and describes products at Freese's Department Store, Farrar Furniture Company, Standard Shoe Store, J.J. Newberry Store, Crown Jewelers, and the W.T. Grant store. Not dated; circa 1955.