Sustaining Specialty Retailers through Customer Involvement: Female Millennials' Perspective

Volume 13 Issue 4 March - May 2019

Research Paper

Sustaining Specialty Retailers through Customer Involvement: Female Millennials' Perspective

Harash Sachdev*, Monica Sachdev**

*Eastern Michigan University, Michigan, U.S.A.

**Oakland University, Michigan, U.S.A.

Sachdev, H., & Sachdev, M. (2019). Sustaining Specialty Retailers through Customer Involvement: Female Millennials' Perspective. i-manager's Journal on Management, 13(4), 1-17. https://doi.org/10.26634/jmgt.13.4.14535

Abstract

This study is geared towards specialty cosmetic retailers that target female millennials, but struggle to co-create value with them. Linking agency theory, consumer socialization, and governance mechanism (trust and flexibility), retailerconsumer gaps related to hedonic consumption, self- concept, and inventory are flushed out. Through semi-structured interviews with beauty specialty retail employees and millennial associates of the second author in the U.S., a causeeffect diagram, service-quality table, and Porter's Five Forces model are generated. In addition, the millennial associates responded to a pilot questionnaire (appendix) related to brand loyalty, digital interaction, employee interaction, flexibility, and trust. Using these consumer, retailer-consumer, and retailer-driven arguments, six testable propositions are suggested that may improve the productivity of cosmetic specialty retailers.