Purpose

The study focuses on (1) the success of three strategies employed during the pandemic – two “persevering” strategies, curbside pickup and return window extension and one innovative strategy, virtual try-on technology and (2) whether the strategies are likely to be successful in the post-pandemic world.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors utilize a panel dataset containing 17 department store chains in the US The panel includes weekly sales by the retailers at the city level from 2018 to 2021, encompassing both a pre-COVID-19 period and a period during the pandemic. A two-way fixed effects model, including retailer-city fixed effects and year-week fixed effects, is used to estimate department store sales.

Findings

The authors find that the two persevering strategies offset the negative impact of government-imposed containment and health measures on sales performance. On the other hand, the innovative strategy is more effective with a low level of containment and health measures, leading to our observation that virtual try-on may be more sustainable than the other two strategies in a post-pandemic environment.

Originality/value

This paper makes the following contributions: First, the authors contribute to the literature on strategies that may be used to respond to crises. Second, the authors contribute to the retail management literature, assessing the impact of the three retail strategies on department store sales. Finally, the authors compare the impact on sales of the two persevering strategies to the innovative strategy and conclude that a mix of these types of strategies may be most effective at generating short-term sales during a crisis and longer-term sales post crisis.

中文翻译：

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应对疫情的策略：以美国百货业为例

目的

该研究的重点是 (1) 大流行期间采用的三种策略的成功——两种“坚持”策略，路边取货和退货窗口延长，以及一种创新策略，虚拟试穿技术，以及 (2) 这些策略是否可能成为现实在大流行后的世界中取得成功。

设计/方法/途径

作者使用了包含美国 17 家连锁百货商店的面板数据集。该面板包括 2018 年至 2021 年城市级零售商的每周销售额，包括 COVID-19 之前的时期和大流行期间的时期。双向固定效应模型，包括零售商-城市固定效应和年-周固定效应，用于估计百货商店的销售额。

发现

作者发现，这两种坚持不懈的策略抵消了政府实施的遏制和健康措施对销售业绩的负面影响。另一方面，创新策略在低水平的遏制和健康措施下更有效，这导致我们观察到，在大流行后的环境中，虚拟试穿可能比其他两种策略更可持续。

原创性/价值

本文做出以下贡献：首先，作者对可用于应对危机的策略的文献做出了贡献。其次，作者对零售管理文献做出了贡献，评估了三种零售策略对百货商店销售的影响。最后，作者比较了两种坚持策略与创新策略对销售的影响，并得出结论认为，混合使用这些类型的策略可能最有效地产生危机期间的短期销售和危机后的长期销售。