Hi everyone, my name is Bowen Shang and it's my great pleasure to be here today to present
my research to you. The purpose of my research is to understand the reasons behind the decline
of the department stores on the UK high street through customers perceptions, and the ultimate
goal of my study, is to develop a retailer brand equity framework for the department stores to
adapt to and to strive on the future high street. As many of you are aware the current high street
has been declining. More than fifty thousand shops were closed in the past year and, among which,
many are still left empty. There are many reasons for shop closures - one is that there are too
many retailers on the high street and, on each high street, there are almost the same certain
retailers. Also there has been a significant competition across different retail institutions,
such as the online retailers and out-of-town retailers, and as many of you may be aware,
there has been a rising impact from the COVID pandemic on the physical high street.
Among different retailers on the high street there has been an anchor which is the department store.
It used to be the destination of the high street
thanks to the one-stop shopping experience it provided. However, due to the competition
across different retailer institutions, this one-stop shopping experience is no longer unique
and standing out for the department stores which that shocked its anchor position.
Many researchers therefore suggested that the department store is reaching the end
of its life cycle however, from my point of view, the department
store has the right resources and the power of advertisement, but is not using them properly.
I think, with the right strategic management,
the department stores should be able to thrive continuously, as the anchor of the high street.
The reason to research this from a brand equity perspective, is that the brand
reflects the experience that customers have with the organization and its offerings,
and the customer-based brand equity framework
is ultimately developed from the customer's perception of the brand
In this context there are a few gaps in the literature.
Firstly, the existing research is highly based on the work of Aaker and Keller, where the brand
equity assumes a retailers brand to be parallel to the pure product and service brand but, in fact,
evidence suggests that retailer brands are different enough to be researched separately.
Secondly the emotional involvement
of customers is still under research and this will be the main focus of my study and finally,
the existing research suggested that certain constructs are related to the brand equity, but
current research does not mention their relative importance which will we will focus in this study.
This study seeks to argue this linear relationship with the help of dot metaphoric
elicitation technique as the methodology.
Overall ZMET is a visual based methodology which uses images chosen by participants in
the interview, prompting them to explore complex issues elicited through their use of metaphors.
The advantage of ZMET is that it is a participant-led process that enables participants
subconscious thoughts and emotions. With the help of this deep mind visual metaphor from images,
the researchers will uncover the customer's unconscious mind to learn what the customers
don't know that they know. However, as with all other research, there are limitations about this
study. Firstly, there are limited opportunities to recruit participants due to the COVID19 pandemic,
therefore we will recruit participants through emails and online, and secondly,
the study is limited to the brand names included in this research and to the UK culture.
That's the end of my presentation thank you so much for listening