Retailing Performance Evaluation Scale for Indian Brick-and-Mortar Lifestyle Retailers (LSRS-b)

Abstract

A majority of brick-and-mortar lifestyle retailers in India have adapted firm-level and output-drivenmeasures to evaluate their overall retailing performance in addition to not apportioning the centraloffice expenses incurred merely to run stores on to store’s profit and loss account. This output-drivenapproach is distracting them from focussing on input variables and efficiency that is inevitablyimperative if sustainable retail profit and returns on investment are expected. In this exhaustiveempirical study, we have studied a few select organized brick-and-mortar lifestyle retailers to identify64 variables that directly or indirectly determine the returns on investment of a lifestyle retailer, ofwhich we have chosen 16 input-driven variables to design the LSRS-b instrument in addition toensuring integration of variables that have a significantly positive association and determination withconsumer repeat visit rate, sales personnel consumer orientation, cash flow efficiency, revenuegeneration, profitability, returns on investment, and consumer-level performance evaluation. Basedon 24 months of data evaluated, we have found that these 16 input-driven variables have a significantdetermination of about 86.90 percent concerning the final output i.e., returns on investment (ROI)which is a strong indicator of the reliability of LSRS-b instrument in evaluating the overall retailingperformance of organized brick-and-mortar lifestyle retailers in India.