For their paper on store-reinventions, Manfred Krafft and Mirja Kroschke along with their co-authors Els Breugelmans (KU Leuven), Marleen Hermans (KU Leuven) and Murali Mantrala (University of Missouri), have been awarded with the Best Paper Award at the Research on National Brand and Private Label Marketing (NB&PL) International Conference. The conference took place from June 12 to 14 in Barcelona (Spain), and is the primary international forum to present and discuss original, rigorous and significant contributions specifically on NB and PL issues.

In their research, the author team investigates how store re-inventions affect a retailer’s sales performance and existing customers’ shopping patterns, both at the focal store and at other (untransformed) stores of the chain in the proximity. To answer these questions the authors use both aggregate sales data as well as customer level data of loyalty program (LP) members from a natural experiment, where a major German grocery retailer re-invented one of its stores. The findings indicate that a store re-invention has a positive sales effect for the focal store that mainly comes from non-LP members. Surprisingly, for other stores in the proximity, the authors also found a positive effect, mainly driven by LP members that switch away from the new store to another store with an old concept. Next, the authors zoom in on LP members, and examine how store re-invention affects store choice and basket size. The results suggest that a store re-invention influences shopping patterns both positively and negatively, with some LP members being more likely to stay at the focal store or to switch to another store of the chain, based on their prior shopping behavior and distance to the store.