Sustainability‐oriented innovation in retailing

Sustainability‐oriented innovation in services has recently been raising interest among academics and professionals. The present research has a dual objective. The first is to develop a scale that captures the notion of sustainability‐oriented innovation in retailing (SOI‐r) from the consumer's perspective. A sequential process is carried out to purge and retain 17 items which synergistically measure SOI‐r. We use quantitative research, adopting an exploratory‐descriptive approach on a total sample of 510 customers of commercial food establishments. The principal axis factor analysis shows six factors: product innovation, marketing innovation, relational innovation, economic sustainability, social sustainability, and environmental sustainability. The second objective is to develop an index using importance‐performance map analysis, which allows analysis of the level of development of the six dimensions identified in SOI‐r and areas for their improvement. The results are compared across food retail formats (hypermarkets, supermarkets, and discount stores) and recommendations are made at a strategic level.