Search results for " Retailing"
showing 9 items of 29 documents
A Novel Operating Strategy for Customer-Side Energy Storages in Presence of Dynamic Electricity Prices
2015
In the wholesale energy market, electricity prices are determined by the balance between supply and demand. Normally, customers are not exposed to these variations but pay a constant electricity price. In an attempt to reduce demand peaks, several utilities are moving from a conventional fixed-rate pricing scheme to a new market-based model, based on time-of-use or real-time pricing, able to closely reflect the wholesale energy price. Electricity customers can thus take profit from the installation of storage systems, shifting their energy consumption from on-peak to off-peak periods. This paper presents a novel charging strategy to manage customer storage systems in presence of hourly elec…
Managing the Liberalization of Italy’s Retail Electricity Market: A Policy Proposal
2018
Italy will phase electricity retail price regulation by July 1st, 2020. This is the last step in the process of electricity market liberalization, that started in 1999. Until then, residential customers and small businesses who do not choose their supplier, will be supplied under a transitional, regulated service named “maggior tutela” (greater protection), which is supplied by the local distributor at a price set by the regulator. This paper reviews the literature on electricity retail competition – with particular regard to its expected effects on prices, innovation and customer engagement – and the condition under which its benefits may be delivered. Then a Structure-Conduct-Performance …
A simple operation strategy of battery storage systems under dynamic electricity pricing: An Italian case study for a medium-scale public facility
2014
In the electricity market, wholesale energy prices depend on the balance between energy production and load demand. In the last few years, electricity market has become more and more flexible as many utilities have started to replace the fixed retail prices schemes with prices changing during the day. Dynamic pricing, also known as Real-Time Pricing (RTP), reflects the trend of the wholesale market and allows to reduce the volatility of the wholesale prices, also contributing to a reduction of demand peaks. Electricity customers take advantage of dynamic pricing by shifting their consumption according to the real-time prices or by using Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) to shift electri…
Economic feasibility of a customer-side energy storage in the Italian electricity market
2015
Electricity prices show significant short-term variations during the day due to the need of balancing supply and demand in real time. Normally, customers are not exposed to these variations but pay a constant electricity price. In an attempt to reduce the volatility of the wholesale prices, several utilities are moving from conventional fixed-rate pricing schemes to new market-based models, where the electricity price can fluctuate during the day depending on the market conditions. Examples of time-dependent pricing schemes are Time-Of-Use (TOU) tariffs, where the electricity price can take two or three price levels during the day, or Real-Time Pricing (RTP) tariffs, where the energy price …
Green energy products in the United Kingdom, Germany and Finland
2014
In liberalized electricity markets, suppliers are offering several kinds of voluntary green electricity products marketed as environmentally friendly. This paper focuses on the development of these voluntary markets at household level in the UK, Germany and Finland. Since there are already existing renewable energy policies regulating and encouraging the use of renewable energy, it is important to consider whether voluntary products offer real additional benefits above these policies. Problems such as double counting or re-marketing hydropower produced in existing plants are identified. According to our study, the demand varies between countries: in Germany the number of green electricity c…
Institutional perspectives on retailing : rethinking the adoption of large-scale retailing in Finland
2018
This dissertation focuses on the adoption of the hypermarket in Finnish retailing and examines how major retail organizations experienced the transition from established practices into new logic of retail business, the large-scale retail trade. The research builds on DiMaggio and Powell’s (1983) analytical categorization of institutional isomorphic mechanisms, but utilizes more recent theorizations and insights of organizational institutionalism in the detailed theoretical framing. My research questions were as follows. How did Finnish retail organizations initially regard the hypermarket format? How did their stances change over time? To answer these questions, I examined the adoption of t…
Examining Online Shopping Services in Relation to Experience and Frequency of Using Internet Retailing
2013
E-shopping has the potential to replace traditional in-store shopping. It is well perceived that information and communication technologies have great impacts on modern society - they are changing how and where we work, shop, and in general terms how we live our lives. In this study, we use a survey instrument to examine the association between experience level with Internet and e-shopping and consumers’ frequency of online purchasing, while considering sex as a passive influencer. We study these relationships in a multinomial logistic regression model that is aimed at online retailers to help them improve their understanding of their consumers’ characteristics and propensity to buy through…
The Cross-Channel Effects of In-Store Customer Experience in the Case of Omnichannel Fashion Retailing in Finland
2023
Although omnichannel retailing has emerged as a popular research topic in academic research, there are still gaps in our understanding of this phenomenon. One such gap concerns omnichannel customer experience and particularly the cross-channel or spillover effects of how customer experience in one channel may affect customer behaviour not only in that specific channel but also in the other channels of the same retailer. In this study, we aim to address this gap by examining how customer experience in the offline channel affects customer behaviour in both the offline and the online channel, more specifically how in-store customer experience affects both brick-and-mortar store and online stor…
The effects of two-way communication and chat service usage on consumer attitudes in the e-commerce retailing sector
2018
In e-commerce retailing (e-retailing), where competitors are only one click away and prices are easy to compare, providing superior customer service and reciprocal communication via a company’s website are important aspects of attracting and retaining customers. One increasingly popular solution to improve customer service is a “live chat” interface that allows consumers to have real-time conversations online with customer service agents. As the literature on the impacts of real-time communication via live chat is currently very limited, this study develops and tests a model that demonstrates the moderating effects of a chat service on the relationship between two-way communication (i.e., a…