Research On Effects Of Social Networks On Retail Performance

In recent years, with the acceleration of the economic globalization, the competition is becoming more fierce in China retail market. According to the research, retail stores closed down frequently. There were almost hundreds of collapse in the past few years, involving an average of 70 per year. The major retailers(department stores, supermarkets) total closed 201 stores in 2014. Compared with the number of 35 in 2013, it created the highest rate, an increase of 474.29 percent.How to promote the sustainable and healthy development of the company has aroused wide attention from scholars at home and abroad. Existing researches have focused on the entry mode, retailing, institutional environment to study how these factors affect the growth of the retail business. In manufacturing, banking and other industries, some scholars have begun to discuss the connection between social networks and enterprise growth performance and recognize the importance of social networks for business growth. Dealing with economic relations of good business and social relations may also crucial to the growth of the retail business. This paper attempts to explore how social networks affect the growth of retail business performance.After the 1990s, the extent of volatility is growing in the market. Marketing scholars are beginning to ponder how to improve the dynamic capabilities in such a volatile environment. The integrate between marketing capabilities and dynamic capability is becoming an inevitable trend. Dynamic marketing capability is a high level of marketing capabilities. Retail companies are facing the number of consumers. Better dynamic marketing capabilities may be more important to the growth of the retail business. Meanwhile, retail as an emerging industry, differences in the development of coastal and other areas also need to consider whether regional differences would have a crucial impact on the retail stores growth.In reality, each subsidiary’s unique strengths and heterogeneity increasingly become a source of competitive advantage. The subsidiaries’role and position in the network is changing. With the development of inter-regional retailers, retail stores across the country, Studying the retail outlets leading behavior whether affect the development of the retail business has a certain practical significance.Specifically, the focus of this paper is to study:whether social networks have an impact on the growth of retail business performance. Around this problem, with the perspective of the social network’s "Enterprise-Market-Network" and the construction of the "Enterprise Resource-business skills-business growth" in the "business growth theory" published by Penrose in 1959, The paper constructs a model of social network, a subsidiary of leading research model behavior, dynamic marketing capabilities, regional differences and retail business performance,making a survey among the retails’manager, using SPSS 20.0 and AMOS21.0 to analyze. Through the empirical analysis of 227 samples, the main conclusions of this article are as follows:social network for retailers has a positive influence in growth performance; social network plays a dynamic role in marketing capabilities; social network of subsidiaries has a a positive influence in dominant behavior; dynamic marketing capabilities plays a positive role in growth performance; Subsidiary of dominant behavior has a positive effect on retail companies performance; dynamic marketing capabilities has the mediated function between the social network and retail business growth; subsidiaries dominant behavior has the mediated function between the social network and retail business growth; regional differences don’t play a regulatory role in the positive impact of dynamic marketing capabilities and the retail performance; regional differences play a regulatory role in the positive impact of subsidiaries dominant behavior and the retail performance.Based on these findings, we propose the following three suggestions about how to improve the retail business performance:First, retail business had better to build a good social network’s with government, suppliers, customers and other stakeholders and maintain good relations; Second, retail outlets should improve the ability to respond the changing market conditions according to regional differences; Third, retail business should handle the relationship between retail head office and retail outlets, improving subsidiaries dominant behavior.