Learning from failure to enhance performance: a systematic literature review of retail failure

Purpose The objective of this paper is to develop a map of the contours of the phenomenon of retailer failure by aggregating, parsing and extracting known findings regarding business failure in marketing, business and other streams of inquiry to provide a comprehensive understanding of research on the topic. Defined as the converse of retailer performance, an understanding of retail failure is expected to yield insights for performance measurement and benchmarking studies. Design/methodology/approach The paper includes a systematic literature review, employing state-of-the-art tools such as VOSViewer. Findings The analysis reveals patterns in the intellectual structure of the research on retail failure, as well as patterns of influence. While the discipline of marketing has been surprisingly limited in the study of retail failure, study of retail failure has been pursued by other branches of the business discipline, and even some disciplines other than business. Originality/value This paper provides a comprehensive and systematic literature review on the topic of retail failure.