Please use this form to submit your study for inclusion into our database. It will be checked by a member of the Innovation Growth Lab team, who may be in contact to ask for more information. Your email address * Your name * Title * The name of the study Short summary A brief description of the project's goals and its current state Abstract <p>This paper studies the impact of business modernization on the sales performance of traditional retailers. We define modernization as adopting tangible structures and business practices of organized retail chains (for example, exterior signage with store name and logo, or a database to record product-level information). To address our research question, we implement a randomized field experiment in Mexico City with 1148 traditional retail firms. Our sample is randomized into three groups: 385 firms that we externally modernize in ways that are visible to customers; 383 firms that we internally modernize in ways that are not visible to customers; and 380 firms form a control group. We find a significant and persistent main effect of modernization on sales: firms in both treatment groups increase monthly sales by 15% to 19%, even 24 months after study recruitment. In terms of novel mechanism evidence, we find that externally-modernizing firms improve their store-level branding, while internally-modernizing firms strengthen their product management. These results have important implications for multinational managers who distribute products through traditional retail channels, and for policymakers interested in improving firm performance in the retail sector of emerging markets.</p> <p>Leonardo Iacovone discussed this trial as part of the <a href="https://vimeo.com/444292954">IGL2020 Research Meeting</a>.</p> The full abstract of the study, if available Links https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3685514 Links to any published papers and related discussions Authors * Affiliations Academic and other institutes that the authors of the study are members of Delivery partner Organisations involved in delivering the trial, if appropriate Year Year Year199419951996199719981999200020012002200320042005200620072008200920102011201220132014201520162017201820192020202120222023202420252026 Month MonthJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec Day Day12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031 Journal Journal publishing the study, if available Publication stage * Working Paper Published Ongoing Research Forthcoming Discussion Paper Research theme * Entrepreneurship Innovation Business Growth Country Country or countries where this study took place. Topics What sort of topics does the study cover? Sample attributes Hypotheses / research question Sample Trial population and sample selection Number of treatment groups Size of treatment groups Size of control group Unit of analysis Clustered? Yes No Cluster details Trial attributes Treatment description Rounds of data collection Baseline data collection and method Data collection method and data collected Evaluation Outcome variables Results Intervention costs Cost benefit ratio Reference Citation for use in academic references
