{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,2]],"date-time":"2025-10-02T05:57:02Z","timestamp":1759384622680,"version":"3.41.2"},"reference-count":39,"publisher":"Emerald","issue":"9","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2015,9,14]],"date-time":"2015-09-14T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1442188800000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/www.emerald.com\/insight\/site-policies"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":[],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2015,9,14]]},"abstract":"\n Purpose<\/jats:title>\n \u2013 The purpose of this paper is to estimate retailing efficiency in a 26-store women clothing retail chain and to decompose it in several measures in order to contribute to the performance improvement of this retail service firm, as well as to compare the efficiency of the different decision making units. <\/jats:p>\n <\/jats:sec>\n \n Design\/methodology\/approach<\/jats:title>\n \u2013 This paper uses the following measures to estimate efficiency: sigma convergence analysis; efficiency analysis; technical efficiency (TE) analysis; pure technical efficiency (PTE) analysis and scale efficiency (SE) analysis for a set of 26 stores of a women retail service brand operating in Portugal. A cross-section input-oriented data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to analyse quarterly data sets from 2010 to 2013. <\/jats:p>\n <\/jats:sec>\n \n Findings<\/jats:title>\n \u2013 The results show that costs with personnel are slightly increasing when analysed using the sigma convergence method, although there are some geographical differences. Moreover, it is possible to witness that the retail store chain\u2019s TE diminishes as the operations outputs do not grow as fast as input savings. On the other hand, there are no SE problems as the levels of SE are larger than pure efficiency levels. <\/jats:p>\n <\/jats:sec>\n \n Research limitations\/implications<\/jats:title>\n \u2013 The main limitation of the study stems from the fact that the analysis is based on a simple retail chain, which makes it a single case study. Therefore, the generalisation of the conclusions for other firms or for other periods of analysis should be made cautiously. <\/jats:p>\n <\/jats:sec>\n \n Practical implications<\/jats:title>\n \u2013 It is shown that some stores have a good TE and other stores have some SE advantage. As such, it is possible to select some stores as benchmarks to deploy internal efficiency throughout the retail chain. <\/jats:p>\n <\/jats:sec>\n \n Originality\/value<\/jats:title>\n \u2013 The contribution of this paper is based on the application of the sigma conversion and DEA techniques to evaluate efficiency in retail service store.<\/jats:p>\n <\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1108\/ijrdm-06-2014-0077","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2015,9,25]],"date-time":"2015-09-25T07:24:30Z","timestamp":1443165870000},"page":"796-814","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":10,"title":["Efficiency and convergence analysis in a women\u2019s clothing retail store chain"],"prefix":"10.1108","volume":"43","author":[{"given":"Jos\u00e9 Manuel","family":"Xavier","sequence":"first","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Victor Manuel","family":"Moutinho","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Antonio 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