Empowering Nanostores for Competitiveness and Sustainable Communities in Emerging Countries: A Generative Artificial Intelligence Strategy Ideation Process

Abstract

This exploratory study investigates Generative Artificial Intelligence’s (GenAI) use in strategy ideation for nanostores—i.e., small independent grocery retailers—to enhance their competitiveness while contributing to community sustainability. Nanostores, particularly in emerging countries, face intense competition and rapidly changing trends. These stores adopt various strategies by leveraging their proximity to consumers in neighbourhoods, resulting in different business configurations. While the existing literature highlights the broader nanostores’ functions, there is limited research on how they may develop comprehensive strategies to face their challenges. By employing a thing ethnography methodology, this work proposes GenAI thing interviewing—i.e., with ChatGPT 3.5 and Microsoft Copilot—through incremental prompting to explore potential strategy ideation and practices. Key findings suggest GenAI conversations can aid shopkeepers in strategy ideation through human-like written language, aligning with small business dynamics and structures. This proposition results in a GenAI ideation framework for strategy generation and definition. Moreover, this technology can enhance nanostore competitiveness and sustainability impact by enacting improved strategy practices in stakeholder engagements. Accordingly, this work’s main contribution underscores a GenAI-enabled conversational approach to facilitate nanostores’ strategy ideation and embedding in everyday business operations. Future work must address the limitations and further investigate GenAI’s influence on human understanding and technological creation, strategy ideation, adoption, and usability in nanostores.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/su162411244
Divisions: College of Business and Social Sciences > Aston Business School > Operations & Information Management
College of Business and Social Sciences
College of Business and Social Sciences > Aston Business School
Funding Information: The APC was funded by Universidad Panamericana, Facultad de Ingeniería, Mexico City, Mexico.
Additional Information: Copyright © 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Uncontrolled Keywords: emerging countries,strategy,generative artificial intelligence,small businesses,competitiveness,community sustainability
Publication ISSN: 2071-1050
Last Modified: 31 Mar 2025 07:27
Date Deposited: 16 Jan 2025 18:33
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: https://www.mdp ... 050/16/24/11244 (Publisher URL)
http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2024-12
Published Online Date: 2024-12-21
Accepted Date: 2024-12-18
Authors: Salinas-Navarro, David Ernesto
Vilalta-Perdomo, Eliseo (ORCID Profile 0000-0002-4551-8327)
Michel-Villarreal, Rosario

Download

[img]

Version: Published Version

License: Creative Commons Attribution

| Preview

Export / Share Citation


Statistics

Additional statistics for this record