Does Private Label Quality Influence Consumers’ Decision on Where to Shop?

When consumers decide where to shop, they take several criteria into account. It is not yet clear whether private label (PL) quality is one of these criteria. It is the intention of this study to shed light on this issue because many retailers have invested heavily into the quality of their PLs. They assume that PLs differentiate a store's assortment and image, which should attract customers to the store. This study examines this assumption by use of a simultaneous equation model that links PL‐specific quality evaluations to perceptions of the image of the associated store as well as to the category‐specific share of store visits. Empirical results for 10 product categories show that PL quality positively affects store image perception, and influences consumers in the decision of where to shop.     

Operationalization of Social Science Concepts by Intuition

Much has been written about the effects of the wording of survey questions onresponses, whereas, relatively little attention has been given to the content of thequestions or the translation of theoretical concepts into related questions in surveyresearch.In this paper we concentrate on the link between a set of basic concepts for socialscience research and questions that can be formulated to measure these concepts.These basic concepts are: evaluations, cognitive judgments, relations, evaluativebeliefs, feelings, preferences, rights, norms , policies, action tendencies, expectations,behavior, events, knowledge, demographic characteristics and information about place,time and procedures.In order to clarify the link between the concepts and their verbal expressions(assertions) we analyze structures of sentences presenting the different concepts.Eight principally different assertion structures have been found which describemost of the survey concepts.These findings can be used in two ways: one can use them to specify an assertionfor a certain type of concept or alternatively one can also use the system to classifyexisting questions.