FABRIC SPECIALITY STORES: CONSUMER DISSATISFACTION WITH SELECTED IN-STORE ATTRIBUTES

This consumer dissatisfaction study focused on selected in-store attributes of the fabric speciality store. The procedure was to select fifteen fabric speciality stores at random in the Phoenix area and distribute thirty questionnaires to customers at each store. The 264 returns were analysed by examining the respondents' comments about the fabric speciality store most often shopped in, the respondents' ratings of the statements concerning the average fabric speciality store's attributes and the complaints the respondents made to fabric speciality stores. The fabric speciality store attributes found to be both important and dissatisfying included: salesperson's helpfulness, variety of fabrics, quality of fabrics, salesperson's product knowledge and fabric price.     

Consumer Acceptance of Item Price Removal: A Survey Study of Milwaukee Shoppers

A survey was conducted of 193 Milwaukee food shoppers to determine their experiences and opinions relating to item price removal (IPR) in supermarkets. The principal findings were that opinions of IPR were related to experiences with shopping in IPR environments, extent of price comparison behaviors, and certain demographic variables. Most of the respondents thought retailers should supply a price-marking instrument to shoppers. A majority of the respondents who had not shopped in an IPR store said they would switch stores if their current store removed prices. However, only one-quarter of the respondents who had shopped in an IPR store changed stores and price removal was of secondary importance in this decision. Overall, respondents were evenly split on the need for legal controls in IPR, but respondents who had not shopped in an IPR store and who were from disadvantaged households (with regard to age, income and/or education) were more likely to see a need for legal controls. The findings of this study and ones conducted in other cities suggest that the primary public policy issue is not whether or not item prices should be removed. Rather, the issue is what is the best method of providing shoppers with price comparison information.     

Fabric speciality stores: customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction with information-source attributes

The purpose of this research was to determine customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction with information-source attributes supplied by fabric speciality stores. After constructing a theoretical framework of information-source attributes and a questionnaire, a survey of fabric speciality store customers was conducted in eight Midwestern cities in the U.S. The results indicated that salespeople, store layout/displays and fabric-bolt labels caused more dissatisfaction than store advertising, special services and free printed literature. It was also found that variables, such as the respondent's age, were related to the respondent's degree of satisfaction/dissatisfaction with fabric speciality store informations-source attributes.     

Customers' relationship with their grocery store: Direct and moderating effects from store format and loyalty programs

This paper aims: (i) to characterize the priorities designed and implemented by grocery retailers concerning relationship marketing with customers; (ii) to analyse customers’ relationship with their grocery store and to evaluate store format and loyalty programs as key determinants of this relationship. Exploratory interviews were conducted with grocery store managers. Two independent samples of Portuguese customers answered a questionnaire and collected data were analysed using Structural Equation Modelling. Main results suggest that supermarkets lead to higher levels of customers’ trust (directly) and customers’ loyalty (indirectly). Furthermore, the positive effect of customers’ satisfaction on customers’ loyalty is higher for members of grocery store loyalty programs.     

Food shopping behaviour in Scotland: the influence of relative rurality

Despite a number of studies investigating consumer food purchase behaviour, few studies actually address the nature of the rural consumer. This may have implications for the generalization of much research on food purchase behaviour, as official estimates of the UK rural population vary between 8.5% and 24%. This paper compares and contrasts the food shopping behaviour of customers in rural and urban areas in Scotland. Particular focus is given on respondent characteristics, attitudes towards rural and urban locations, distance travelled for food shopping purposes and store patronage. Results from the research emphasize the notion that rural and urban retailing should be conceptualized as a continuum rather than being regarded as dichotomous, and a conceptual framework is proposed.     

The out-of-region bias: Distance estimations based on geographic category membership

This research addresses estimations of distance, an important factor in numerous consumer decisions (e.g., store choice, willingness to pay for travel). Our central hypothesis is that when two places are located in the same geographic category, individuals estimate them to be closer to each other than when they are located in different categories, a bias we term ??the out-of-region bias.?? In study 1, we demonstrate that participants are more willing to visit a store located in the city in which they live rather than a store located in a neighboring city because they mistakenly think that a store in their city is closer to home. In studies 2a and b, we show that the out-of-region bias leads consumers to express higher willingness to pay for an airline ticket that involves travel across versus within regions because they inaccurately estimate greater distance between cities that are located in different regions (vs. the same region). Study 2a also demonstrates that the out-of-region bias is ameliorated in the presence of a map, indicating that the bias is a conceptual (vs. perceptual) bias, and study 2b rules out an alternative explanation for our results based on consumers?? tendency to exaggerate north?Csouth distances.     

Performance implications of store format diversification for international retailers

Abstract

International retailers face formidable tasks in trying to replicate, or improve upon, their home country success abroad. Their market-seeking efforts sometimes require strategic diversifications of their store format portfolios capable of serving customers in different host countries. In this study, we examine whether the degree of store format diversification helps improve the performance of international retailers. We also assess the possible moderating effects of three factors—internationalization speed, political distance, and cultural distance—on this relationship. Utilizing 2001–2015 panel data for 19 retailers originating from several home countries and operating in multiple host countries, we employ a fixed effects model to examine the hypothesized relationships. Our results show that the performance of international retailers is influenced negatively by store format diversification. This relationship is moderated by internationalization speed and political distance, but not by cultural distance.     

The effects of in-store themed events on consumer store choice decisions

Retailers are increasingly using in-store events to provide shoppers with unique experiences that will enhance shopping value and help differentiate their stores from competitors. However, relatively little is known about how consumers respond to experiential retail events in terms of their store choice decisions. The purpose of this research was to find out how in-store retail events affect consumers in terms of their store choice decisions. The paper presents findings from a discrete choice experiment that manipulated the presence of different types of in-store themed events in a do-it-yourself (DIY) category. Participants were 312 randomly recruited residents of Melbourne, Australia, who had recently shopped at a hardware store. The experiment was implemented as a mail-back survey. Using logit models the authors assess the effects of the in-store events along with those of various traditional store attributes, including store appearance, price image and distance, on consumer store choice decisions.     

Customer loyalty to food retailers in Northern Ireland: ‘devoted loyals’ or ‘promiscuous switchers’?

Store loyalty is a major challenge for food retailers, and the food retail market in Northern Ireland has been subject to considerable change in the past decade. Although shoppers will often patronize many stores, they typically have a primary affiliation to a ‘main’ food store that captures the majority of their food purchases. This study uses a unique approach to segmenting customers into groups based on loyalty in terms of both the type of data used to generate a loyalty score and the data collection techniques used. Innovative projective techniques have been used alongside traditional questioning techniques to reveal ‘behavioural’ and ‘emotional’ loyalty indicators, and in doing so create a holistic measure of customer loyalty to a main food store, allowing customers to be segmented into groups based on loyalty. A paper‐based questionnaire was administered to 152 food shoppers from throughout Northern Ireland. Responses to traditional questioning formats and projective techniques (cartoon friends and mini case studies) were analysed and used to generate a loyalty score for each respondent. The first group of customers nearly always visit the same store, are willing to recommend the store to others and are less likely to switch to a competitor, even when offered an incentive to do so. They also rate the ‘hard’ attributes of this store highly. As a result of these characteristics, customers in this segment were termed ‘devoted loyals’. The second group of customers may occasionally use a different supermarket for food shopping, some would consider switching to a competitor if offered an incentive, and they rate ‘hard’ store attributes at a slightly lower level than the ‘devoted loyals’. Based on their group profile, these customers were assigned the title of ‘susceptibles’. The third group of customers are less willing to actively encourage friends and family to shop at a specific store. Many in this group did not consider their current store as their number one choice in the next few years. An incentive to switch to a competitor store is more likely to trigger a transfer of loyalty by this group. These customers were termed ‘promiscuous switchers’.     

Clothing outshopping in a rural Western community

Statistics reveal that over half of all women are gainfully employed outside the home. Professional working women have a certain status to maintain and it is reasonable to assume that their clothing needs might differ from women who are employed in other occupations and who remain in the home. Recent research has shown that considerable shopping occurs out of the local retail trade area (termed outshopping). Product-specific outshopping research has revealed clothing to be a product consumers are willing to out-shop to obtain. Professionally employed women might have to resort to outshopping more often than the other women in order to meet their clothing needs. For this project outshopping was defined to be the percentage of shopping which occurred at least 50 miles from the test site. This research represents the combined efforts of a graduate class studying trends in fashion merchandising; a telephone survey was developed and conducted by the class and responses from 100 female consumers were analysed using multiple step-wise regression. It was predicted and found that clothing outshopping behaviour could be significantly predicted by the degree of satisfaction with local retailing and number of children remaining in the home. Including the two variables professional/non-professional working status, and the age of female respondent as predictors, did not significantly improve the ability to predict outshopping behaviour. The implications for retailers are discussed.     

Evidence Supporting the Importance of Brands in Marketing Computer Products

ABSTRACT

For convenience store (c-store) management to be truly customer-focused, they must listen to their customers and provide the products that meet customers' needs. This study investigates one aspect of c-store customer satisfaction, the product mix. The purpose of this paper is to investigate c-store customers' perceptions of product offerings to expand the c-store's product mix and in turn increase customer satisfaction. Fourteen products were examined. Of the fourteen, three were rated very likely to be purchased: postal services, home style meals, and a salad bar. Differences in preference were found between gender and marital status. Men and single customers had higher purchase intentions for the home style meals than women and married customers. Suggestions for future research are provided.     

Exploring word‐of‐mouth influences on travel decisions: friends and relatives vs. other travellers

Travel research consistently shows the importance of word‐of‐mouth (WOM) information sources in the travel decision‐making process. Friends and relatives have been identified as organic image‐formation agents, and it has been emphasized that this WOM information is one of the most relied‐upon sources of information for destination selection. While there has been recognition of the importance of WOM information sources on consumer behaviour in tourism, little has been performed to understand more specifically how and what behaviour is influenced. This study examined the differing influences of friends and relatives vs. other travellers on the travel choices and behaviours of 412 visitors to the North Queensland Region in Australia. More specifically, the present study compared the following four groups of respondents: those who indicated that they obtained travel information from friends/relatives and other travellers (n = 70); those who obtained information from friends/relatives only (n = 121); those who obtained information from other travellers only (n = 105); and those who obtained information from neither (i.e. no WOM) (n = 116). The results indicated that there were significant differences across the four groups with respect to demographic characteristics, other information sources used, accommodation and transportation used, and travel activities in the destination. However, the groups did not differ in their image of the destination.     

The behavioural intentions of specialty coffee consumers in South Africa

More than 1.6 billion cups of coffee are consumed worldwide on a daily basis. South Africa is rapidly adapting to worldwide trends with speciality coffee consumption on the rise, with South Africa recently having been recognised as a key player in the speciality coffee industry. Emerging market trends in speciality coffee consumption have resulted in a number of changes in consumption patterns, preferences and consumer behaviour. The purpose of this study was to determine the behavioural intention of speciality coffee consumers in South Africa, using the Theory of Planned Behaviour. The data were gathered from a non‐probability sample of 327 respondents, who were selected through a self‐completion online questionnaire. The results indicate that males consume more speciality coffee than females. The majority of respondents consume speciality coffee more than once a day, and foam cappuccinos are consumed most regularly. The results of the stepwise multiple regression analysis demonstrate the utility of the Theory of Planned Behaviour as a conceptual framework for predicting the behavioural intention of speciality coffee consumers. The findings indicate that attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control are important predictors of behavioural intention. Furthermore, perceived behavioural control is the most important factor influencing speciality coffee consumption, and the most influential of the direct measures of the Theory of Planned Behaviour. With the current rise in speciality coffee consumption among South Africans, the Theory of Planned Behaviour framework contributes to understanding those factors which influence regular speciality coffee consumption. It is recommended that marketers and practitioners adapt their offerings to appeal to the specific needs of the growing speciality coffee market in South Africa.     

A structural equation model of impulse buying behaviour in grocery retailing

PurposeEnvironmental changes, specifically the economic crisis and the growing penetration of digital technologies, have produced significant changes in shopping habits designed to create new paradigms for impulse buying behaviour. A new scenario seems to be opening up where customers enter the store much more prepared than in the past searching for products they had planned to buy. The purpose of this paper is to explore the determinants of impulse buying in a context of more planning and preparation for shopping.Design /methodology/approachThe data were obtained using a structured questionnaire from 316 respondents interviewed instore thanks to the cooperation of a leading Italian retail chain. We conducted a two-stage approach mall-intercept survey method to collect data. Firstly, we interviewed customers before entering the store, enquiring them about the pre-shopping preparation and shopping enjoyment tendency. Secondly, we interviewed the same customers at the end of their shopping trips, asking them to indicate which purchases were unplanned. Then, shoppers answered to questions regarding their general tendency to engage in impulse buying, the urges experienced to make impulse purchases, the level of positive and negative affect experienced during the shopping trip.FindingsIn the structural model tested with LISREL 8, we found that pre-shopping tendency influences directly impulse buying: confirming our hypotheses, a higher pre-shopping preparation lead to lower levels of impulse buying. Results also showed that the personality variables (shopping enjoyment tendency and impulse buying tendency) influenced impulse buying through positive affect and urge to purchase. Our research did not find support for the relationship between negative affect and urge. Finally, higher levels of urge to buy impulsively lead to higher levels of impulse buyingOriginality/valueFrom the review of past and recent literature, we have not found a model that considers the influence of pre-shopping tendency on impulse buying behaviour. This paper addresses this major gap in extant literature by including pre-shopping tendency among the individual characteristics (impulse buying tendency and shopping enjoyment tendency) taken into consideration by past contributions.     

Managing a Global Retail Brand in Different Markets: Meta-Analyses of Customer Responses to Service Encounters

This study investigates how retailers can leverage their brand to shape customers’ satisfaction with service encounters. It develops and tests hypotheses about how brand, store, and consumer factors moderate customer responses to experience clues during retail service encounters. Six meta-regression analyses synthesize and compare results from 842 satisfaction equations describing customers’ encounters with a global retailer operating 400 stores in 32 countries. The results show how customers weigh their perceptions of service encounters differently depending on brand, store, and consumer factors. In markets where customers believe the retailer has high holistic brand quality, they place less weight on experience clues within the store. In markets where customers believe the retailer’s service brand promise, they place more weight on in-store experience clues. In markets where the retailer promises utilitarian value, customers weigh functional experience clues more heavily. In markets with an online purchasing channel, the effect of experience clues common to offline and online store environments is magnified, and unique clues are diminished. In addition, customers heavily weigh experience clues that fit their goals. In general, retail success factors include high brand quality (which makes customers more forgiving), a service brand promise that is mirrored in the store image (which makes customers attend to the experience clues aligned with them), and the careful monitoring and managing of retail touchpoints (to customize experience clues to each market). In this way, retailers can use customer-based strategies to effectively design and manage their global retail brand in different markets.     

Price recall: Brand and store type differences

Price is among the most important choice criteria for customers, whose price knowledge is often surprisingly inaccurate. This study aims at providing new insights into differences in price recall across brands and store types, and their potential effect on marketing efficiency and customers’ store choice. Towards this aim, we analyze the price recall of consumers for 51 food items by a random-effects panel estimation employing a survey with 715 participants. Our results show that customers recall national brand prices better than private labels, almost irrespectively of the store type; consumers overestimate store brand prices in both store types; the effect, however, is much higher for the convenience store. These outcomes have consequences for the marketing strategy: despite a price-matching guarantee for the store brands in the convenience store, the price image is still in favor of the discounter. This result raises doubts on the effectiveness of the price-matching guarantee, at least in this context. The everyday low price strategy of the discounter seems to pay off in terms of the price image. Though both stores charge the exact same prices for their store brands, prices at the discounter are on average perceived to be significantly lower.     

Consumer opinions and practices related to food additives in the purchase situation

The aim of this study was to describe consumer opinions and behaviour in the purchase situation. Sixty female customers, who had bought one of the food items chosen as focus foods (milk snacks, bread, beverages, condiments) of the study, were interviewed in six supermarkets in the metropolitan area of Helsinki. The subjects most often quoted good taste and familiarity as grounds for the selection of focus foods, but not the additive content. The majority of subjects considered Finnish foods to be mainly good and safe although 17 expressed some concern about food additives. The general concern of the subjects about additives did not conform with their actual buying behaviour.     

The influence of external design elements on clothing store entry intentions for recreationally and task-oriented female clothing shoppers

This study investigates the influence of the exterior of a clothing store for store entry intentions of potential female recreational and task-oriented clothing customers. First, we analyse the proposed exterior elements of a clothing store that are preferred and affect the willingness to enter the store. Second, we investigate the impact of the most significant exterior elements (e.g. the crowdedness of the store entry and the creative complexity of the composition of the window display) on the entry intentions for recreational and task-oriented potential female shoppers from a self- and other decision perspective. Overall, the results show that task-oriented female clothing shoppers have a higher store entry intention when the store entry is less crowded, and the window display has a creative complex composition. Recreational female clothing shoppers, on the other hand, prefer crowded complex window displays.     

Applying Behavioural Theory to the Challenge of Sustainable Development: Using Hairdressers as Diffusers of More Sustainable Hair-Care Practices

The challenges presented by sustainable development are broadly accepted, yet resource use increases unabated. It is increasingly acknowledged that while technical solutions may play a part, a key issue is behaviour change. In response to this, there has been a plethora of studies into how behaviour change can be enabled, predominantly from psychological and sociological perspectives. This has resulted in a substantial body of knowledge into the factors that drive behaviour change and how they can be manipulated to achieve desired social goals. In this paper, we describe a study that draws on this body of knowledge to design an intervention to drive behaviour change across the hairdressing sector, and by the process of diffusion, across the vast social networks of this occupational group to influence domestic hair-care practices. The intervention was successful: hairdressers indicated positive intentions to adopt more sustainable practices within their salons and pass them onto their customers. The customer survey (N = 776) confirms this: customers surveyed after their hairdresser attended the Green-Salon-Makeover intervention were significantly more likely to report that environmental issues had been considered in their salon visit and that they themselves would consider such issues in their hair-care practices at home than customers who were surveyed before the intervention.