Factors Persuade the Store Resonance of Women …consumers have a high level of loyalty to one or a few stores. Mo nroe and Guiltinan (1975) noted that store loyalty induces brand
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Factors Persuade the Store Resonance of
Women Shoppers: an Empirical Study with
Reference to Supermarkets in Chennai 1K. Ramprabha
1Department of Business Administration,
School of Management Studies,
Vels Institute of Science,
Technology and Advanced Studis (VISTAS), Chennai.
ramprabhaalagappan@gmail.com
Abstract The concept store resonance is adapted from the concept brand
resonance which was initiated by Kevin Lane Keller (2001). Store resonance
is the ultimate relationship between a store and a customer. The closeness
of that bond between the store and the customer can be measured using
four factors: loyalty, emotional bond, being a member of the store
community and active store involvement. The role of women in the society
and their effects has changed. Women are more in touch with their feelings
and have the tendency to stay better connected with their family, friends,
and ‘brands’. Monroe and Guiltinan (1975) noted that store loyalty induces
brand loyalty. Specifically, if a consumer usually buys in the same store,
then his range of choice will be significantly limited, which makes it more
probable that he will buy the brand that he knows and remain loyal to it.
Schiffman and Kanuk (1994) suggested that the existence of an exchange
relationship between the image perceived by the consumers of a store and
of the brands sold in that store, making it foreseeable that store and brand
loyalty are inter-related. This paper attempts to study on the store
resonance and its impact on the dimensions of retailing which in turn have
an effect on the women shopping behaviour. To analyse the intensity of
store resonance on the women shoppers based on the retail factors, a scale
was generated, validated and compared with the retail factors of the store.
The study indicated that women shoppers are attached to a particular store
and their store resonance is high. This is because a brand or a
product/service/store that has served her well will result in repurchase
decision even though there may be an alternate that is less priced or
International Journal of Pure and Applied MathematicsVolume 119 No. 12 2018, 14981-14991ISSN: 1314-3395 (on-line version)url: http://www.ijpam.euSpecial Issue ijpam.eu
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exceeds in features to some extent.
Key Words: Store Resonance, Retail Factors, Women Shoppers, Loyalty,
Supermarkets.
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1. Introduction
The concept store resonance is adapted from the concept brand resonance which
was initiated by Kevin Lane Keller (2001). Brand resonance is the “relationship
between consumer(s) and their brand(s); this relationship may be in the form of
behavioural, psychological, and social bonding” (Keller, 2008), (Rindfleisch,
Wong, and Burroughs, 2013). Based on above construct of brand resonance, the
concept store resonance has been developed. Store resonance is the ultimate
relationship between a store and a customer. The closeness of that bond
between the store and the customer can be measured using four factors: loyalty,
emotional bond, being a member of the store community and active store
involvement. The customer indentifies him/herself with the store to a
considerable degree and is willing to invest in a relationship that can come
across in repeat purchases, reduced susceptibility to information from
competing stores and even in paying a possible price premium. Store resonance
refers to the nature of the consumer-store relationship and, more specifically,
the extent to which a person feels that he or she resonates or connects with a
store and feels “in sync” with it.
The role of women in the society and their effects has changed. It is important
to analyze the multiple roles that a female plays in her everyday life. Most of
the marketers know that „women are different‟, but one should actually need a
deep rooted understanding of how and why they are different. Women think
differently from men because there are biological, neurological, and behavioural
variations between the brains of men and women. These differences in turn
make an impact on their buying behaviour. Women are more in touch with their
feelings and have the tendency to stay better connected with their family,
friends, and „brands‟.
At the consumer level, it is consistently reported that the retail factors of the
supermarkets have a major impact on the decision of shopping. This paper
attempts to study on the store resonance and its impact on the dimensions of
retailing which in turn have an effect on the women shopping behaviour.
2. Review of Literature
Tate (1961) reported that 10% of house- holds shopped at only one store and
26% shopped at only one or two stores during a year suggesting that many
consumers have a high level of loyalty to one or a few stores. Monroe and
Guiltinan (1975) noted that store loyalty induces brand loyalty. Specifically, if a
consumer usually buys in the same store, then his range of choice will be
significantly limited, which makes it more probable that he will buy the brand
that he knows and remain loyal to it. Retailers are working toward strengthening
the environment in their stores in order to create a store atmosphere that can
make consumers more loyal. Mazursky and Jacoby (1986) discovered that the
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merchandise-related aspects (quality, price, and assortment), service-related
aspects (quality in general and salespeople service), and pleasantness of
shopping at the store are among the most critical components of store image
attributes. Osman (1993) delineated five variables that measure the degree of
loyalty patronage from past studies: percentage of purchases of a specified
product category at a chosen store, the frequency of visits to the store in relation
to other stores during a certain period of time, the ratio of ranking between
stores, Propensity to shop at the store in the future, and the extent of the
customers‟ willingness to recommend the store to their friends. Attitudinal
brand loyalty has been operationalized as repeat purchase intention (Anderson
and Sullivan, 1993; Cronin and Taylor, 1992), willingness to pay a premium
price (Zeithaml, et al. 1996) or the loyal consumer‟s willingness to expend a
larger amount of monetary resources to acquire the brand, and intention of
word-of-mouth (WOM). Schiffman and Kanuk (1994) suggested that the
existence of an exchange relationship between the image perceived by the
consumers of a store and of the brands sold in that store, making it foreseeable
that store and brand loyalty are inter-related. East, Harris, Willson, Lomax and
Perkins (1997), resulted that the loyal buyer was found to be a woman who was
working full-time. Babin and Attaway (2000) noted that consumers are more
likely to return and spend a greater portion of their money with a retailer that
provides relatively high utilitarian or hedonic shopping value. Sirgy and Su
(2000) suggested that the overall atmosphere of a store can create a favourable
consuming context and generate positive perceptive emotions about the store
among consumers. Lemmink and Mattson (2002) stated that during a shopping
experience, consumers can experience positive short-term service encounters
that build friendships and enhance the likelihood of favourable long-term
outcomes, such as loyalty. Ailawadi, Pauwels and Stwenkamp (2008) indicated
that consumers loyal to a store are less likely to switch to another store in the
case of a stock outs and are more likely to buy store brands. Ray and Chiagouris
(2009) reported that store atmosphere, store uniqueness, merchandise value and
store familiarity influence store affect which in turn influences store loyalty.
According to Luo, Chen, Chin and Liu (2011), the strong favourable attitudes
leading to purchase intention underlie an emotional attachment to the brand,
product or service and develop into a commitment. This commitment shows a
customer's loyalty.
Objectives
To develop a scale on store resonance of the shoppers.
To assess the intensity of store resonance factor with the dimensions of
retailing.
3. Research Methodology
Descriptive research design has been adopted for the study. The population of
the study involved women consumers of selected modern retail stores in
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Chennai, India. The selected retail stores are Nilgiris, More and Spencer‟s
Daily. Random sampling was used to select the sample stores and the
respondents were selected using mall intercept sampling method. The pilot
study included 150 respondents and the main study included 370 respondents.
Store Resonance Scale Generation
This process was conducted using two stages. The first stage included the
development of the questionnaire based on the level of women‟s psychological
bond and feelings towards the retail store. The scale comprises components
based on loyalty, engagement, sense of community and attachment towards the
store.
Loyalty: The term store loyalty refers to the consumer‟s inclination to patronize
the store during a specific period of time, because consumer patronages result in
the store‟s revenue. Loyal customers will tend to concentrate their purchases in
the store and therefore may represent a very profitable market segment if they
can be readily identified and engage in less comparison search among stores
before purchasing, know about the existence of and have visited fewer stores,
and concentrate their purchases in a smaller subset of stores than do other
consumers.
Emotional Attachment: For the creation of resonance the customer preferred store
must have something unique in border context. For example, customers with a
immense pact of attitudinal connection to a store may state they "love" it and express it
as one of their favourite possessions or see it as a "little pleasure" they look forward to.
Community: Keller defined this stage as „sense of community.‟ This stage is
characterized by attachment of customer with the store through the store
community. Customers identify themselves with the store community is
reflected as an important social phenomenon, through which the customer feels
an affiliation with other people that are associated with the store.
Engagement: Engagement is the tip of brand store resonance. This stage occur
when consumers ready to invest time, energy, money or other resource into the
store, beyond those expended during purchase and consumption.
The scale consisted of nine questions measured in 5 point Likert scale with
1indicating strongly disagree, 2 disagree, 3 neutral, 4 agree and 5 strongly
agree. The second stage included the collection of data from the focused group.
The main research instrument was interviewer administered survey. Based on
the pilot study the reliability of the tool was checked and the Cronbach Alpha
obtained was 0.770. Since the value is more than 0.70 as suggested by Nunnally
(1978), it indicates that the instrument is sufficiently reliable.
Confirmatory Factor Analysis
The store resonance scale was generated to identify To determine the extent to
which the nine questions were robust over new subjects, a confirmatory factor
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analysis was conducted, estimating the nine situations. When the nine questions
were allowed to correlate, the fit statistics suggested a poor model fit. After
removing “I buy from this store whenever I can”, “I buy most of my provisions
from this store” and “This store is special to me” and the remaining six
situations were allowed to correlate, the fit statistics suggested a good model fit
fig (1). The following table (1) represents the model fit indices for the store
resonance scale.
Table 1: Model Fit Indices for Store Resonance Scale
Description Model fit
indices Range Remarks
Chi -
square
Degrees of
freedom
Confirmatory
Factor Index (CFI) 0.97
Between
[0;1]
CFI>0.095: Good Fit
(Byrne, 2001)
CFI≥0.095: Excellent
Fit (Kline, 2005)
10.54 9
Goodness of Fit
Index (GFI) 0.97 [0;1]
0=poor fit
1=exact fit
Adjusted Goodness
of Fit Index (AGFI) 0.94 [- ;1]
- = poor fit
1=exact fit
RMSEA 0.03
RMSEA<0.05: Close
Fit (Arbuckle,2003)
RMSEA ≤ 0.05:
Excellent Fit (Kline,
2005)
Fig. 1: CFA Model of Store Resonance Scale
Based on the results of CFA, the primary data was collected for the store
resonance scale and the retail factor scale suggested by Ramprabha (2017) so as
to identify the intensity of store resonance towards the supermarkets based on
the retail factors of the stores. The collected data was entered into SPSS 16.0.
Using the mean values the store resonance was classified into high store
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resonance and low store resonance and the result was analysed and interpreted
through independent„t‟ test to find the second objective.
Table 2: Mean, Standard Deviation of Retail Factors on the Respondents‟
Store Resonance
Retail Factors Store resonance N Mean SD t value Sig
Atmospherics High 302 3.56 .891
3.312 .001** Low 168 3.25 1.028
Layout High 302 3.48 1.012
4.468 .001** Low 168 3.16 .973
Merchandise High 302 3.42 .909
3.071 <0.001** Low 168 3.01 1.053
Social High 302 3.34 1.167
6.490 .002** Low 168 2.99 1.179
Price/promotions High 302 3.58 .902
6.236 <0.001** Low 168 2.96 1.140
Service High 302 3.67 .931
5.707 <0.001** Low 168 3.07 1.111
staff High 302 3.95 1.058
3.428 <0.001** Low 168 3.56 1.179
Source: Primary data; *5 percent level; **1 percent level
Table 2 indicates that 302 respondents have a high store resonance due to the
retail factors of the store and 162 respondents have a low store resonance.
Monroe and Guiltinan (1975) argued that store loyalty induces brand loyalty.
Specifically, if a consumer usually buys in the same store, then his range of
choice will be significantly limited, which makes it more probable that he will
buy the brand that he knows and remain loyal to it. And Chang, Burns and
Francis (2004) noted that women sense the satisfaction when their intrinsic
needs are sated, like friendly personnel offering a high level of services.
4. Results and Discussions
This study investigates the amount of store resonance associated with the retail
factors of the store towards the shopping behaviour of women. The findings
indicated that female shoppers start with a generalized sense of their need and
then continue to evaluate alternatives. There is a lot of comparison of the
offering before the final purchase. Once a woman is sure that she has gathered
enough information and evaluated all possible alternatives, she would arrive at a
decision. But this buying behaviour of a woman does not end with purchase.
Word of mouth for the value plays a significant part in post purchase behaviour.
She would share her experience with the offering with her initial advisors,
friends and other people in her circle. Another important aspect is loyalty. A
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brand or a product/service that has served her well will result in repurchase
decision even though there may be an alternate that is less priced or exceeds in
features to some extent. Though women are price sensitive loyalty overtakes
this sensitivity. Hence, it becomes important to position a product, brand or a
store in a way that how they will benefit her and other in her life. Women are
considered to be the primary shoppers, with two-thirds of women handling most
of the grocery shopping- with three quarters of those women making shopping
lists and the rest taking time to look on the discounts and sales. They act as
gate-keepers and have a strong purchasing power, especially, when they need
different things for different situations. Though they are price sensitive, loyalty
overtakes this sensitivity. Building store resonance requires customers to
feel/experience a high level of satisfaction with the performance of stores. The
satisfaction thus represents the basis on which the consumers create in their
mind as image of the visited store and build their attachment towards them.
Hence, it becomes important for the retailers to position their products and their
store in a way that they will benefit the women shoppers and their peer groups
as well. By showcasing new items under comfortable ambience with a positive
social surroundings and courteous store personnel and by maximizing the
product affordability, the retail store can create a convenient and enjoyable
shopping experience to the women shoppers which in turn give a high pace of
store resonance. The analysed retail units have actually managed to properly
communicate by means of the elements of marketing mix, the stimuli that an
enterprise needs to create comparative competitive advantages. Therefore a
better focus of retail stores, not only on some tools of the marketing mix but
also on the highlighting their own special services so as to create a proper,
unique and different image in consumers‟ mind.
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