Consumers’ decision-making process has been changed with the introduction of the Internet as on alternative channel for shopping. E-tailing is an emergent area of nascent organized retailing in India. The purpose of this paper is to explore the determinants of shopper behaviour such as convenience, customer service, trust, web store environment, and web shopping enjoyment and to examine the influence of these factors towards willingness to buy and patronage of online retail stores. The study is purely based on primary data collected from a sample of 135 respondents by using simple random sampling technique from five leading software companies in Hyderabad. Necessary secondary data were used to reinforce the model. A structured non-disguised questionnaire was administered and responses were measured on the seven-point Likert scale. Statistical tools like mean, standard deviation, multiple correlations, multiple regressions, student t-test, and ANOVA were used to find out the strength of relationship and degree of association among the variables entered into the model. The results reveal that convenience, web store environment, online shopping enjoyment, and customer service have significant impact on the willingness to buy from online retail stores rather than perceived trust. Except trust and customer service, all other variables are significant with patronage of online retail stores. As not much work in India has been done in this context, the paper seeks to provide fruitful insights into the factors determining the prospects of e-tailing that can benefit academicians as well as marketers.
PurposeRetailing in India is an unchartered territory. Food and grocery is the most promising area for setting up retail business in India. An understanding of shopper retail format choice behaviour will enable retailers to segment their market and target specific consumer groups with strategies premeditated to meet their retail needs. The purpose of this paper is to make a detailed study on the effect of shoppers' demographic, geographic and psychographic dimensions in terms of format choice behaviour in the fast growing Indian food and grocery retailing.Design/methodology/approachDescriptive research design is adopted applying mall intercept survey method using structured questionnaire for data collection. Both descriptive (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistical tools like χ2, factor analysis and multivariate analysis are used to analyse the data collected from 1,040 food and grocery retail customers from upgraded neighbourhood kirana stores, convenience stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets in conjoint cities of Secunderabad and Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh in India.FindingsThe findings suggest that shoppers' age, gender, occupation, education, monthly household income, family size and distance travelled to store have significant association with retail format choice decisions. The choice decisions are also varied among shoppers' demographic attributes. The findings from shoppers' psychographic dimensions like values, lifestyle factors and shopping orientations resulted in segmentation of food and grocery retail consumers into hedonic, utilitarian, autonomous, conventional and socialization type.Practical implicationsThe study has practical implications for food and grocery retailers for better understanding the shopper behaviour in the context of changing consumer demographic and psychographic characteristics in an emerging Indian retail market. The findings may help the retailers to segment and target the food and grocery retail consumers and, as a consequence, to undertake more effective retail marketing strategies for competitive advantage.Originality/valueGiven the absence of published academic literature and empirical findings relating to store format choice behaviour in food and grocery retailing in India, this study may serve as a departure point for future studies in this area of concern. The research is also relevant to retail marketers in terms of format development and reorientation of marketing strategies in the fastest growing Indian retail market.
The fast changing trends in lifestyles, food and eating habits ofconsumers have contributed largely to the growth and development oforganisedfood andgrocery retailformats in India. But, this sector is predominantly (99.2 percent) dominated by the traditional kirana stores, which have strong relationships with the customers for various technical andfunctional quality benefits extended to them. This posed a great challenge to the organised retailers for customer acquisition and retention ofloyal customers in this fierce competition. The paradigm shift in marketing practices from the traditional marketing to reactive marketing and then to relationship marketing have reiterated the significance ofleveragingfirm-customer relationshipfor reaping mutual benefits. Thus relationship marketing has come to the fore and occupied centre stage as one ofthe strategic tools for organised retailers to develop ways for attracting and motivating potential customers to remain staunch loyalists forever. However, little is known about the actual influences ofthe cornerstones of relationship marketing on relationship quality and customer loyaltyfrom an empirical analysis in the context ofchanging trends in food and grocery retailing. This study seeks to investigate the influence ofrelationship marketing cornerstones viz., Customer Satisfaction, Trust, Commitment, Communication on Relationship Strength which further explore the affect on attitudinal outcomes like relationship quality and behavioural outcomes such as customer loyalty. The study further examines an influence ofthe relationship quality on customer loyalty. This study is purely based upon the primary data and necessary secondary data to reinforce the model. A total of150 retail customers in Hyderabad activelyparticipated in this survey. Thefindings from the study indicated that customer satisfaction has emerged as a significantfactor,followed by commitment and trust for managing relationship quality and customer loyalty. Variousmanagerial and marketing implications are extensively discussed.
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