Impact of store personality on store loyalty: A study of specialty store chains in Vietnam

Abstract

The purposes of this study are: (i) to develop store personality measurement scale tailor-made for household and electronics store chains in Vietnam, an Asian transitional economy; and (ii) to exam-ine the degree of influence of each store personality dimensions on store loyalty. The scale development is conducted in two stages: item generation and item purification. The new scale is applied to a data survey of 268 shoppers in Ho Chi Minh City (a metropolitan city in southern Vietnam) by systematic sampling. Multivariate data analysis techniques, such as exploratory factor analysis and struc-tural equation modeling, are used to analyze the data. The results reveal that store personality measurement scale is structured into four dimensions: reliability, sophistication, economy, and enthusi-asm with 22 items as observed variables and store personality im-pacts on loyalty behavior mediated by attitudinal loyalty. Particu-larly, these four dimensions are found to be correlated significantly with attitudinal loyalty but not with loyalty behavior except for economy—reliability and sophistication have positive impacts, whereas economy and enthusiasm negatively relate to attitudinal loyalty. The findings help retail managers with effective positioning strategy. This paper is the first to design the scale for store personali-ty and to explore the impact of each dimensions of store personality on attitudinal and behavioral loyalty in Vietnam and in the special-ty-store-chain context.