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

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.

[email protected]

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.

International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics Special Issue

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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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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