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Impact of Shopper, Store and Situational Factors on Store

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Downloads to date: N/A | Words: 11748 | Submitted: 09-Aug-2011
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India focus

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Introduction

Retailing consists of the sale of goods or merchandise from a fixed location, such as

a department store ,shopping mall etc .The retailer buys goods or products in large

quantities from manufacturers either directly or through a wholesaler, and then sells

smaller quantities to the end-user. Retail establishments are often called shops or stores.

Retailers are at the end of the supply chain. Manufacturing marketers see the process of

retailing as a necessary part of their overall distribution strategy.

In the retail outlet various type of good and service are provide to the customer but all

the goods and services are generally homogenous in nature through all the other retail

outlets . Product and services of every company are available in every retail outlet. It is

also find that many customer only used to shopping in own decided outlet rather from

every outlets even there is homogenous among the product and service offer by the

every retail outlet .So This put the question in the mind of the every retailer that is there

is any gap between what customer expected from retailers and what retailer provides to

customer during shopping.

No two customers have the identical likes and preferences. Delivery value and

narrowing down the zone of tolerance is a tightrope walk for marketer in organized

retail sector. Especially in market like India the challenges is formidable because

organizations need to cater to a wide and diverse group of customers .Thus building

equity and generating volumes in such complex market tapers down to the function of

managing customer expectation.

Customers take their time to first sketch their needs and then arrive at a specific

decision. At the end of the day the question is what does the customer expect? How to

fulfill the glaring gap between need and expectations? The answers to this question are

“by delivering the value “

But in many case retailers are not aware of what their customer expect. Hence they are

unable to deliver the right value to the right customer and satisfy them .Especially in

this competitive scenario where the customer are well informed, commanding and

demanding at the same time it has become imperative for the organization to be updated

on the “WHAT”,”WHY”and “HOW” of each and every customer. This calls for

empathizing with the customer by indulging into their priorities and decision making.

Even in the case of a product as simple as beauty soap, customer have versatile

expectations like, good packaging fragrance, herbal or medical benefit, glowing skin

etc. and all this at an affordable price. A daunting task but companies have no option but

to offer the expected value, that too by keeping the operating costs low.

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Following general expectations of a typical customer

??Value of Money

??Availability and location

??Service expectations

??Quality in Product

??Need based solution

So in other to deliver the value, Retail outlets in addition to providing products and

services, need to cater for a wide range of motives. The various determinants of retail

outlet preference include cleanliness, well-stocked shelves, and range of products,

helpful staff, disabled access, wide aisles, car parking, multiple billing points and

environmentally friendly goods. These differing motives arise as retailers cater to

different types of shoppers who include economic consumers (concern with value),

personalized consumers (concern with relationships), recreational shoppers (shopping

as a leisure activity) and apathetic consumers (who dislike shopping). Retailers have to

satisfy budding customers, older consumers as well as time crunched individuals whose

motives all tend to be conflicting as well as different. Retailers need to establish a good

image to prevent customers from shopping around. They must cater to shoppers need

for pleasure and practicality.

If expressed as a calculation, customer satisfaction might look something like this:

Customer expectations = Companies Performance/ Companies Satisfaction

Satisfaction is a consumer’s post-purchase evaluation of the overall service experience.

It is an affective reaction (Menon and Dubé, 2000) in which the consumer’s needs,

desires and expectations during the course of the service experience have been met or

exceeded (Lovelock, 2001). Satisfaction in this sense could mean that a supermarket

has just barely met the customer’s expectations, not exceeded nor disappointed those

expectations. The benefits of taking the customer’s response beyond satisfaction at this

level by exceeding expectations, is a competitive strategy many retailers aspire to

achieve. There is a recurrent struggle for existence and survival in the wake of deep

competition, drastically changing customer attitudes and expectation levels.

The study would enable us to understand the impact of various factors that influence a

consumer’s shopping behavior in a departmental store. It would also help in knowing

the magnitude and direction of movement of these factors amongst each other. These

factors have been divided into three heads- Store, Situation and Shopper factors.

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Literature Review

The concept of store loyalty is derived from the concept of brand loyalty which refers to

the tendency to make repeat purchases of products of the same brand. Store loyalty

refers to the tendency to repeatedly shop at the same store for similar or other products.

A loyal customer would give preference to a specific store and would tend to be far

more forgiving of errors of the store.

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