Relevance of Cross-Format Shopping behaviors in Consumers in Emerging Economies: A study on Retail Management

Abstract

Emerging economies are experiencing increased instances of shoppers dividing their patronage to more than one retail stores and/or formats due to increased competition, greater choice patterns and consumerism. However, the research on cross format shopping behavior is limited and unexplored in developing economies such as India, unlike that in developed economies. While this phenomenon has been prevalent in developing economies, it has become more evident in India due to various factors such as great product assortments, vehicles owned, diverse needs of consumers, greater purchasing choice, competitive prices and increased focus on total quality management. Hence, it becomes imperative to understand the challenges imposed on concentric retail growth zones with the proliferation of grocery stores, convenience stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets, given that the Kirana stores forming more than 60% of the retail stores present today. The study also provides important insights to managers to tactically position their products and services in order to retain customer loyalty and therefore develop an efficient retail marketing strategy. The preliminary research in the area has primarily dealt with conventional variables such as convenience, price, promotional offers, discount programs, loyalty programs, service quality etc. This paper deals with constructs that have been primarily left ignored. The constructs have been developed after floating a questionnaire to respondents in which they were asked to answer questions. Results from exploratory factor analysis indicated that perceived value for money, perceived value for time, store attributes, shopping motives, and temporal aspects such as time spent on buying goods, basket size etc. were instrumental in influencing the shoppers’ behavior towards store loyalty. To check the reliability of the scales developed, a measure called Cronbach’s Alpha has been used to validate the results. In this study, cross format shopping includes both inter-shopping (cross shopping from a kirana store to a convenience store and vice versa) and intra-shopping (crossing from one kirana store to another kirana store) and provides deep insights to the academicians and researchers to undertake further research on interrelationship between constructs as well as to develop new constructs.