Exploring consumer retail shopping experience

Abstract

In the context of the growth of modern retail in India it is important to examine the factors that affect the consumer’s shopping experience in the Indian cultural and value milieu which may well be different from the factors researched in the western context. While there have been papers that have examined consumer motivations, expectations and shopping orientations in the Indian context, there is a need for research in the area of how these culturally contextualized motivations and behaviour translate into preferences for actual retail store attributes. The issue of prioritizing of the various factors in order of their influence on the retail experience in the Indian context also assumes strategic importance given the trade-off that retailers sometimes have to make between various retail store attributes for eg: convenient location vs ample parking space, quality vs price etc. The objective of the study is to determine the various factors that affect the shopping experience and their degree of influence on the customer’s retail shopping experience. The study wishes to prioritize these factors with respect to their degree of satisfaction with the consumer’s experience using regression analysis. The study also tests hypothesis regarding the purchase and post purchase behaviours of the Indian consumers and their expectations from the shopping experience that have been catalogued in some papers and reports. In the study the stock availability, quality, brand variety, knowledgeable salesperson, layout- space, lighting, product display, category variety and convenient location were factors that affected the shopping experience listed above in their order of influence. It was also found that other factors were not significant including stocking of latest products, air conditioning, labelling, appealing interiors, ease of locating product, parking space, amenities, packaging and delivery, ease locating salesperson, courteous and helpful salesperson, ease of return, payment ease, checkout speed, in-store advertisements, competitive prices and discounts and offers. Hypothesis regarding consumer post-purchase shopping behaviour with respect to sharing experience with friends and family was shown to be true. However hypothesis regarding information seeking orientation among Indian consumers could not be established. The hypothesis that more consumers check manufacturing dates than expiry dates was not accepted.

The model explained only about 56% of the variation in the satisfaction with the retail experience. This may be due to differing consumer preferences and motivations. Therefore it would be advisable to take this study further by first segmenting the consumers based on their motivations and then finding the prioritized list of factors important to those consumer sub-segments. It would also be advisable to a more representative sample in further studies that covers all consumer demographic and psychographic segments.