Stephan Grzeskowiak, M. Joseph Sirgy, Thomas Foscht and Bernhard Swoboda
A common assumption holds that retailers generally contribute to customer life satisfaction – retailers offer products and services that solve consumer problems – large and small…
Abstract
Purpose
A common assumption holds that retailers generally contribute to customer life satisfaction – retailers offer products and services that solve consumer problems – large and small. However, some retail experiences have been found to generate dissatisfaction, stress and unhappiness for some customers but not for others. Research is needed to not only demonstrate how retail experiences impact customer life satisfaction. The purpose of this paper is to address the question: why does satisfaction with various store types impact customer life satisfaction differently?
Design/methodology/approach
The research context of this study is grocery retailers (neighbourhood convenience stores, super markets, and grocery discounters) in Austria. Using stratified random sampling across store types, a total of 379 personal interviews with grocery store customers were conducted. OLS regression analysis was conducted to test the research model.
Findings
The study results suggest that satisfaction with a store type impacts customer life satisfaction depending on store-type congruity with shoppers’ identity. That is, satisfaction with a store type (e.g. neighbourhood convenience stores, super markets, and grocery discounters) is found to influence life satisfaction if the store type is congruent with the shoppers’ self-image and lifestyle.
Practical implications
An emphasis on store-type congruity with shopper’s identity allows retailers to shift their attention towards creating more meaningful shopping experiences. Such a shift in focus may not only benefit retailers due to increase in customer loyalty for that store format. It also benefits shoppers themselves – the shopping experience contributes to shoppers’ life satisfaction.
Originality/value
This research introduces store-type congruity with shopper’s identity as a key concept that connects shopping experiences to customer life satisfaction. This contributes towards building the hierarchical theory of shopping motivation. It demonstrates under what conditions shopping experiences impact consumer life satisfaction – a research topic that has received little attention in the retailing literature to date.
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Peter Kenning, Stephan Grzeskowiak, Christian Brock and Martin Ahlert
Marketing channels are changing dramatically as the world economy becomes networked. Buyers who are likely to only have limited insight into a wholesaler's sourcing decisions may…
Abstract
Purpose
Marketing channels are changing dramatically as the world economy becomes networked. Buyers who are likely to only have limited insight into a wholesaler's sourcing decisions may be uncertain about product and/or service quality. This paper aims to show that a credible quality signal provided by the wholesaler, the wholesale brand, can effectively reduce buyer uncertainty.
Design/methodology/approach
Using structural equation modelling methodology in the context of 569 buyers across 52 locations of a home improvement wholesaler the authors investigate the key mediating role of transaction costs for the effect of wholesale brand knowledge on buyer loyalty.
Findings
The results suggest that wholesaler brand knowledge effectively reduces ex‐post transaction costs incurred by the buyer. These lower quality control costs and price verification efforts increase buyer loyalty. Interestingly, however, the data show that this bonding effect of the wholesale brand may not affect buyer search costs.
Research limitations/implications
The research on the role of supplier brands for supply network management is an early effort. Clearly more research is needed to fully explore the role of wholesale brand knowledge for wholesaler selection.
Practical implications
The findings are important to marketing channel managers because they provide a viable alternative to ever‐increasing relationship marketing costs. They suggest that a close wholesaler‐retailer relationship may not be necessary to realize the benefits of a trusting exchange environment. In fact, they show that high wholesale brand knowledge may act as a substitute and reduce uncertainty effectively.
Originality/value
This paper is the first to introduce a transaction cost perspective on the relationship between wholesale brand knowledge and wholesale loyalty. It demonstrates how wholesale brand knowledge can reduce uncertainty in the wholesaler‐retailer dyad and substitute for more costly relationship building efforts.
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Stephan Grzeskowiak and Jamal A. Al‐Khatib
Retailers are increasingly forced to enter negotiations with new suppliers and have less time to develop trusting relationships prior to awarding sourcing contract. Such supplier…
Abstract
Purpose
Retailers are increasingly forced to enter negotiations with new suppliers and have less time to develop trusting relationships prior to awarding sourcing contract. Such supplier negotiations are often guided by self‐interest‐seeking behavior. However, not all exchange partners behave opportunistically when given the opportunity and little is known about how and when opportunism actually occurs. This research seeks to develop a multidimensional perspective of exchange partners' Machiavellianism that reveals different types of opportunistic motivations in exchange relationships and to extend knowledge of socialization as a safeguard by investigating the efficacy of signaling trustworthiness as a means of reducing the risk of opportunistic behavior in exchanges with partners with different moral standards about opportunism.
Design/methodology/approach
The data consist of a sample of 259 purchasing professionals who are members of the Institute of Supply Chain Management and report on their negotiation behavior. Moderated regression analysis is used to analyze the research model.
Findings
The results show that opportunistic behavior originates from a multidimensional set of moral convictions held by an exchange partner. Interestingly, signaling a trusting relationship only reduces opportunistic behavior that is due to deceit, but is not effective against cynicism or flattery.
Originality/value
To date, retail managers have addressed potential partner opportunism by designing contractual agreements or by implementing structural and social safeguards. Little is known about how these approaches address partner‐specific causes of opportunism. The study demonstrates the extent to which trust, a popular socialization mechanism in retailing, moderates the degree to which an exchange partner's moral conviction leads to opportunism.
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Dieter Ahlert, Rainer Olbrich, Peter Kenning and Hendrik Schroeder
Hao Liu, Yu Mu, Xinhong Fu and Yuying Liu
Fresh products' homogeneity makes it difficult for grocery stores to differentiate themselves by improving product or service quality. This study analysed grocery store loyalty…
Abstract
Purpose
Fresh products' homogeneity makes it difficult for grocery stores to differentiate themselves by improving product or service quality. This study analysed grocery store loyalty from the perspective of self-congruence and compared the relative importance of affective attachment and lifestyle matching, which acts as a mediating mechanism in influencing customer loyalty.
Design/methodology/approach
Individuals in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Beijing and Xi'an; representative cities of China's east, south, west, north and central regions, responded to questionnaires. Altogether, 282 valid responses were obtained; structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to test the hypotheses.
Findings
The findings show that lifestyle congruence has a greater mediating effect than emotional attachment in the relationship between store-self congruence and grocery store loyalty. Furthermore, social self-congruence was the dominant dimension of store-self congruence that affects grocery store loyalty.
Research limitations/implications
The first important academic contribution of this study is the provision of knowledge on the issue of whether to focus on generating grocery store loyalty via the mediating effect of emotional attachment or lifestyle congruence. Furthermore, the empirical findings further clarify the boundary of brand attachment theory, demonstrating the limitation of this theory in explaining the mediating mechanism for self-congruence on loyalty in a context that sells low-involvement products in a collectivistic culture. Another academic contribution focuses on the examination of dominant dimensions of self-congruence.
Practical implications
This study provides a new strategy for grocery store managers to avoid the trap of homogeneous competition, namely, to clearly define consumers' social rather than personal identity. Additionally, grocery stores should focus on matching their image with target customers' lifestyles when building customer loyalty.
Social implications
This study's findings also shed light on public policy. Some implications could be increasing the layout rationality of retail commercial outlets to facilitate the interaction between grocery stores and community consumers and promoting the matching of grocery stores and consumer lifestyles. Such policies may boost grocery sales, which in turn would boost farmers' incomes.
Originality/value
Compared to previous studies, this study analysed the customer loyalty of grocery stores from the perspective of self-congruence, analysed the mechanisms by which self-congruence influences customer loyalty via the mediating effects of emotional attachment and lifestyle congruence and compared the relative significance of these two paths. Furthermore, this study clarified the relative importance of self-congruence dimensions in influencing grocery store loyalty.
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Bojan Grum and Darja Kobal Grum
There is a lack of theoretical and empirical studies regarding concepts of social sustainability based on social infrastructure. The idea of understanding this paper is that…
Abstract
Purpose
There is a lack of theoretical and empirical studies regarding concepts of social sustainability based on social infrastructure. The idea of understanding this paper is that quality social infrastructure leads to the general quality of people’s life in the built environment and that is rounded up to social sustainability. This paper aims to integrate these concepts into the network, hereinafter referred to as a social sustainability model.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodology used in this paper is desk research. The authors follow methodological steps in the building of conceptual network: setting up a research problem; choice of databases; reviewing the literature and categorizing the selected data; identifying and default conceptual definition; integrating the concepts; synthesis and making it all make sense; and assembly and validating the concept. Through that, a large volume of bibliographic materials was scanned, and a limited number of documents have been reviewed and critiqued. The documents have been selected from varied disciplines, including social infrastructure, quality of life, social sustainability, urban sociology, housing policy as among the articles.
Findings
The result is the model which represents the links between social infrastructure (utility equipment, public infrastructure, vital objects and fundamentals) and further between factors inside quality of life structure (users, quality of life, reflections). The result is the model which representing the links between social infrastructure (utility equipment, public infrastructure, vital objects and fundamentals) and further between factors inside well-being structure (users, quality of life, reflections).
Research limitations/implications
There is a potential risk of errors arising from the use of assumptions, limited desk reviews and data from secondary resources.
Originality/value
The authors portray the development of social sustainability model. Within this model, the authors can critically observe all levels within the existing built environment: user responses to the built environment, their satisfaction, social inclusion, health, etc. Within this model, they can observe the links between existing research, their frequency, capture, direction and not least to determine which areas have not been explored and where the lacks of research are. The conclusion outlines the framework and its main concepts of social sustainability based on social infrastructure and well-being, including their theoretical premises and components.
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Zi Wang, Ruizhi Yuan, Martin J. Liu and Jun Luo
Despite the growing research into luxury symbolism and its influence on consumer behavior, few studies have investigated the underlying psychological processes that occur in…
Abstract
Purpose
Despite the growing research into luxury symbolism and its influence on consumer behavior, few studies have investigated the underlying psychological processes that occur in different cultural contexts. This study investigates the relationships among luxury symbolism, psychological underpinnings of self-congruity, self-affirmation and customer loyalty, especially regarding how these relationships differ between consumers in China and those in the US.
Design/methodology/approach
Sample data were collected through surveys administered to 653 participants (327 in China and 326 in the US). A multi-group structural equation model was adopted to examine the conceptual model and proposed hypotheses.
Findings
The results show that luxury symbolism positively influences self-consistency, social consistency, social approval and self-esteem, and subsequently impacts self-affirmation and customer loyalty. However, for US consumers, self-esteem and social approval have significantly negative impacts on self-affirmation, while for Chinese consumers, social approval has no significant impact on self-affirmation. The authors also find that interdependent self-construal positively moderates the relationship between luxury symbolism, and social approval and social consistency. Independent self-construal positively moderates the relationship between luxury symbolism and self-consistency, and negatively influences the relationship between luxury symbolism and self-esteem.
Originality/value
Based on the theory of self-congruity and self-affirmation, this study fills a literature gap by revealing the psychological underpinnings regarding luxury symbolism and customer loyalty. It extends extant studies in luxury consumption by introducing self-construal (independent self vs interdependent self) as an important cultural moderator in luxury symbolism. This paper provides insights for luxury practitioners to create efficient marketing strategies by satisfying consumers' psychological needs in different cultures.