Eastern International University

Becamex Business School

BBS 460: Marketing research
Homework Assignment #1: Critique a Research Method
Term: Quarter 3, 2013-14
Date: 09/04/2015
Student Name: Lng Vin Anh
Ng Tho Trm

- 1132300411
- 1132300120

Email addresses: anh.luong.k1sba@eiu.edu.vn

tram.ngo.k1sba@eiu.edu.vn
1. What is the research topic?
The research topic is the influences of in-store retailing mixes on customer involvement
needs and customer loyalty in the shopping environment.
2. Where, when, why and who wrote the research?
The study is conducted by Nic S. Terblanche from Stellenbosch University in South Africa in
2010.
3. What is the research problem that was researched?
When going shopping, customer have the concern about certain products which the customer
can use as status symbol or importance for a customers physical or psychological. Therefore, it is

claimed that the customers will probably find it more satisfied and contented if they find the product
information or the advice from sale staffs when shopping. Even, they are free to make a complaint
and after receive the support from the customer service. As a result, enhancing the retail mix
apparently represents a strategic plan for the retailers to build up the customers loyalty.
4. What are the research objectives?
There are 2 objective of this research:
The primary objective is to define which in-store retail mix attributes must be in place to
satisfy customer involvement demands in four diverse retailing environments, including superstore,
a supermarket, a clothing store and a wellness, beauty and lifestyle (WBL) retailer.
The second objective is to determine which in-store retail mix attributes (the
independent variables) in the four retailing environments impact on customer loyalty (the
dependent variable).
5. What are the research questions?
What are the in-store retail mix attributes impact customer involvement and customer
loyalty in four diverse retailing environments namely a superstore, a supermarket, a clothing
store and a wellness, beauty and lifestyle (WBL) retailer?
6. What are the theoretical foundations?
By clarifying many interrelated concepts including the customer involvement, product
involvement, the customer loyalty, and the retail mix. It concludes that the loyalty of costumer
contains both the cognitive construct (attitude) and shopping behavior. This means that loyalty of
customer is referred to either the positive propensity toward the store or brand or the extent of

expenditure for a specific brand or store. Besides, once the firm would like to win the
competition, it is necessary to provide the customer adequate inputs to reduce the associated risk
and then boost the behavioral and attitudinal loyalty by dominating in shopping process.
Furthermore, the product or service involvement could be viewed as a customer-defined
construct. Hence, there are 5 constructs about in-store retail mix influencing the involvement at
retail level: Personal Interaction; Merchandise Value; Complaint Handling; Internal Store
Environment; and Merchandise Variety and Assortment. In each construct, it is fitting
measurement for the customer involvement in different types of retailers and plays a role of
variables in predicting the customer loyalty.
Thus, based on the unique behavior and retail mix expectation of shopper in respect of
different retail store types, namely a supermarket, a superstore, a clothing store and a store
selling wellness, beauty and lifestyle products. Here are the following proposition:
In a supermarket environment consumer loyalty will be determined by
merchandise value.
In a superstore environment consumer loyalty will be determined by merchandise
value.
In a clothing store environment customer loyalty will be determined by personal
interaction, the in-store environment and merchandise value.
In a WBL-store environment customer loyalty will be determined by personal
interaction, merchandise variety, complaint handling and merchandise value.
7. What are the research method?
The study employed the sampling method to collect the data. Specifically, there were 320
respondents and 1244 customers from two superstores and eight nationwide supermarket
branches were interviewed respectively. Moreover, 2074 customers of 11 branches of a national

clothing retailers took a participant in this study. About the WBL-store, the questionnaires were
sent by mail to 34 000 WBL- customers.
8. What is the data collection?
Apart from the data from WBL-stores customers which was conducted by mail, the
others were collected by means of personal interview. All of respondents were required to
evaluate the level of satisfaction with the retail mix at particular on a 7-point Liker-type scale.
The questionnaires used in this survey measured the 5 dimension: Personal Interaction (5 items),
Merchandise Value (5 items), Merchandise Variety (4 items), Internal Store Environment (5
items), and Complaint Handling (3 items).
9. Is there any other relevant information collected?
The empirical results here provide considerable support for the 4 theories. However, one
considerate thing is the extent of the relationship between the variables (the retail mix
dimensions) and the loyalty. In which, for the case of supermarket and superstore, it is
undeniable that price (merchandise value) plays the most important role in making purchasing
decision for the purpose of enriching the loyalty of patrons. Moreover, the factors of personal
interaction and store environment contributes the positive influence on the loyalty. However, the
most important key is the merchandise value in clothing store while WBL-store clients expect
the friendliness from the staffs. Hence, superstore can strongly compete if concentrating on the
price or promotion. In stead of that, for the WBL stores is viewed as a high involvement find the
strategy of increasing value-added for customer as the way to win.

10. What is the conclusion of the research?

The retail mix offered assigned the different level of involvement which leads to the
degree of customer loyalty. It is clear that the different type of retail have the different types of
retail mix, proposition and expectation from the shopper. Thus, if the company would like to
enhance the loyalty of their clients, it need to consider carefully how its customer look at its
retail mix decision.