Assignment of Advance Research Methods

Submitted To:
Mr. Rai Imtiaz Hussain
Submitted By:
Waqar Ahmad (1023)
Muhammad Umar Waqar (1033)
MBA 2015-19 Morning
University of Education Okara Campus
A Research on the Store Image Attributes Affecting Its Store
Loyalty.
MBA
University of Education Okara Campus
Waqar Ahmad (1023)
Waqarahmad0035@gmail.com
Muhammad Umar Waqar (1033)
Umarwaqar1033@gmail.com

Abstract:
The business of retail today has facing intense competition and to survive in this
competitive environment the owner and manager of retail store are adopting new
ways to fill customer needs and wants for the purpose of customer satisfaction
because buying pattern of behavior of people and satisfaction are positively
correlated. There is a positive relationship between customer satisfaction and
store loyalty because satisfied customer makes a repeat purchase and became a
loyal customer of the store. In Pakistan there is less study has been done on it but
in other countries of the world like in Korea a large amount of work has done on
that. The retail sector is a main pillar of the study and the topic which was study
based on retail store and to predict the loyalty of the people for make a purchase
as well as from the particular store. For the prediction of result 120 questionnaire
were distributed and only 102 were utilized .After that the result of the study were
predicted as store atmosphere and quality have significant and positive result on
the loyalty of a store while sales person service, credit service and store brand
have insignificant and negative influence on store loyalty. The results of the study
will help the store managers and owners to understand their customer and to
survive in today are competitive environment by fulfilling customer needs and
will maintain store loyalty
Key words: Store loyalty, store image, Sales person service, Credit service, Store
brand, Quality, Store Atmosphere
INTRODUCTION:
In today’s competitive environment Store loyalty is a very important
issue for a store. It is difficult job to create store loyalty because it occurs due to buying
satisfaction of customer because satisfied customer will make repeat purchase and dissatisfied
will not purchase again. In the rt[esult the sale of a store will increase or decrease. In Pakistan
there is less work has been done on that. However (Yoo & Chang, 2005) and (Koo & Busan,
Inter-relationships among Store Images, Store Satisfaction, and Store Loyalty among Korea
Discount Retail Patrons, 2003) in Korea and (Giraldi, Spinelli, & Merlo, 2003) in Brasil have
done significant work on it. From those studies we observed that we should start some work on
store image attibutes Which affect store loyalty in Pakisatn that are sales person service, credit
service, store brand ,quality and store atmosphere. In the environement of Pakistan this study
will help the owner and managers of retail stores to keep there customer loyal and identified the
problems that a customer face at the time of purchase from a store and the managers of stores can
enhance their sales by increasing repeat purchase level of customers by removing these
problems. There are some objetives of the study as:-
 Identify the attributes that affect store loyalty
 Helps managers to increase sale by solving the problems of customer

The response will be taken from the customers who make purchases from the retail stores of
Pakistan and specifically the customers of city Okara, Renala Khurd and Habibabad. For the
analysis correlation and regression through SPSS will used for the interpretation of the results
generated from the study.
Literature review:

 Dependent Variable

Store Loyalty:
“In an attitudinal sense store loyalty can be understand as psychological
commitment or store preference and so it can be defined as positive attitude to the specified store
so operationally it can be measured future probability buy (Yoo & Chang, 2005)”.
A study was conducted on the variables that are price, advertisement, assortment, brand, store
atmosphere, facilities, credit service, and convenience of shopping, location, promotion, sales
personnel service, and product quality. The interview was taken from married women who lived
in city area of Korea. They focused discount stores as well as departmental stores. Five point
likert scales was used to collect the data. They ask to answer two hundred and twenty married
women but only one hundred and forty two give the answer. Store atmosphere, location,
shopping facility and sales-personnel service affect store loyalty significantly in departmental
stores and advertising, quality of merchandise, credit service and store atmosphere have a
significant influence upon store loyalty statistically in discount stores (Yoo & Chang, 2005).
(Semeijn, Riel, & Ambrosini, 2004)His study on “Consumer evaluations of store brands: effects
of store image and product attributes” evaluation of store brand as a dependant variable and store
image as a independent variable they also us Perceived Psychosocial Risk, Perceived Functional
Risk and Perceived Financial Risk as a mediating variables. The first proposition predicts a
direct, positive and linear relationship between the store brand and store image. A negative effect
predicted of the perceived risks on consumers’ evaluations store brand’s product. Store image
has little effect on perceived functional risk.
A study on “Drivers of Customer Loyalty in A Retail Store Environment” in the study survey
was conducted from 972 customers and variables were service quality, product quality and brand
image drive customer loyalty. They predict that brand image is the strongest driver of customer
loyalty discussed taken by product quality then service quality (Clottey, Collier, & Stodnick,
2008).
  Independent Variable:
Store image:
“Store image is a complex of attributes that customer about the store feels and it is more than a
simple sum of objective individual attributes since a parts of attributes interact in customer’s
mind” (Yoo & Chang, 2005).
Hypothesis:

In the research to predict the relationships of the variable the following hypothesis are generated.
In these variables the store loyalty is treated as dependent variable and store image is treated as
independent variable that contains some components that are sales person service, credit service,
store brand, quality and store atmosphere. First the hypothesis are nullified and then positively.
H0: There is insignificant and negative relationship between sales person service and store
loyalty.

H1: There is a significant and positive relationship between sales person service and store
loyalty.

(Akhter, Abbasi, & Afzal, 2011) conducted a research on variables such as customer loyalty as
dependant variable and Customer satisfaction, customer relationship, product image,
trustworthiness as independent variables. One fifty respondent customers were taken as sample
for that purpose questionnaire was used that consist 14 items and tested in SPSS. Likert scale of
five points from for strongly disagrees to strongly agree was used the results of this study show
that these independent variables have a significant impact on customer loyalty.

H0: There is insignificant and negative relationship between credit service and store loyalty.

H1: There is a significant and positive relationship between credit service and store loyalty.

(Koo & Busan, Inter-relationships among Store Images, Store Satisfaction, and Store Loyalty
among Korea Discount Retail Patrons, 2003) researched on “Inter-relationships among Store
Images, Store Satisfaction, and Store Loyalty”. Data was collected from 517 discount retail store
customers in Korea. Likert scale 5- point was used through SPSS 10. The study showed that only
location has a significant effect on the attitude. Store image has a direct effect on customer
satisfaction. The attitude towards a discount retail store has a significant impact on store loyalty
.Store location also has a direct impact on store loyalty.

H0: There is insignificant and negative relationship between store brand and store loyalty.
H1: There is a significant and positive relationship between store brand and store loyalty.
A study was conducted in which retail brand satisfaction, retail brand loyalty and attitude
towards retail brand products were treated as independent variables and Store loyalty treated as
dependent variable and for that purpose questionnaire were given to 230 respondents but only
225 were useable and a seven-point Likert scales from1 strongly disagree to 7 strongly agree and
correlation and simple multiple regression was used for analysis the result was if increase in
retail brand satisfaction than it will influence store loyalty while attitude towards retail brand has
moderating effect the study was conducted by (Binninger, 2007).
H0: There is insignificant and negative relationship between quality and store loyalty.

H1: There is a significant and positive relationship between quality and store loyalty.

(Liljander, Polsa, & Rielb, 2009) was conducted a study on Store brand purchasing behavior
store image and apparel the result that perceived financial risk negitively affect consumer
intention psychosocial risk negitively affect the perceived value and store atmosphere positively
affet perceived product.
H0: There is insignificant and negative relationship between store atmosphere and store loyalty.
H1: There is a significant and positive relationship between store atmosphere and store loyalty.

A research was on the variables Online store service, Online store merchandise, Online store
atmosphere, Online store navigation, Offline store service, Offline store merchandise, Offline
store atmosphere and Offline store layout as “ Online purchase intentions: A multi-channel store
image perspective” conducted. For that purpose a survey was made to relate the variables and the
result of that study was significant influence of offline on online store image and offline store
merchandise had a very strong impact on the online store merchandise (Verhagen & Dolen,
2009).

Price of merchandise, Quality of merchandise, Assortment of merchandise, Sales personnel,

Location convenience, Services, Sales promotions, Advertising, Store atmosphere, Institutional,
Clientele, Physical aspects, Post transaction are the variables on that a research was done and in
the result this study suggests that a retailer should take proactive action for all these (Giraldi et
al. 2003).

Some work also has done on these variables that are Personal Values, Online Store Associations,
Online Store Loyalty, and End States of Existence, Means, and Behavior. the results was
generated in that study shows no statically significant effect of information and security had no
effect on that but product assortment had a positive and statically significant effect on loyalty
(Koo, 2006).
(Jin & Park, 2006) conducted a research on variables that are trust satisfaction and loyalty mall
intercept and online survey was used to find out the result and the result was Merchandising the
most important attribute in enhancing both trust and satisfaction, study examined the moderating
effect of online purchase experience on the impact of each online attribute on consumer trust and
satisfaction.
This research was conducted on “Consumer perceptions of store brands versus national brands”
that includes variables such as store brand, national brand and brand equity in which the
respondents were 225 and the data was collected through mall intercept and survey and the
results that were generated from that study was that a better quality can be offered by private
brand is same but at lower price (Wulf, Goedertier, & Ossel, 2005).

Methodology:

The study is based on the variables store loyalty as dependent variable and
sales person service, credit service, store brand, quality and store atmosphere as independent
variables. For the purpose of data collection questionnaire is used. The questionnaire is
consisting of two parts. The first part contains the personal information of the respondent on
gender, age, income and occupation. The second part consists on the questions about the
variables to find out the results. For that purpose 120 questionnaires were distributed only 113
were returned and only 102 were usable out of them and the data is collected from three cities of
Pakistan Okara, Renala Khurd and Habibabad.
Theoretical Framework:

Research model used in this study is I n the following way;

Store Image:
 Sales person
service
Store
 Credit
service Loyalty
 Store Brand
 Quality
 Store
atmosphere

In study a five point likert scale from1 for strongly disagree to 5 for strongly agree was used in
the questionnair. For data analysis the correlation ang regression method used to pridict the result
of the research on the specified variables.

Findings and Conclusion:

The results that generated by that study regarding demographic on the basis of gender 52.9%
were male and only 47.1% were female as a respondant. The basis of age 2.9% were below 15
years,88.2 % were above 15 years to below 30 years,7.8% were 30 years to below 45 years while
only 1% were above 45 years and on the basis of respondant’s income 26.5% were below 15000,
and only 35.3% were from 15000 to 29999,and only 16.7% were from 30000 to 44999, only
10.8% were from 45000 to 59999, and also 10.8% were with the income of 60000 or above. On
ocupation basis 34.3% were teachers and 47.1% were bankers and 7.8% were lawyers and and
only 9.8% specify their ocupation. The overall reliability of all 13 items is .667 and is significant
calculated by Cronbatch’s Alpha
 The study generated some significant result and some insignificant and proved the null
hypothesis the correlation between these variable is find by study as,

Table 1 correlation

Sales person Store

Store loyalty service Credit service Store image quality atmosphere

Pearson Correlation Store loyalty 1.000 .261 .174 .137 .408 .341

Sales person e .261 1.000 .355 -.013 .345 .284

Credit service .174 .355 1.000 .165 .210 .232

Store image .137 -.013 .165 1.000 .161 .307

Quality .408 .345 .210 .161 1.000 .313

Store .341 .284 .232 .307 .313 1.000

atmosphere

In the above table the quality and store atmosphere have strong correlation while others have
weak correlation that shows the result of quality and store atmosphere are significant and
positive on the other hand the result of store loyalty, sales person service, credit service and store
image has insignificant relationships. People have positive feelings about quality and store
atmosphere and they prefer both while they give a negative response about others.
Regression results of this study are in the following table,
 Coefficients
Model Unstandardized Coefficients Standardized t Sig.
Coefficients
B Beta V
I
F
(Constant) 1.675 3.490 .001
1
.
.
7
salesperson service .092 .088 .847 .399 3
5
2
7
2
1
.
.
8
Credit service .021 .028 .281 .779 1
3
9
6
7
.
8
store brand .017 .020 .210 .834
6
7

.
8
Quality .248 .303 3.051 .003
1
9

.
7
Store atmosphere .209 .209 2.067 .041
8
6
Adjusted R2 : .185
The all result of the study were not same they were different from with one another, in these
results the variables such as store atmosphere and quality at a retail store location were only
significant it means that the owner or manager of a retail store should focus on store atmosphere
and as well as quality and they are the good predictors of store loyalty of a customer to remains
loyal and can be used effectively as attributes of store image but sales person service ,credit
service and store brand does not have significant or positive results and are the poor predictors of
store loyalty and cannot be used as attributes of store image. These results are providing a
direction of store owners focus on the quality and store atmosphere because these factor are on
the basis of raw opinion of the people and the perception of the people is negative about the other
variables on these basis the results are quality are significant at level .003 it means quality has a
positive and significant influence on store loyalty while store atmosphere has significant at point
.041 and denoting the positive and significant effect on store loyalty.

Implications:
In the research, studies on store image attributes are reviewed. We analyzed on the basis of that
studies loyalty of a store influenced by which of them. In the study store atmosphere found the
largest influencer on store loyalty. They attempt to make a good image of their stores by
displaying and decorating the store with lights of different colures. Another factor of store loyalty
is sales person service. It means retail marketer should pay great attention to overcoming
customers’ complaints by provide good service such as product information but the study
indicates that they have not a greater influence on store loyalty. The quality of goods has the
greater influence on the loyalty of a store. Finally store atmosphere has a significant influence on
the store loyalty.

Limitation:
The research has some limitation that can be used as future guidelines .The first limitation is the
study is conducted in retail store customers. Second research conducted only three cities
HabibAbad, Renala Khurd and Okara cities of Pakistan. Third, the response was taken from only
120 people. Fourth, for the purpose of result prediction correlation and regression method is used.
References:
Akhter, W., Abbasi, A. S., & Afzal, H. (2011). Factors affecting customer loyalty in Pakistan. African
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Binninger, A. S. (2007). Exploring the relationships between retail brands and consumer store loyalty.
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Clottey, T. A., Collier, D. A., & Stodnick, M. (2008). Drivers Of Customer Loyalty In A Retail Store
Environment. Journal of Service Science, 1, 35-48.

Giraldi, J. d., Spinelli, P. B., & Merlo, E. M. (2003). RETAIL STORE IMAGE: ANALYSIS OF THE IMPLICATIONS
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Jin, B., & Park, J. Y. (2006). The Moderating Effect of Online Purchase Experience on the Evaluation of
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Semeijn, J., Riel, A. C., & Ambrosini, A. B. (2004). Consumer evaluations of store brands:effects of store
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