An Empirical Study on the Housewives' Store Patronage Behavior in Seoul Metropolitan Area

by Cho, Nam-Khi

The research questions of this dissertation were what are the major determinants of store-type choice and how does the relative importance of store-type choice differ under purchase situations.

From the literature reviewed, it was found that consumers' store partronage behavior can solve the research questions. Sepcifically, the purpose of this dissertation is to investigate consumers' perceptions of store attributes, the determinants of store-type choice, and the difference of store-type choice over purchase situations.

Based on literature regarding to consumers' patronage behavior, this study integrated theoretical models and established conceptual framework focused on consumers' individual characteristics and purchase situations.

Seven hypotheses were proposed for the research objectives. The hypotheses were composed of four hypotheses about store-type image difference and three about store-type chioce.

It was hypothesized that :

H I-1 : The degree of consumers' perception of store-type image will differ within the purchase situations.

H I-2 : The degree of consumers' perception of store-type image will differ across the purchase situations.

H I-3 : The degree of perception of store-type image will differ according to each store-type choice group.

H I-4 : The degree of consumers' perception of store-type image will differ according to their life style characteristics.

H II-1 : Consumers' store-type choice will differ according to their demographic characteristics.

H II-2 : Consumers' store-type choice will differ across purchase situations.

H II-3 : Consumers' store-type choice will differ within purchase situations according to their life style characteristics.

Purchase situations were manipulated by product(3)¡¿time(2)¡¿task(3) factorial design from purchase involvement constructs and three situations were selected. In relation to life style characteristics, this study utilized fashion and shopping life style instruments. Respondents were divided into four groups in fashion-orentation life style characteristics and five in shopping-orientation life style characteristics by factor analysis and cluster analysis. Store types used in this †Ç¿ä were department stores, specialty stores, discount stores, and general stores related to apparel retailers.

To test hypotheses, ANOVA(analysis of variance), MANOVA(multivariate analysis of variance), and Chi-square analyis were used and discriminant analysis was used for follow-up analysis.

Statistical analysis results support H I-1, H II-2, and partially support H I-2, H I-4, H I-1 and H I-3.

The major research findings are as follows :

1. Consumers' perceptions of store image differed within and across purchase situations. Specifically, the higher the degree of perceptions of purchase situations, the degree of perceptions of store image was higher and consumers perceived merchandise-related attributes as important. The lower the degree of perceptions of purchase situations, consumers perceived purchase convinience-related attributes as important.

2. Consumers' perceptions of store image differed according to preffered storetype groups.

3. Consumers' perceptions of store image and store choice differed according to life style characteristics. Specifically, shopping-orientation instruments was useful in explaining difference of store image perceptions and fashion-orentation instruments was useful in store-type choice difference.

4. Consumers' store-type choice differed according to demographic characteristics and across product situations. Specifically, Korean women's the most preferred store type was sepcialty store and followed by general store, discount store, and department store. The most significant demographic variables were household total income and respondent's occupation. The higher the degree of purchase involvement, age and education were more significant. The higher the deree of purchase involvement, department store and specialty store were preferred, and the lower the degree of purchase involvement, general store was preferred. But discount store's preference did not differed across purchase situations.

5. The most important store attributes as determinants of store-type choice were number of sales, distance to store, credit card availability, clientele, store hours, salesperson kindness, merchandise display.