Abstract

Purpose – The opening up of the Indian retail sector has seen a proliferation of the corporate players through different retail formats and stores – the majority being in the food and groceries. This necessitates creating, building, and managing differentiated retail store brands, and image differentiation, to attract and retain shoppers. This research paper attempts to understand whether the Indian consumers differentiate the various store brands and images based on their experiences.

Design/methodology/approach – The study was conducted in two stages – list of parameters of evaluation of retail store image (developed from the literature), discussed with middle‐level managers from the retail sector to finalize parameters relevant for store image measurement in the Indian context and a questionnaire evolved for primary data collection, administered to 326 SEC A and B respondents (shoppers of food and grocery from modern retail stores). To assess the store image dimensions perceived by these shoppers, factor analysis was employed and for understanding various store image attributes used for differentiation of store brands one‐way analysis of variance was employed.

Findings – Results reflect that Indian shoppers have started identifying the dimensions of retail store image and are differentiating the various stores on the basis of functional attributes. Eventually, the stores would have to create differentiation based on psychological attributes.

Research limitations/implications – The paper is limited to the organised modern food and grocery retail stores of Ahmedabad city.

Originality/value – The paper can be helpful to Indian retail store chains to focus on elements to create a differentiated store image.

Keywords: - - -

Conclusions

Modern organized retail stores in India are competing based on providing a good value proposition to Indian shoppers. They are currently following the strategy of using a large portion of their budgets on advertising – either on name and logo recognition or on cheap prices rather than competitive prices. It has resulted in price-based competition to attract shoppers.

This is also corroborated by the fact that most of the factors in the study cross-loaded onto Statement 14 (effective discounts/promotional schemes) which implies that respondents perceive all stores similarly in their offerings of discounts and schemes. Another strategy of making competition less relevant is to position one’s retail mall on a non-price plank. One such plank that can be adopted by modern, organized retail stores could be providing a superior shopping experience using service and merchandise and other functional and psychological store image attributes to shoppers thereby creating a distinct store image. By creating a differentiated store image and maintaining it consistently would over time make it into a recognizable brand.

The present research is aimed at understanding store image differentiation in the organized food and grocery retail context in India. For this, interviews with middle-level executives of modern organized retail stores were undertaken to assess whether the items of the store image scale developed in the west were capturing the store image construct in the Indian context.

Based on factor analysis, we deduced six factors with an eigen value . 1. They are store-staff related, store ambience, service related, customer convenience related, sensory appeal and number of customers present at a time.

The present state of retail image construct consists of dimensions like store staff related, store ambience, service related, customer convenience related, sensory appeal, and customer presence. We further examined them for statistical significance for differentiating organized store image using ANOVA.

The results of factor analysis and ANOVA highlight a potentially interesting scenario. The study reveals that customers have started identifying the dimensions of retail store image. However, the results of ANOVA indicate that, currently, the customers are not able to differentiate the various stores on the basis of psychological aspects of store image. They are able to discriminate among different stores based on functional and tangible aspects like quiet or noisy store, overcrowded or less overcrowded store, parking space, store at a walking distance or at a far-off distance, and fast billing and checkout. This finding is consistent with dimensions like locational convenience and other convenience factors deduced for retail organized store image in a study by Berry (1969) and attributes like sales clerk service, location of a store and layout, and atmosphere found in a study by Hirschman et al. (1978). The absence of psychological aspects/ dimensions in forming retail organized store image may be as modern organized food and grocery retail is still in a nascent stage in India. It may also be due to the large number of functional aspects which were included in the survey based on extant literature and expert opinion, thus potentially underplaying the role of psychological aspects. These results indicate that the modern organized food and grocery retail chains are differentiating themselves by functional/tangible factors like parking space, proximity of the store, and noise levels. At this nascent stage of modern-organized retail evolution in India, functional differentiation may be the key influencer of customers’ store image formation and possibly selection decision.

But eventually, retailers should start directing efforts towards differentiating their store based on psychological aspects which will lead to distinct brand positions. If the differentiation in psychological aspects of store image does develop, strong store brands may develop and customers will visit stores not just driven by their whims and fancies or due to promotions, nearness or just some experience, but due to strong identification which they perceive with a particular modern organized retail store brand. As per Martineau (1958):

The shopping situation must therefore include many things not directly associated with specific items but closely connected with various patterns of consumer behavior. As the shopper fits the stores into her planning, she manipulates store images in her mind – not images of this counter or that department but impressions or pictures of entire stores. In large part, where she goes and what she buys depends on the subjective attributes that are part of the store images – atmosphere, status, personnel, other customers. Consciously or unconsciously, they sway her expectation and direct her steps.

Discussions with retail experts from industry and academia further added might to our findings as they agreed with the conclusions.

دانلود ترجمه تخصصی این مقاله دانلود رایگان فایل pdf انگلیسی