The effects of the current economic situation on customer satisfaction and retail patronage behaviour

Abstract

This study examines the factors that underlie store attributes and determines their influence on maximal customer satisfaction. First, we attempt to assess the differential influence of store factors on several customer subsamples that exhibit diverse retail patronage behaviour, a variable we operationalise as shopping frequency in accordance with relevant literature. Second, we aim to determine whether the economic downturn has exerted any influence on this relationship by collecting two comparable samples of consumers in different periods – one at the beginning of the crisis and one in the middle of the crisis. The findings highlight the importance of the proximity to home and customer attention attributes, and show that while in the beginning of the crisis a higher shopping frequency has a greater propensity to enhance the convenience, services and quality image factors, in the middle of the crisis the smallest number of factors contributing to satisfaction can be observed in the subsamples with the highest and lowest shopping frequency, respectively. The results thus suggest that the current economic situation is not contributing strongly to changes in consumers' patronage behaviours.

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