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IJRDM 39,1

Effect of shopper attributes on retail format choice behaviour for food and grocery retailing in India
Cherukuri Jayasankara Prasad
Department of Business Management, Krishna University, Machilipatnam, India, and

68
Received 28 September 2009 Revised 25 May 2010 Accepted 28 June 2010

Ankisetti Ramachandra Aryasri

School of Management Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad, India
Abstract
Purpose Retailing in India is an unchartered territory. Food and grocery is the most promising area for setting up retail business in India. An understanding of shopper retail format choice behaviour will enable retailers to segment their market and target specic consumer groups with strategies premeditated to meet their retail needs. The purpose of this paper is to make a detailed study on the effect of shoppers demographic, geographic and psychographic dimensions in terms of format choice behaviour in the fast growing Indian food and grocery retailing. Design/methodology/approach Descriptive research design is adopted applying mall intercept survey method using structured questionnaire for data collection. Both descriptive (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistical tools like x 2, factor analysis and multivariate analysis are used to analyse the data collected from 1,040 food and grocery retail customers from upgraded neighbourhood kirana stores, convenience stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets in conjoint cities of Secunderabad and Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh in India. Findings The ndings suggest that shoppers age, gender, occupation, education, monthly household income, family size and distance travelled to store have signicant association with retail format choice decisions. The choice decisions are also varied among shoppers demographic attributes. The ndings from shoppers psychographic dimensions like values, lifestyle factors and shopping orientations resulted in segmentation of food and grocery retail consumers into hedonic, utilitarian, autonomous, conventional and socialization type. Practical implications The study has practical implications for food and grocery retailers for better understanding the shopper behaviour in the context of changing consumer demographic and psychographic characteristics in an emerging Indian retail market. The ndings may help the retailers to segment and target the food and grocery retail consumers and, as a consequence, to undertake more effective retail marketing strategies for competitive advantage. Originality/value Given the absence of published academic literature and empirical ndings relating to store format choice behaviour in food and grocery retailing in India, this study may serve as a departure point for future studies in this area of concern. The research is also relevant to retail marketers in terms of format development and reorientation of marketing strategies in the fastest growing Indian retail market. Keywords Consumer behaviour, Demographics, Psychographics, Retailing, India Paper type Research paper

International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management Vol. 39 No. 1, 2011 pp. 68-86 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0959-0552 DOI 10.1108/09590551111104486

Introduction The macro-environmental forces profoundly affect the fortunes of food and grocery retail sector in India. The paradigm shift in consumers socio-economic, demographic

and geographical proportions are driving what was once a traditional small-scale retail outlets into an organised retail formats aimed at catering to the evolving needs and tastes of discerning consumers. But the ever changing consumers psychographic variables like values, activities, interests, opinions, motives and lifestyles have contributed immensely to the growth of store format typologies such as convenience stores, discount stores, super markets and hypermarkets (Prasad and Reddy, 2007). Studies on shoppers in India have largely been limited to their time and money spending pattern, demographic prole for a particular format (Sinha, 2003). Furthermore, the espousal of value for money and value for time have unconditionally altered the consumers shopping orientations and buying behaviour towards choice of food and grocery store formats. Though most of the previous retail research studies have focused on store image and importance of store attributes in understanding the concept of store choice and patronage behaviour (Woodside and Trappey, 1992; Medina and Ward, 1999; Outi, 2001; Sinha and Banerjee, 2004, Sinha et al., 2005; Sinha and Uniyal, 2005; Carpenter and Moore, 2006), yet a few research studies have revealed a connection among demographic, psychographic characteristics and store format choice suggesting that individual characteristics of consumers inuence their shopping behaviour (Fotheringham and Trew, 1993; Stone, 1995; Arnold, 1997; East, 1997; McGoldrick and Andre, 1997; Medina and Ward, 1999; Fox et al., 2004; Carpenter and Moore, 2006, Baltas and Argouslidis, 2007). Since organised retailing is a recent phenomenon in Indian context, not much insight is available till date. It is also observed that food and grocery retailing is the most promising area to set up retail business for domestic as well foreign companies in India. This fact is vindicated by the entry of domestic giants and foreign companies. This is an unchartered and unexplored research area in an Indian context where few empirical studies examined and contributed to the existing knowledge. Towards this end, this study and its outcome is a signicant contribution to the eld of store choice behaviour literature in Indian retailing context. Hence, this study assumed signicance aiming to examine the association between shoppers characteristics and store format choice decisions in food and grocery retailing in India. The purpose of the study is to understand the much needed domain of the consumer behaviour which enables the segmentation of food and grocery retail consumers towards the emergence of retail formats in India. The geographical scope of the study is conned to the twin cities of Secunderabad and Hyderabad (population is more than 56 lakhs) in Andhra Pradesh in India. The conceptual scope is limited to shoppers demographic and psychographic attributes which are pivotal in understanding the store format choice behaviour in the fastest growing largest consumer market. Literature review The behaviour of retail shoppers is a subject of study across the world (Sinha and Banerjee, 2004). The behaviour of shoppers differs according to the place where they are shopping and their involvement level with the act of shopping (Berman and Evans, 2005). There is a growing need to evaluate the true drivers of shopping behaviour in the Indian retailing context (Sinha and Banerjee, 2004, p. 483). For many years, marketing researchers have considered issues related to consumers store choice across various purchasing situations (Carpenter and Moore, 2006). From early studies that examine traditional retail format choice (Williams and Dadris, 1972) to recent inquiry into

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IJRDM 39,1

the non-traditional internet format choice, the marketing literature has identied several factors that are consumer related and situational factors that impact store choice. Shoppers socio-economic, demographic and geographic factors Socio-economic class is a group of people who are similar in their behaviour based upon their economic position (education, occupation and income) in the market place (Engel et al., 1990). Extensive research indicates that consumers across social strata tend to exhibit characteristically differentiated psychological and behavioural patterns that eventually determine the store choice behaviour (Monroe and Guiltinan, 1975; Sheth, 1983; Gupta and Chintagunta, 1994; Brown and Fisk (1965); Kohn et al., 1990; Shim and Kotsiopoulos, 1993; Shim and Bickle, 1994; Morganosky, 1995; East, 1997). Demographic factors such as age, gender, marital status, income, female working status, education, occupation and family size exert enormous inuence on choice of store format in grocery retailing (Bellenger and Korgaonkar, 1980; Zeithaml, 1985; Kopp et al., 1989; Sampson and Tigert, 1992; South and Spitze, 1994; Stone, 1995; East et al., 1995a; East, 1997; Mason, 1996; McGoldrick and Andre, 1997; Arnold, 1997; Bawa and Ghosh, 1999; Sinha and Banerjee, 2004; Fox et al., 2004; Carpenter and Moore, 2006). In general, the closer the consumers are to a store, the greater their likelihood to buy from that store. In contrast, the farther away consumers are from a store, the greater the number of intervening alternatives and thus the lower their likelihood to patronize that store (Loudon and Della Bitta, 1993). The travel time to a store is assumed to measure the effort, both physical and psychological, to reach a retail outlet. However, the effect of travel time varies by product. For some products, consumers are willing to travel very far (Runyon and Stewart, 1987; Hawkins et al., 1998). Psychographic factors Psychographics is an approach used to dene and measure the lifestyles of consumers using activities, interests and opinions (Tam and Tai, 1998). Psychographics dimensions are the measurements of the consumers mind, which pinpoints how he or she thinks, feels, reacts and reects (Roy and Goswami, 2007). The psychographic studies are used to develop an in-depth understanding of the market segments in accordance with their activities, interests, opinions (Goswami, 2007) needs, motives, perceptions, lifestyles and attitudes. Traditional demographic variables cannot identify the complete characteristics of an evolutionary retail market because consumers in the same demographic group have very different psychographic make-up (Sinha, 2003). Psychographics or lifestyle studies include attitudes or evaluative statements about the people, place, ideas, products, etc. are used to assess consumer buying behaviour (Hawkins et al., 2002; Gonzalez-Fernandez and Bello, 2002). Earlier studies attempted to segment customers in accordance with their values (Rokeach, 1973; Kahle, 1983), activities, interests and opinions (Blackwell and Miniard, 1994). Previous research studies by Cosmos (1982) revealed that total assortment of goods and services used by a consumer was a mirror image of his/her lifestyle using AIO (activities, interests and opinions) variables. Keng et al. studied the learning and reading related lifestyles of user and non-users of libraries in Singapore. They segmented library visitors into seven types based on different patronage intentions and reading habits. Wu (2003) conrmed the signicant relationship with consumer lifestyle and online shopping behaviour. In a similar vein, Nijmeijer et al. (2004) investigated the relationship between

70

food lifestyle and vegetable consumption using personal values, lifestyle components, food beliefs and attitudes. They also found that personal values had signicant effect on purchase frequency and usage rates. In more recent times, Roy and Goswami (2007) found that the psychographics had a strong correlation with product/service groups with similar purchase frequencies among the college goers of urban Kolkata in India. Research questions The following research questions have therefore been developed to assess whether shopper attributes have any inuence on retail format choice decisions in food and grocery retailing: RQ1. Do shoppers socio-economic, demographic and geographic attributes have signicant association with store format choice decisions? RQ2. Do shoppers psychographic variables including AIOs and shopping discriminate food and grocery retail customers in terms of format choice? Methodology This study is descriptive in nature (cross-sectional study). The population frame (75 million) would be the retail customers of food and grocery in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India. The sampling frame for the present research would be comprised of adult retail customers of food and grocery formats in the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad. These conjoint metropolitan cities with a population of six million are economically and commercially more vibrant. The Hyderabad is also happened to be the capital city of Andhra Pradesh state in India. These conjoint cities are well known for ourishing organised retail business as the Reliance Retail, Pantaloon Retail, A.G. Metro, Aditya Birla Retail, Fresh @ and Spencers have chosen twin cities to set up their food and grocery formats like convenience store, discount stores, supermarkets, hypermarkets, Cash and Carry, etc. Considering the complexity of the survey, time and funding budget, a mall intercept survey was used (Dabholkar et al., 1996; Sinha and Banerjee, 2004) to collect the data from 1,040 respondents. The data were collected at 60 different food and grocery retail stores coming under four retail formats such as neighbourhood kirana stores, convenience stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets. Most of the retailers are domestic retail giants running chain stores in India. The data were collected form 15 neighbourhood kirana stores, ten convenience stores (such as Spencers Daily, KBs Fair price, True Mart, Spinach, In & Out, DHL service point, Subhiksha, Fresh @ and 24/7), 25 supermarkets (such as Foodworld, Food Bazaar, Reliance Fresh, Fresh @, Subhiksha, Spencer, More, Usha and Vijetha) and ten hypermarkets (Big Bazaar, Hypercity, Magna, Vijetha hyper,and Choupal Sagar). These are the prominent retail companies running multiple store formats across the chosen sampling frame work. The data were collected at 60 different food and grocery retail stores by administering a structured and non-disguised questionnaire with the list of questions in a prearranged order. Sample subjects were carefully chosen by administering an initial screen question that Do you purchase food and grocery products at any other store format than your primary store format? so as to ensure they are involved in patronizing at least two or more store formats. The survey instrument consists of two parts: part-A and part-B. The part-A consists of 13 questions connected to respondents socio-economic, demographic, geographic

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and store choice behaviour measuring format choice, purchase pattern and volume of purchase. The responses are measured using nominal and interval scales. The second part-B consists of three questions relating to consumers psychographic factors covering list of values (LOV, nine statements), 45 statements concerning lifestyle factors such as activities (16 statements), interests (17 statements) and opinions (12 statements) and shopping motives (38 statements). All items are measured on 5-point Likert scale (5 strongly agree to 1 strongly disagree). All the measurement items were adapted from the existing scales to measure the constructs proposed in the model. For measuring psychographic variables, values related items are adopted form Kahle (1983), interest and opinion statements were adopted from VALSTM Survey, Gonzalez-Fernandez and Bello (2002), Wu (2003) and Kelly (2004). Shopping motives related items were adopted from Sinha (2003). Store choice related items were adopted from Sinha and Banerjee (2004) and Carpenter and Moore (2006). The internal consistency of the instrument was tested through reliability analysis using Cronbachs alpha. Reliability estimates for the construct variables are, vales (0.71), lifestyles (0.80), shopping motives (0.78) and store choice behaviour (0.75) revealing a high degree of reliability. All reliability results exceeded 0.70 limit of the acceptability. The subjective nature of the face validity of an instrument was systematically evaluated by four eminent academicians in marketing research to examine whether the scale items adequately cover the entire domain of the construct being measured. The common-sense interpretation of the scale scores was also assessed with ten consumers in nearby store format. Necessary changes were incorporated in the nal survey instrument. Since the present cross-sectional study was not posited on any sound theory underlining the shopper behaviour, the construct validity was assessed through discriminant validity examining the extent to which a measure does not correlate with other constructs. Here, the signicance of the correlation, i.e. p # 0.5, is taken into consideration, rather than the absolute value of the correlation. Given the condition of signicance, absolute values of ^ 0.25 would be considered as high correlations (Feick and Price, 1987). Methods of analysis Factor analysis was conducted to reduce the number of variables for LOV, lifestyle (activities, interests and opinions) and shopping motives. Factor models were selected based on Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy criteria (should be as near 1 as possible) which is a goodness-of-t coefcient, Bartletts test of sphericity (should be as close to 0 as possible) which is a badness-of-t test, the eigenvalues over one and amount of variance explained by the model. Each model was estimated using principal components analysis as the extraction method. Varimax with Kaiser normalisation rotation method assisted in interpreting the data for LOV factors, activity factors, interest factors, opinion factors and shopping motive factors. For investigating RQ1, x 2 was carried out to assess whether there was any association or dependency/independency between shoppers attributes and retail format choice decisions at 5 percent level of signicance. Since the store format choice decisions were measured using nominal (categorical) scale, the continuous variables (monthly household income(MHI) distance travelled to store(DTS) and family size) have been converted into absolute numbers by having categorized dividing test scores into high, medium and low categories for assessing the association among the constructs.

For investigating the RQ2, Mitchells (1994) approach is a combination of factor analysis, clustering analysis and discriminant analysis was used. Gonzalez et als approach was used in factor analyzing the responses from interests and opinions, activities, values and shopping orientations. The principle component analysis was used with varimax rotation in all the three analyses (Hair et al., 2003). The resultant factors were identied by using eigenvalue greater than one criterion. For further analysis, items which loaded highly on each factor were averaged instead using factor scores directly (Hair et al., 2003). The aggregated scores were put to hierarchical cluster analysis using Euclidean measure of distance through Wards method with ve-cluster option. MANOVA and multiple discriminant analysis were used to nd the variances among the emerged clusters. Finally, x 2 statistic was used to describe the clusters with demographic variables. Results Prole of respondents A total 1,500 retail customers were approached for survey taking 25 samples from each store format of randomly selected 60 retail stores. Only 1,085 customers were responded and shown interest to participate in the survey. This is a 66 percent response rate. Out of this, only 1,040 were usable as 45 were rendered unusable because of incomplete data. All respondents were adult male and female food and grocery retail customers consisted of 590 female (56.7 percent) and 450 male (43.3 percent) with an average age of 32 years (range 20-62), modal age group 30-40 years and median age was 35 years. The majority of the respondents (85.0 percent) were married and rest 15.6 percent were unmarried. The major chunk of the respondents (58.5 percent) had graduation as their educational qualication and least 18.9 percent had SSC as their minimum qualication and the rest 22.6 percent had PG as their academic qualication. The aggregated mean MHI was Rs 18,000 with 50.2 percent respondents had paid employment as their occupation. The average family size of the respondents was 5.2. A major chunk (94 percent) of the respondents lived within 4 km from different retail store formats and about 64 percent had travelled up to 3 km for shopping food and grocery products. The results of respondents demographic, socio-economic and geographic variables were summarised in Table I. Respondents prime store format choice behaviour Majority of the respondents (more than 65 percent) had informed that they were involved in cross-shopping that resulted in patronage of multiple store formats for various reasons. Hence, respondents were forced to choose their prime retail format, majority of the respondents (31.25 percent) had supermarket store format as their prime retail format for purchasing food and grocery products followed by neighbourhood upgraded kirana store formats (29.2 percent), hypermarket type formats (21.15 percent) and convenience store type formats (20.67 per cent). The results of store choice behaviour at different food and grocery retail formats were given in Table II. Purchase pattern of food and grocery products About 75 percent of the respondents visited different retail store formats more than once a month for purchasing food and grocery products, out of which about 32.5 percent each for fortnightly and once in week. Some 25 percent respondents purchased once in month,

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Variable Gender Age

Description Male Female 20-30 years 30-40 40-50 50 and above Married Unmarried SSC/Diploma Degree PG and above Housewife Employment Business Others Rs 10,000-15,000 Rs 15,000-20,000 Rs 20,000-25,000 Rs 25,000 and above 1-3 3-5 5 and more 1-2 km 2-3 km 3-4 km 4-5 km .5 km

Frequency 450 590 338 424 223 55 884 156 197 608 235 286 522 151 81 137 367 294 242 264 402 373 323 334 236 95 52

% 43.3 56.7 32.5 40.8 21.4 5.3 85.0 15.0 18.9 58.5 22.6 27.5 50.2 14.5 7.8 13.2 35.2 28.3 23.3 25.4 38.6 36.0 31.1 32.1 22.7 9.1 5.0

Mean 32

SD 8.56

74
Marital status Education Occupation

MHI

Rs 18,000

Rs 4,350

Family size DTS

5.2 2.8

0.752 0.864

Table I. Respondents demographic, socio-economic and geographic characteristics

Source: Primary data

Store format choice behaviour Kirana store Convenience store Supermarket Hypermarket Total Always Usually Occasionally Total 147 75 58 280 (52.5) (26. 8) (20.7) (100) 97 62 56 215 (45.1) (28.8) (26.1) (100) 175 85 65 325 (53.8) (26.2) (20.0) (100) 112 71 37 220 (50.9) (32.3) (16.8) (100) 531 293 216 1,040

Table II. Respondents store choice behaviour at different food and grocery retail formats

Note: Values given in Parentheses are calculated in percentage Source: Primary data

35.4 percent of the respondents are likely to purchase once in a week from kirana store followed by 27.2 percent from supermarkets and 33.68 percent of respondents are likely to purchase once in fortnight from supermarket followed by 27.5 percent from hypermarket. The x 2 -statistic results (x 2 73.462, df 9, p 0.000) also revealed that there was a signicant association between purchase frequency/pattern and type of retail format. It was implicit from the ndings that store format choice decisions were dependent on purchase pattern. The results imply that frequency of visit to a particular store format was being affected by situational factors particularly task denitions like bulk or in small ll-up purchases, urgent need to buy, and knowing special arrivals

if any. The purchase pattern was also seemed to have been affected by perceived risk factors. The results further imply that consumers purchase pattern are more often than convenience and kirana store formats due availability of choice, convenience and perceived benets. The purchase pattern/frequency for food and grocery products at given retail format was given in Table III. Respondents purchase volume of food and grocery products With an average spending of Rs 4,360 per month on food and grocery products, majority (30.57 percent) of the shoppers were in the category of Rs 4,000-5,000 followed by 26.63 percent in the category of Rs 3, 000-4,000 and 25 percent in the category of less than Rs 3,000. Some 62.26 percent respondents preferred modern retail formats like supermarkets and hypermarkets for shopping grocery products in the category of Rs 4,000-5,000. Majority of the respondents (65.0 percent) preferred to buy grocery products from organised retail formats like supermarkets and hypermarkets in the category of more than Rs 5,000. Some 64.13 percent of respondents preferred kirana and convenience store formats for purchase of grocery products in the category of less than Rs 3, 000. The x 2-statistic results (x 2 95.457, df 9, p 0.000) also revealed that there is a signicant association between purchase volume and choice of retail format. It was implicit from the ndings that store format choice decisions were dependent on purchase volume, i.e. amount of money spent for shopping food and grocery products. The results of purchase volume of food and grocery products per month are given in Table IV. Factor analysis Factors were labelled based on their salient loadings. All loadings below 0.5 were dropped, and the factor analysis was recalculated. The Cronbachs alpha was used to measure internal reliability by unit weighting items with salient loadings in a factor.
Purchase pattern Twice in week Once in week Once in fort night Once in month Total Supermarket 48 104 130 43 325 (14.8) (32.0) (40.0) (13.2) (100) Kirana store 30 134 64 52 280 (10.7) (47.8) (22.8 (18.7) (100) Hypermarket 20 48 104 48 220 (9.1) (21.8) (47.3) (21.8) (100) Convenience store 20 94 75 26 215 (9.4) (43.7) (34.8) (12.1) (100) Total 118 380 373 169 1,040

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Note: Values given in parentheses are calculated in percentage Source: Primary data

Table III. Respondents purchase pattern at different food and grocery store formats

Purchase volume , Rs 3,000 Rs 3,000-4,000 Rs 4,000-5,000 Rs 5,000 and more Total

Kirana store 64 92 84 40 280 (22.8) (32.8) (30.0) (14.3) (100)

Convenience store 102 53 35 25 215 (47.4) (24.6) (16.4) (11.6) (100)

Supermarket 58 (17.8) 80 (24.6) 121(37.2) 66 (20.4) 325 (100)

Hypermarket 35 (15.9) 52 (23.7) 78 (35.4) 55 (25.0) 220 (100)

Total 259 277 318 186 1,040

Note: Values given in parentheses are calculated in percentage Source: Primary data

Table IV. Respondents purchase volume at different food and grocery store formats

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The ve statements concerning activities were eliminated due to low loadings such as give or attend a dinner party (0.320), Go on a vacation (0.313), Go to a nightclub or dance (0.326), Engage in hobbies or do-it-yourself projects (0.318), I do enjoy making my own decisions (0.434) and their Cronbachs alpha was 0.24. The seven statements concerning interests were eliminated due to low factor loadings such as Other people usually follow my ideas (0.482), I spend a lot of time talking with my friends about shopping (0.381), I purchase time-saving meals (0.373), I am a homebody (0.349), Go to a festival (0.358), Visit an art gallery and/or museum (0.354), Dine out in a restaurant (0.347) and their Cronbachs alpha was 0.528. The two statements concerning opinion were eliminated due to low factor loading such as The way I look is extremely important to me (0.472), A womens life is fullled only if she can provide a happy home for her family (0.458) and their Cronbachs alpha was 0.453. Six statements such as I go for shopping to nd value for money (0.487), I go shopping to have a look at products being considered for purchase (0.436), I am aware of fashion trends and want to be the rst to try them (0.427), Sales persons add enjoyment to shopping (0.402) and Local stores are attractive places to shop (0.381) were eliminated due to low loadings and their Cronbachs alpha was 0.534. The factor analysis results for remaining LOV, lifestyle factors and shopping motives were given in Tables V-VII, respectively. Empirical results and discussions RQ1. Do shoppers socio-economic, demographic and geographic attributes have signicant association with store format choice decisions? The x 2 ndings shown in Table V revealed that there was signicant association between respondents demographics and retail format choice decisions. Respondents age, gender, occupation, education, income, family size and DTS were found to have signicant association except marital status. This implies that retail format choice decisions in food and grocery retailing are dependent on consumers demographic factors except marital status. The result pertaining to consumers marital status is contradicted with earlier studies of East (1997) and McGoldrick and Andre (1997) which have found higher degree of store loyalty from married when compared to single individuals. Socio-economic class (composition of education, occupation and income) of consumers

Factor label Joy seeker

Statements

Factor loadings 0.705 0.648 0.696 0.653 0.714 0.689 0.638 0.523

Cronbachs a 0.721 0.703 0.718 0.703

Variance explained (%) 24.3 22.6 21.4

Excitement Fun and enjoyment Internally focused Self-respect Self-fullment Dependent on Sense of belonging others Warm relationships with others Security Accomplishment Table V. LOV factor analysis

Notes: p 0.001; extraction method, principle component analysis; rotation method, varimax with Kaiser normalisation; variance explained 68.3%

Lifestyle variables Activities

Factor label and statements Entertainment oriented Go to movies Reading books Listening to music Community oriented I am involved in social organisation I am involved in community projects Sports enthusiast I play sports a lot I exercise regularly to stay t Attend a sporting event Business oriented I am involved in a business organisation Travel for business reasons Attend a charitable event Innovative interests I like doing things that are new and different I like to use new and different things in my lifetime I like the challenge of doing something that I have never done before Leadership interests I like to lead others I like being in charge of a group I usually organise people to get things done Socio-cultural Visit or entertain friend or family regularly I entertain at home Give or attend a dinner party Attend a concert or play Family related If it is good enough for my wife, it is good enough for me also My family is the single most important thing to me I always take opinion of my family before taking purchase decision Autonomous related I am more independent than most people I have more ability than the most people I think I have more self-condence than the most people Intellectual related I feel condent in my ability to shop I have the ability to choose the right products What you think of yourself is reected by what you buy I consider myself an intellectual

Factor loadings 0.749 0.715 0.523 0.738 0.721 0.705 0.685 0.635 0.725 0.658 0.634 0.714 0.698 0.658 0.574 0.709 0.692 0.662 0.681 0.649 0.610 0.763 0.662 0.650 0.635 0.654 0.621 0.771 0.720 0.685 0.649

Cronbachs a 0.741

Variance explained (%) 21.8

Retail format choice behaviour

77
0.725 18.6

0.717

16.3

0.708

15.8

Interests

0.754

25.7

0.705 0.727

22.4 17.7

Opinions

0.718

27.6

0.714

24.2

0.685

21.8

Notes: p 0.001; extraction method, principle component analysis; rotation method, varimax with Kaiser normalisation

Table VI. Lifestyle factor analysis

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Factor label Variety seeking

Statements

Factor loadings 0.824 0.782 0.771 0.685 0.756 0.710 0.683 0.654 0.586 0.689 0.634 0.610 0.712 0.705 0.692 0.690 0.578 0.726 0.696 0.678 0.651 0.764 0.752 0.743 0.715 0.683 0.693 0.632 0.586 0.543 0.654 0.598 0.531

Cronbachs Variance a explained (%) 0.751 18.5

78

I do shopping to keep up with trends I do shopping to see what new products are available I like to have a lot of variety in my life I like to try new outlets Recreational I go shopping to make me feel better (managing stress) I feel relaxed after shopping Shopping is fun I like to have excitement and fun in doing shopping Shopping for pass time Brand conscious I prefer to buy national brand-name grocery products A well-known brand means good quality I try to stick to certain brands and stores Time conscious Shopping the stores wastes my time I would like to nish shopping as soon as possible I shop where it saves my time I usually buy from the nearest store I never seem to have enough time to do things I want to do Local shopper I owe it to my community to shop at local stores Local stores offer me good products at low price Local store provide better service Local store take more interest in you Price conscious The price of product is good indicator of its quality Higher the price of product, higher is the quality Lowest price offers attracts me I buy as much as possible at discount prices I usually watch the advertisements for sales promotions Information seeking I often go shopping to get ideas though no intention of buying I generally seek help while shopping I would discuss with others before deciding on the purchase Check with other shoppers at the store about a new product Experience seeking I like to share my shopping experiences with my friends Shopping would provide me social experiences outside home I like to go shopping with friends/family

0.725

16.3

0.716

14.8

0.685

12.5

0.731

9.7

0.784

6.4

0.686

5.8

0.635

4.1

Table VII. Shopping motives factor analysis

Notes: p 0.001; extraction method, principle component analysis; rotation method, varimax with Kaiser normalisation; total variance explained 88.1%

has been proven to be a meaningful determinant in store format choice behaviour. These results are concurred with previous studies of Zeithaml (1985), Morganosky (1995), Fox et al. (2004) and Carpenter and Moore (2006). The ndings are also signicantly differed with Mason (1996), Shim and Kotsiopoulos (1992a) and East et al. (1995b). The ndings from other demographic variables such as age, gender, family size are similar in nature with earlier studies of Sampson and Tigert (1992), Sinha and Banerjee (2004) and Fox et al. (2004). It may be concluded that consumers who are younger, educated and higher incomes have greater patronages towards modern grocery formats. The grocery shopping is also considered as a gendered activity and noticeable differences have existed between male and female consumers towards choice of store formats. Larger household sizes which have larger consumption levels have preferred supermarkets and hypermarkets for purchase of products in bulk where they get frequent price promotional offers. The ndings from geographical factors DTS are also concurred with earlier studies of Loudon and Della Bitta (1993) and Hawkins et al. (1998). Here, the majority (63 percent) of consumers have preferred to purchase grocery products from store formats which are in the range of less than 3 km distance from their households. It may be concluded that the closer consumers are to a store, there is greater likelihood to patronage those store formats (Table VIII): RQ2. Do shoppers psychographic variables including AIOs and shopping discriminate food and grocery retail customers in terms of format choice? For examining RQ2, the resultant factors of three LOV, four activities, three interests, three opinion and eight shopping orientation were submitted to hierarchical clustering using Wards method, and ve clusters were emerged as most acceptable. These were labelled as hedonic, utilitarian, autonomous, conventional and socialization-type consumers. The average scores of the items were loaded highly on factors and had acceptable levels of reliability ranging from 0.685 to 0.749 measured by Cronbachs alpha. These average scores were also put for examination in the agglomeration matrix and dendrogram resulting in the acceptance of ve clusters. Later, MANOVA test was used to nd out any differences exhibited on the basis of values, activities, interests, opinions and shopping orientations. The multivariate test using Pillais Trace and Wilks Lambda were conducted on marginal means obtaining values of Pillais Trace 0.065, F (20, 2236) 1.887, p 0.012 and Wilks Lambda 0.94, F (20, 1844.99) 2.05, p 0.010, respectively. The clusters were
Store format choice decisions (x 2 0.05) Calculated value Table value df Signicance ( p-value) 50.091 25.210 8.884 18.942 80.388 81.886 20.125 25.869 16.92 7.82 7.82 12.59 16.92 16.92 12.59 21.03 9 3 3 6 9 9 6 12 0.000 0.000 0.064 0.015 0.000 0.000 0.012 0.011

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Respondents attributes Age Gender Marital status Education Occupation MHI Family size DTS Source: Primary data

Table VIII. Summary of x 2-test results between respondents attributes and store format choice decisions

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different across the values, AIOs and shopping orientations. At the last stage, the ve clusters were used as dependent variables and the averaged LOV, interests, opinions, activities and shopping orientation scores were used as independent metric variables for multiple discriminant analysis. The four cananonical discriminant functions accounted for 92 percent of the variance in the dependent variable. All the four functions were statistically signicant and means of functions differed across ve clusters and further examinations of the structure matrix and functions at group centroids along with its x 2 tests of association and cross-tabs between clusters showed the results of ve clusters: (1) Hedonic type (25.3 percent). These are the sort of consumers who use products or services for the sake of intrinsic enjoyment rather than to solve some problems. These consumers are low on need-based buying, high on idea shopping, and have high unplanned purchases. Window shopping and storage display is important to them. They do shopping where they get abundant excitement and fun. They are mostly a group of variety seekers and trendsetters. The ndings from this segment reveal that it has the highest number of consumers (both male and female) belonging to age group 25-40 years having MHI ranging from Rs 20,000-25,000 with sound education having greater tendency to indulge in purchase of food and grocery items from hypermarkets. Location of the store is not important criteria for purchase of items. (2) Utilitarian type (23.7 percent). These consumers are high on need-based buying, low on idea shopping and never resort to unplanned purchase. This segment consists of more female consumers belonging to working class and housewives. Location of the store and convenience is more important which saves their time and effort. This segment exhibits family-related opinions and price conscious behaviour. They are moderate in frequent purchasing and having sole interest in quality and variety of products. They have preferred to purchase food and grocery products from supermarkets and occasionally at hypermarkets which provide large assortment and price-related promotional offers. (3) Autonomous type (20.6 percent). This segment of consumers is more likely to take decisions themselves. They are neither sport enthusiasts nor fashionable. They tend to exhibit more self-condence and ability to choose right products and store formats for shopping. They seem to be time conscious and more often showing off leadership interests and intellectual-related opinions. The results revealed that this segment has the highest number of consumers relating to working class (46.3 percent) in the age group of 28-45 and business categories (12.4 percent). They usually do purchase food and grocery products from convenience store and supermarket type formats providing lot of convenience/accessibility which ultimately save their time and effort while shopping. (4) Conventional type (17.3 percent). This segment of consumers hardly shows interest either in window shopping or socialization. They have not evinced greater interest in product quality and assortment. Location of the store is very important and owes a lot to their local community. This segment believes that local stores (traditional kirana stores) offer better service and quality products at reasonable prices. Frequency of purchase is more than two times in a month. The ndings reveal that majority of the married female consumers belong to housewife category in the age group of 35-45 have larger tendency to purchase

food and grocery products from neighbourhood kirana stores and supermarket store formats which are more responsive to their needs and wants. (5) Socialization type consumers (13.1 percent). In this segment, consumers would like to socialize with their near and dears. They are high in window shopping. They are moderately need based and not much of idea-shoppers. Location of the outlet is somehow important for them. They do not indulge in much unplanned purchase. The frequency of purchase is at least once in a month. They like to share shopping experiences with friends hoping that stores would provide social experiences outside home. The results found that male consumers who are in the employment category in the age group of 30-45 having higher propensity for socialization. They do purchase from neighbourhood kirana stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets where they can meet their social groups and fulll social needs. The ndings explain that 88.3 percent of the cases correctly classied. Executing leave-one-out cross-validation option, where the discriminant model is re-estimated and found that a hit ratio of 84.6 percent, giving a robustness of the estimate verifying with each respondent as a hold-out. Implications of the study The study contributes to the retail marketing literature providing empirical considerations when using consumers ever changing demographics and psychographic dimensions towards store format choice decisions. The empirical ndings also provide comprehensive understanding about segmentation of food and grocery retail customers in the context of Indian retailing. Given the absence of published academic literature relating to store format choice behaviour in grocery retailing, this study may serve as a departure point for future studies in this area of concern. This comprehensive study also provides invaluable information to retailers in relation to shoppers store choice behaviour in Indian food and grocery retailing. Understanding how preferences vary with consumer factors is a key element in developing successful retail marketing strategies. The ndings reveal that consumers socio-economic, demographic and geographic characteristics have signicant association with the choice of retail formats. It can be inferred that it is also possible to affect the orientations of the shoppers by offering modern retail formats. In addition, increased time pressure has also lead to changes in shopping behaviour and a reduction in the number of shopping trips made by households. The ndings also established an association between the behaviour and attitude of the shoppers. The ve psychographic segments are signicantly differed in terms of values, lifestyles and shopping orientations. These ndings would enable retailers to develop an effective marketing strategy to optimise the use of marketing and promotional resources in meeting the needs of discerning target customers. With the heightened level of competition in todays food and grocery retail market, an increasing number of stores are currently facing difculties in operating protability. This study enables marketers to adjust market communications and repositioning themselves to retain the existing and attracting potential customers. Conclusions The present ndings contribute to the understanding of consumer store choice behaviour in food and grocery retailing in India, an area that has received scant attention within

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the academic literature. The overall results of this study show that Indian food and grocery consumers have cross-shopping behaviour in nature exhibiting sheer patronage of multiple store formats. No single retail format seems to be prime in meeting consumer needs/wants. Consumers rst choose a store format, and then move into a particular store within the format where they can save time, money and effort. Hence, retaining customer allegiance to a particular retail format is posed as a major task. It is also found that consumers giving due concern to value for money, and see-touch-feel-select concept. Results also emphasize the need for a customized approach to retail marketing. The study reveals that in the Indian retailing context, demographic factors of consumers do inuence store format choice behaviour in food and grocery retailing. It is also observed that store format choice is a hierarchical process which depends on demographic attributes and current needs of a consumer. Findings from x 2 statistic also revealed that shopping trip pattern as well as purchase volume have signicant relationship with store formats choice decisions. The consumer psychographic dimensions like values, lifestyles and shopping orientations signicantly affected store format choice behaviour. The emerged ve psychographic segments have exhibited different shopping orientations. Time consciousness and local shopper orientations are the signicant predictors for choice of kirana store format. Time consciousness and information seeking are the signicant predictors for convenience store format choice decisions. Variety seeking, brand conscious, time conscious, local shopper, and price conscious shopping orientations are signicant predictors for supermarket store format choice decisions. Variety seeking, recreational oriented, brand conscious, price conscious, and experience seeking related orientations are the signicant predictors for hypermarket format choice decisions. It is suggested that retailers would take note of the emerged food and grocery retail segments while developing retail format strategies. Limitations and directions for future study The study has some limitations to be addressed by future research. The study is limited to shopper attributes like demographics and psychographics only. The predictability of shopper attributes on store format choice behaviour is to be examined though there is a signicant association. Moreover, lifestyles and LOV items are based on international studies. Hence, they might not be reective of Indian psychographic dimensions. This creates a need and opportunity for development of India-specic AIO inventory. It is also observed that without inclusion of store format attributes, predicting store format choice behaviour in retailing is not comprehensive. Hence, it may serve as direction for further research in this aspect. Longitudinal research is appropriate rather cross-sectional for unequivocal understanding of the consumer behaviour for wider generalisation of research ndings. This study has not explored the critical factors affecting consumers cross-shopping (multiple store patronage) and store-switching behaviour. Though it is a common phenomenon to patronage multiple stores in an evolving retail market, yet it needs to be investigated. This study has not considered situational factors (task denition, perceived risk, physical surroundings, social factors, etc.) which underlie the frequency of visit to a particular store format, shopping basket and patronage motives. This limitation may be served as an opportunity for future researchers. More importantly, increased sample size and multi-city sampling can be considered for future research for better generalisations of the ndings.

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Further reading Churchill, G.A. and Iacobucci, S. (2002), Marketing Research: Methodological Foundations, 8th ed., South-Western/Thomson Learning, Mason, OH, pp. 755-6. Crask, M. and Reynolds, F. (1978), An in-depth prole of the department store shopper, Journal of Retailing, Vol. 54, Summer, pp. 23-32. Edris, T.A. and Medina, A. (1989), On the reliability of psychographic research: encouraging signs for measurement accuracy and methodology in consumer research, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 24 No. 3, pp. 23-41. Ghosh, A. and McLafferty, S.L. (1987), Location Strategies for Retail and Service Firms, Lexington Books, Lexington, MA. Homer, P.M. and Kahle, L.R. (1988), A structural equation test of the value-attitude-behaviour hierarchy, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 54 No. 4, pp. 638-46. Kahle, L.R. and Kennedy, P. (1989), Using the list of values (LOV) to understand consumers, The Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 6, Summer, pp. 5-11.

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Keng, K.A. and Ehrenberg, A.S.C. (1984), Patterns of store choice, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 21, pp. 399-409. Kim, B. and Park, K. (1997), Studying patterns of consumers grocery shopping trip, Journal Retailing, Vol. 73 No. 4, pp. 501-17. Korgaonkar, P.K., Lund, D. and Price, B. (1985), A structural-equation approach toward examination of store attitude and store patronage behavior, Journal of Retailing, Vol. 61 No. 2, pp. 39-60. Kothari, C.R. (2007), Research Methodology-methods and Techniques, 2nd ed., New Age International, New Delhi. Kotler, P., Keller, K.L., Koshy, A. and Jha, M. (2009), Marketing Management-A South Asian Perspective, Pearson Education, New Delhi, p. 153. Krishnaswamy, K., Sivakumar, A. and Mathirajan, M. (2006), Research Methodology-integration of Principles, Methods and Techniques, Pearson Education, New Delhi. KSA Technopak (2006), India Retail Report Images, pp. 333-5. Leedy, P.D. and Ormrod, J.E. (2005), Practical Research: Planning and Design, 8th ed., Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ. Leszczyc, P.T.L.P., Sinha, A. and Timmermans, H.J.P. (2000), Consumer store choice dynamics: an analysis of the competitive market structure for grocery stores, Journal of Retailing, Vol. 76 No. 3, pp. 323-45. Lusch, R.F. and Lusch, V.N. (1987), Principles of Marketing, Kent, Boston, MA, p. 630. Mason, J.B., Mayer, M. and Ezell, H.F. (1991), Retailing, Irwin, Homewood, IL. Nargundkar, R. (2007), Marketing Research Text and Cases, 3rd ed., Tata McGraw-Hill, New Delhi. Prasad, C.J.S. and Babu, S.S. (2009), A study on role of consumerism in modern retailing in India, GITAM Journal of Management, Vol. 7 No. 1, pp. 227-47. Sinha, P.K. and Kar, S.K. (2007), An insight into the growth of new retail formats in India, Working Paper No. 2007-03-04, IIMA. Vedamani, G. (2008), Retail Management Functional Principles & Practices, Jaico, Mumbai. Williams, R.H., Painter, J.J. and Nichols, H.R. (1978), A policy-orientated typology of grocery shoppers, Journal of Retailing, Vol. 54, pp. 27-43. About the authors Cherukuri Jayasankara Prasad is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Business Management, Krishna University, India. He obtained a PhD in Retail Management from JNTUH, India. His research interests are retailing, consumer behaviour, services marketing, relationship marketing and entrepreneurship. He has 25 research papers published in peer reviewed international and national reputed journals and conferences. Cherukuri Jayasankara Prasad is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: jayasankaraprasad@gmail.com Ankisetti Ramachandra Aryasri is a Professor and Director at SMS, JNTUH, Hyderabad, India. He is also a Chairman of the Board of Studies (postgraduate). He is recipient of best teacher award-2009 from the government of Andhra Pradesh, India. He is a member of the editorial board for various peer reviewed reputed journals. He has authored 04 textbooks with Tata McGraw-Hill publishers. His research interests include retail marketing, organisational behaviour, and entrepreneurship. He has more than 60 papers published/presented in various national and international journals and conferences. To purchase reprints of this article please e-mail: reprints@emeraldinsight.com Or visit our web site for further details: www.emeraldinsight.com/reprints