Assessing potential Downsides of In-‐Store Marketing Activities:
Negative Emotions and how they affect Attitudinal and Behavioral Store
Loyalty Intention
Master Thesis, Master of Science Marketing Management University of Groningen
Faculty of Economics and Business, Department of Marketing January 2015 Florina Gamp Morgensterlaan 396, 9742 CV Groningen, +49 177 570 2606, florina.gamp@gmail.com s2622084
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ... 1
2. Aspects threating Store Loyalty Intention ... 5
2.1 Store Layout and Product Placement ... 7
2.2 Emotions ... 8
2.2.1 Shopping related Stress ... 8
2.2.2 Shopping related Anger ... 9
2.2.3 Stress and Anger Relationship ... 10
2.4 Store Loyalty Intention ... 11
2.5 Repatronage Intention (Behavioral Loyalty) ... 12
2.6 Attitudinal Loyalty ... 15 3. Method ... 16 3.1 Study Design ... 16 3.2 Measurement Approach ... 17 3.3 Sample Characteristics ... 19 4. Analytical Results ... 22 4.1 Manipulation Check ... 23 4.2 Measurement Properties ... 23
4.3 Analysis of the Structural Model ... 26
4.3.1 Direct Effects ... 27
4.3.2 Multi-‐group analysis ... 31
5. Discussion ... 37
5.1 Implications ... 40
5.2 Limitations and Future Research ... 42
6. Conclusion ... 43
7. References ... 44
List of Figures
Figure 1: Conceptual Framework ... 6
Figure 2: Sample Description Gender ... 21
Figure 3: Sample Description Age ... 21
Figure 4: Sample Description Occupation ………….. ... 21
Figure 5: Sample Description Annual Household Income ... 21
Figure 6: Structural / Inner Model ... 27
Figure 7: Frequencies of Responses of Stress ... 30
Figure 8: Relationships between Dependent Constructs with their Reflective Indicator ... 32
Figure 9: Mediation Construct bye Hoyle and Kenny (1999) ... 39
Figure 10: Frequencies of Responses of Anger ... 42
List of Tables
Table 1: Manipulation Check (Pre-‐test) ... 19
Table 2: Homogeneity of Experimental Groups ... 22
Table 3: Manipulation Check ... 23
Table 4: Cronbach’s Alpha ... 24
Table 5: Composite Reliability ... 24
Table 6: Average Variance Extracted ... 25
Table 7: Fornell–Larcker criterion ... 26
Table 8: Direct Effects of the Scattering of Power Items ... 29
Table 9: Model Fit based on r-‐square ... 32
Table 10: PLS Path Analysis Results Complete Sample ... 34
Table 11: PLS Path Analysis Results per Experimental Group ... 35
Table 12: MGA Results per Experimental Group (Significance) ... 37
Table 13: Hypotheses ... 37
Abstract
In-‐store travel distance and time spend in a store can increase sales. Therefore, retailers employ different strategies to increase these aspects. One strategy is the scattering of power items – items that are high in demand – throughout the store. While research has assessed the positive effects of these strategies, potential tradeoffs or downsides have not yet been researched. The present study aims to fill this gap. The effects of scattering power items on store loyalty intention are assessed considering two different concepts of loyalty: attitudinal and behavioral loyalty. Negative emotions like anger and stress are introduced in the study as potential mediators. The analysis is done by a combination of AN(C)OVAs in SPSS and a multi-‐group analysis in SmartPLS3 to assess not only direct effects of the strategy but also differences in the relationships of the dependent constructs with regards to the strategy. The results indicate that there are no significant negative effects of the strategy on the loyalty variables and on the emotions but a significant negative effect of anger on attitudinal loyalty and general store loyalty intention. Furthermore, the results show a strong positive effect of attitudinal loyalty on behavioral loyalty and of stress on anger. Managerial implications and ideas for future research are presented to round off the present study.
1. Introduction
In-‐store or point-‐of-‐sale marketing has become one of the major parts within the marketing mix. It is often seen as the “last medium” to reach customers and increasing investments in retailing are being made to use this medium (Egol and Vollmer 2008). Marketing strategies, which are often described in theory and applied in practice in this context, are the lengthening of in-‐store travel-‐ distance and the increase of time spend in a store (Hui et al. 2013; Donovan et al. 1994). There are numerous approaches to the aforementioned strategies. Some retailers are scattering commonly bought products throughout the store, so that customers will have to walk through as many aisles as possible and to the farthest corners (Granbois 1968). Another approach is the instalment of escalators with opposing travel directions in a sense that customers cannot simply reach higher floors but have to walk around the escalators and through departments to reach the next escalator. Another option is a forced walk through layout of the store, like it is used in Ikea stores (Hui et al. 2013; Spies, Hesse and Loesch 1997). In those stores, there is only one way of traveling through the store and reaching the cash out, normally forcing the customer to walk through the entire store. Studies on these approaches have found significant positive effects of travel distance, especially with regard to unplanned purchases (e.g., Hui et al. 2013). With regards to strategies that increase the time spend in the store, aspects like atmospheric design rather than the store layout have been the focus of former research, which identifies mainly their effects on money spend in the store (e.g. Donovan et al. 1994).
These findings lead to a great amount of managerial implications within online industry publications. Advices like “Spread the better-‐selling items out among the shelves to encourage customers to browse the entire store to find what they want (Root III 2011)” or “…what you want is to expose customers to the maximum amount of merchandise because the more they see, the more they buy (Coulter 2012)” can be found within current publications on retailing websites.
Besides the aforementioned existing research about the different aspects associated with the application of marketing strategies, like the increase of consumers in-‐store path and time spend in the store, current literature is lacking research on potential negative effects.
First, research does not examine a potential relationship of these strategies with the creation of negative emotions like stress and anger related to the shopping experience. There are a lot of people that find, shopping adds stress to their lives (Fram and Ajami 1994), especially during Christmas time (Aylott and Mitchell 1999). Customers might find the attempts of retailers, to keep them in the store longer or make them walk longer distances, irritating. Stress or anger might arise as the customers are not able to find certain products or as they cannot realize their shopping trip as fast as planned. If the customer then as well notices that this is due to the retailer’s strategy, the level of anger might even rise further. These negative emotions might be harmful for the relationship of the customer with the store, as he might intrinsically employ different strategies to cope with them. A coping strategy could be to avoid the store in the future (Roth and Cohen 1986) or to openly display displeasure and engage in negative word-‐of-‐mouth (Yi and Baumgartner 2004).
Second, literature does only provide some insights on the effects of stress and anger in the context of shopping and even less about their effects on store loyalty. A lot of people find Christmas shopping stressful, which has led them to avoid these stressful situations by realizing the Christmas shopping quite some time ahead or via online stores (Dailymail 2008). In line with approach and avoidance theory discussed by authors like Roth and Cohen (1986), one could assume that once the customer is put into a stress situation or made angry through the respective marketing strategies introduced before, he most likely will try to avoid these situations in the future by avoiding this store.
Third, there is no research about negative effects of strategies like the scattering of products or the lengthening of the walkway in the store in general and more specifically about the negative effects on future store choice (Hui et al. 2013). The scattering of products could also lead customers to not realize a certain amount of planned purchases, as they are not willing, able or motivated to walk to the farthest corner of the supermarket. Keeping customers in the store for a longer time or making them walk through as many aisles as possible, might also affect their memory. They might not be able to recall their planned purchases, which would lead to a failure of buying them (Park, Iyer and Smith 1989). The customer might also simply choose a different store in the future, where he can realize his purchases in a shorter amount of time and without walking longer distances.
patronage, can lead to the identification of spurious loyalty. A customer, who continues to go to one specific grocery-‐store, for instance, can be seen as loyal based on the behavioral loyalty aspect. However, he might go there only because the store is conveniently located and at the same time not hold a favorable attitude towards the store. This customer might more easily switch stores, for example, if a new grocery store opens in the neighborhood, than a customer, who would also hold a favorable attitude towards the store. This attitudinal loyalty is also important for retailers, as it could result in positive recommendations of the store while spurious loyalty can also lead to negative word-‐of-‐mouth (Dick and Basu 1994).
As described before, research on in-‐store travel distance and time spend in stores is rather rare. Existing research in the area of shopping related stress has identified time pressure as the main driver of stress in stores (Fram 1992; Fram and Ajami 1994). Further major drivers are crowding and queuing. Aylott and Mitchell (1999, p. 687) find that these three aspects are in close relationship with each other and refer to the felt frustration of customers to “not be able to realize their purchase as easily and quickly as they would like to’’.
In terms of anger as a negative emotion in an in-‐store setting, research found that anger can result from a shopping experience, for instance trough negative touch points with sales employees or feeling guilty about an acquisition (Machleit and Eroglu 2000). Further, anger in a shopping context can be created through unsuccessful planned purchases and has been found to have a negative impact, for instance on customer satisfaction (Machleit and Mantel 2001). This leads to the assumption that a shopping experience in a store with scattered power items could evoke anger especially if planned purchases cannot be realized due to this marketing strategy.
With regards to store choice, previous studies focus on drivers such as assortment size (Briesch, Chintagunta and Fox 2009), convenience of location in terms of travel distance from home to the store, prices (Arnold, Ma and Tigert 1978) and other determinant attributes such as merchandising display techniques, quality of fresh food and service level (Arnold, Oum and Tigert 1983) or store image (Oppewal and Timmermans 1997). Insights on negative aspects that keep the customer from choosing a store are rather rare.
this area of research (e.g. Hart et al. 2011). Again, one needs to question in this context what , which aspects keep customers from becoming loyal to a specific store.
The differentiation of attitudinal and behavioral loyalty in the context of store loyal is rather rare. Insights on this topic have arisen form brand loyalty research. The main idea that can be derived is that for true loyalty it needs both, behavioral loyalty for example in terms of repeated behavior and attitudinal loyalty in terms of favorable attitude or commitment (e.g. Amine 1998; Dick and Basu 1994).
Considering these findings and the previously described gap in the literature, it is worthwhile exploring the marketing strategies of lengthening customers’ in-‐store path and in-‐store shopping time under the aspect of being potential drivers of shopping related stress and anger and having negative effects on store loyalty intention, measured on both, behavioral loyalty intention and attitudinal loyalty.
In this sense, the study attempts to identify the effect of in-‐store marketing activities that are aiming to increase the in-‐store travel distance or time spend in-‐store on store loyalty intention in form of attitudinal and behavioral store loyalty. Furthermore, it tries to examine the role of these marketing strategies as drivers of negative emotions, such as stress and anger, and their effect on the store loyalty intention mentioned before. It addresses the following research questions:
What are the effects of forcing customers to travel longer in-‐store distances and spend more time in the store on store loyalty intention? Do such strategies evoke negative emotions like stress and anger in the customers? Do these negative emotions have a mediating role in the relationship between the marketing activities and the store loyalty intention or, in other words, will these negative emotions influence the outcome of the first research question? Does the effect of such strategies differ in terms of attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty?
So far there are no guidelines, which help managers decide on a strategy, considering that literature suggests two opposing findings. On the one hand, there are the findings of positive effects of travel-‐ distance and time-‐spend in stores on, for instance, unplanned purchases. On the other hand, there are findings indicating that customers are striving for a shopping experience as quickly and as easy as possible.
amount of products possible (Coulter 2012), or to keep customers in store longer, with activities like food samples, product demonstrations or well trained staff (MaxPoint 2011). However, literature critically questioning these strategies and suggesting, for instance, to make the grocery-‐shopping trip as easy, fast and convenient as possible, is missing.
Furthermore, it includes the aspects of negative emotions arising from these marketing strategies and therefore adding to the literature of shopping related stress and anger. In addition, this paper tries to give practical insights on an aspect, which is not easily observed and hardly researched, in the following sense: Customer data, for instance through loyalty programs, is being largely collected, stored and analyzed by practitioners and academics. The analysis of this data gives good insights on what customers buy, when, why and where. While it is rather common to question and analyze why a customer choses a specific store, it is more complicated and therefore less assessed, why a store has not been chosen again or is generally avoided after a first visit. The enormous amount of marketing budget mentioned in the beginning, invested in strategies to encourage unplanned spending would be largely wasted, if it would negatively affect customers store loyalty or even lead customers to avoid the store in general. In that sense, this paper attempts to provide support for practitioners that are in the position to decide whether to apply such a strategy or not by providing information about potential tradeoffs or even downsides of the marketing strategies.
The content of this paper is structured as followed: in the next section the conceptual framework of the present study will be introduced and the components are explained. A more detailed literature review on the relevant touch points is provided and the hypothesis will be presented. In the subsequent section, the approach and methodology to the research will be introduced, followed by the results. The paper will be concluded with practical implications, limitations of the study and ideas for future research.
2. Aspects threating Store Loyalty Intention
authors often refer to the same conceptual framework suggested by Dick and Basu (1994) for both, brand and store loyalty. This framework suggests to assess loyalty based on two concepts: attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty. This distinction will be justified and explained in sections 2.5 Repatronage Intention and 2.6 Attitudinal Loyalty.
Increasing competition among retailers enhances the importance of customer retention, especially for grocery retailers. This aspect will be discussed more in detail in the store loyalty intention section below. The addressed literature names several aspects that can have a positive effect on store loyalty intention, like customer satisfaction (Grace and O’Cass 2002, Sivadas and Baker-‐Prewitt 2000), personal relationships (Macintosh and Lockshin 1997) or store image (Bloemer and de Ruyter 1998), but mainly fails to provide insights about aspects that could threaten store loyalty intention. One aspect that could be harmful in this context is the marketing strategy to scatter power items within the store, as it forces the customer to walk longer distances and spend more time in the store, which could be conflicting with his intrinsic motivation to realize the grocery shopping trip as fast and easy as possible and therefore be avoided in the future by not visiting the store again. Power items are products that are in high demand in a store (Aghazadeh 2005) and will be described more specifically in the following section. The present study aims to provide insights on how this strategy can affect store loyalty intention, considering both behavioral and attitudinal loyalty. It further aims to identify the role of negative emotions, like stress and anger, in this relationship.
Figure 1 below provides the conceptual framework of the study and shows the relationship of the different components mentioned before. In the following section, these components will be explained and discussed in more detail, relevant literature will be provided and the hypothesis for the present study will be presented.
2. 1 Store Layout and Product Placement
The importance of store layout has been addressed in the literature since several years. Lewison (1994, p. 289) already pointed out that the layout would affect the in-‐store traffic patterns, shopping atmosphere and behavior. Also the store image is majorly influenced by the store layout design (Baker, Grewal, & Parasuraman, 1994), which can also affect the customer’s price acceptability according to Grewal and Baker (1994), in a sense that the price of a product was found to be less acceptable in a high design condition (green/peach color scheme, open layout, neat organization of merchandise).
There are different types of store layouts described in conventional retail settings. Vrechopoulos et al. (2004) summarize the three major ones, being Grid, Freeform and Racetrack, differing mainly in their arrangement of displays and aisles. While in the Grid layout they are arranged in a rectangular setting, running parallel to each other, in a Freeform layout they are arranged asymmetric and in different forms and sizes. The Racetrack layout is set up in individual, partly separate, theme-‐based areas. There is also an increasing number of very particular store layouts that are aimed at increasing the time a customer spends in the store and the distance travelled in the store. One extreme example is the store layout of Ikea. With its forced pathway, it forces customers to literally walk through the whole store, while spending as much time as possible in the store and pass by as many products as possible. Research in Ikea stores has shown that this layout has a positive effect on mood (measured on three subscales for elated, depressed and angry mood) and purchase behavior of the customer, as it provides a clear structure and no difficulty to find the way (Spies, Hesse and Loesch 1997). Nevertheless, the marketing strategies used in practice concerning the lengthening of the travel distance and time spend in a store do not always have to be that drastic. According to Hui et al. (2013), simply scattering items that are frequently bought can have a positive impact on travel distance and with that on unplanned purchases, which is in line with the advices found in current industry publications mentioned in the introduction. This strategy will be referred to as the scattering of power items in the following analysis, applying the definition of power items by Granbois (1968, p.29): "items a significant number of shoppers buy each time they visit the store”.
on patronage. They found further that among the most frequently experienced hassles are those that concern merchandise and store environment, such as not finding a product or perceiving a store as not well structured (Machleit, Meyer, and Eroglu 2005). Both situations described could also occur due to a scattering of the power items which suggests an additional indirect negative effect of the marketing strategy on patronage.
Further, Dick and Basu (1994) suggest in their customer loyalty framework that some situational factors may influence loyalty. This would also include the perceived opportunity to act accordingly to ones goals, for instance, in the case of planned purchases that are out of stock. The scattering of power items could create situational factors that could prevent this aim consistent behavior and therefore lower the store loyalty intention.
Last, the aspect of time should be considered when thinking about the effect of scattering of power items on store loyalty. There are several studies which show that customers tend to prefer stores where they can make their purchases as fast as possible (Huddleston, Whipple and Van Auken 2004; Grewal et al. 2003). This desire would clearly be challenged through the marketing strategy. Considering these aspects the first hypothesis of the present study is:
H1: The scattering of power items throughout the store will have a negative effect on store loyalty intention.
2.2 Emotions
Customer emotions have been studied in the shopper context for several years. There are numerous studies, which show that emotions can be created through a shopping experience (Huddleston, Whipple and Van Auken 2004; Machleit and Eroglu 2000; Machleit and Mantel 2001; Yoo, Park and MacInnis 1998). In the present analysis, the emotions stress and anger will be analyzed, as they have not yet been studied intensively in a grocery-‐shopping context and are suspected to have an especially harmful impact on store loyalty intention. The emotions, their potential antecedents and their hypothesized impact are described and analyzed in more detail in the following sections.
2.2.1 Shopping related Stress
can be described as a variable, tied to the person, in form of a precondition brought to a situation or as a reaction to a cue in a situation and therefore arising from a certain aspect without initial precondition. While these authors focus on the first description in their research, there is also a small number of studies, focusing on the latter description, which will be the focus of this study and therefore described in more detail in the following section.
Stress has been studied only very rarely as a negative emotion within the context of shopper marketing activities. The existing research about shopping related stress mainly focuses on the impact of music, crowding, queuing, relocation of stock, floor and shelf space as drivers of stress (e.g. Aylott and Mitchell 1999). Crowding has been differentiated from general density and defined by Stokols (1972) as a state of psychological stress that arises from the feeling, that the personal need for space cannot be met. It has been studied thereafter with this underlying definition in the marketing and shopping context (Eroglu and Machleit 1990). Aylott and Mitchell (1999) state that one major stressor in the shopper context is the relocation of items or the restructuring of the whole store, as this can lead the customer to not find their desired products.
As mentioned in the introduction, time pressure can be seen as a precondition and has also been identified as the main driver of stress in stores (Fram 1992; Fram and Ajami 1994). The scattering of power items throughout the store and a lengthened pathway through a specific store layout will affect the aspect of time and the finding of products. As these aspects are identified as antecedents of shopping related stress in literature, the following hypothesis is formulated:
H2: The scattering of power items throughout the store will lead to an increased level of stress.
2.2.2 Shopping related Anger
notion into a shopping environment, Rose and Neidermeyer (1999) exemplify that frustration could arise when a customer finds himself in a situation, where he is kept from achieving an important goal, for example obtaining a fast service, which will arise anger within the customer. Another predecessor of anger is the feeling of being obliged to do something against ones wishes (Izard 1977, p. 330). In their comparison of different measurement procedures of emotions, Machleit and Eroglu (2000) found a significant negative correlation between the encountering of a bargain during a shopping trip and the level of anger measured within a customer. According to Averill (1983, p. 1150), the justification of the anger object plays a major role in the creation of anger. In other words, a situation will evoke stronger feelings of anger within a person, if the person perceives that the situation is not justified or could be controlled by others. In the grocery-‐shopping context this could mean that the customer will hold the retailer responsible for what happens in the store. The store layout is in control of the retailer and could therefore, when perceived as unjustified, evoke even stronger levels of anger.
To sum it up, a special product placement in form of scattered power items will force the customer to walk longer distances, which could be against his wishes and could lead to a feeling of obligation. Furthermore, it could create frustration as the customer will be kept from realizing the purchases as fast as planed or even worse, the customer will not be able to buy certain products, as they cannot be found. In addition, the creation of anger will be especially strong, if the customer perceives the scattering of products as unjustified and blames the retailer for it. Taking the antecedents of anger into consideration, the following hypothesis can be formulated:
H3: The scattering of power items throughout the store will lead to an increased level of anger.
2.2.3 Stress and Anger Relationship
H4: An increased level of stress will lead to an increased level of anger.
2.3 Store Loyalty Intention
The importance of Customer Loyalty has been emphasized within the literature for many years. While the center of attention of many publications has been brand loyalty (for instance Ehrenberg, Goodhardt and Barwise 1990; Kahn, Kalwani and Morrison 1986; Bennett and Rundle-‐Thiele 2001), there is also an increasing but yet very limited number of publications concerning store loyalty, also in the grocery sector (Macintosh and Lockshin 1997; Sirohi, McLaughlin and Wittink 1998; Bloemer and de Ruyter 1998; Sivadas and Baker-‐Prewitt 2000).
In the last years, many retailers have opened a tremendous number of new stores, resulting in problems of overcapacity, decreasing productivity and increasing competition (de Vuijst, Kesteloo, and Hoogenberg 2014). This trend shows the importance of grocery store loyalty, but still leaves practitioners in the retail setting constantly in the position to decide whether to employ marketing strategies that focus on drawing new customers to the store or on strategies that focus on the current customer base, as they are not always the same (Rhee and Bell 2002). Focusing on the latter can be reasonable, as a growth in customer retention rate can lead to considerably higher profits (Reichheld and Sasser 1990; Fornell and Wernerfelt 1987; Sirohi, McLaughlin and Wittink 1998). Grace and O’Cass (2002) even describe the retention of customers and the building of a loyal customer base as the ultimate goal for any business as well as of any retailer. They further suggest that the key difference between success and growth or failure lies within the loyalty of the customer base.
One aspect which one will encounter numerously in the store loyalty literature is the aspect of customer satisfaction. It is a quite controversial aspect. Machleit, Meyer and Eroglu (2005), for instance, identify customer satisfaction as a necessary determinant for patronage. This aspect can be found again in Bloemer and de Ruyter’s (1998) study of store image, which was found to only have an influence on store loyalty through customer satisfaction. Further confirmed was this by the study of Grace and O’Cass (2002), who found a significant positive effect of satisfaction on repatronage intention.
On the contrary, Sivadas and Baker-‐Prewitt (2000) did not find a direct effect of overall customer satisfaction with a department store, measured on a four-‐point Likert type scale, on store loyalty. Thus, satisfaction by itself will not convert into loyalty. Miranda, Kónya and Havrila (2005) confirmed this result, as they also did not find an effect of store satisfaction on store loyalty. They further found very distinct antecedents of store loyalty and satisfaction. Aspects like a frequent buyer program or the size of the grocery bill, for instance, influenced only store loyalty. Product range and pricing, on the other hand, influenced only satisfaction. The only common antecedent of both concepts was the presence of sales assistance. Based on this latest research, overall satisfaction will not be included in the conceptual model of this study.
To further comprehend store loyalty, it is important to understand the construct of it. It seems to suggest itself that store loyalty can be seen as repeated shopping at one store. Especially in the brand loyalty literature, many studies use behavior as an indicator of loyalty. For instance, in a study of double jeopardy, loyalty was used interchangeably with repeat purchases (Ehrenberg, Goodhardt and Barwise 1990) just like in a study on variety-‐seeking and reinforcement behavior (Kahn, Kalwani, Morrison 1986). But not only in the brand loyalty literature, behavior is used as the main indicator of loyalty. In their study of consumer perceptions and store loyalty intentions, Sirohi, McLaughlin and Wittink (1998) measure store loyalty intention by the intent to continue shopping, increase purchases and to recommend the store. Based on this literature, the following section will introduce repatronage intention as behavioral loyalty and indicator of store loyalty intention.
2.4 Repatronage Intention (Behavioral Loyalty)
availability of online stores. With that, the number of alternatives for costumers has increased tremendously and therefore retailers can no longer depend solely on the brands merchandised in their stores to encourage repatronage (Grace and O’Cass 2002).
A small number of specific antecedents of repatronage intention have been identified in previous research, in addition to the antecedents of store loyalty mentioned before. For instance, image and shopping experience enjoyment was found to have a positive effect (Hart et al. 2007). Huddleston, Whipple and Van Auken (2004) found that customers are motivated to repatronage if the store is familiar, convenient, consistent, clean and has friendly personnel. Further research identified value for money, customer satisfaction and consumption feelings as antecedents of repatronage intention (Grace and O’Cass 2002).
The latter is of specific interest for this study, as a significant positive effect of feelings in relation with the consumption on repatronage intention was found. Referring to pervious studies that have shown the effect of emotions at the point of purchase, they argue that these consumption emotions can also stimulate behavior in the future, like repatronage intention. The authors argue further that these emotions are evoked during the shopping experience and affect the episodic memory and will later be retrieved when making a judgment (Grace and O’Cass 2002). Several studies support this finding and claim that emotions are variables that are transient and affect the customers’ future patronage (Tai and Fung 1997; Swinyard 1993; Golden and Zimmer 1986). In a more recent paper, Huddleston, Whipple and Van Auken (2004) as well point out that positive emotions, evoked during a shopping trip, for instance through store atmospherics, can positively affect store loyalty. They further find that shopping trips can likewise evoke negative emotional responses through encountering dislikes during the trip, which can have negative impact on attitudinal loyalty. They further point out that this is the case, for instance, when changes to a store layout destroy the familiarity of the customer with the store and with that cause frustration and anger. These dislikes were identified as a result of six focus group interviews by Huddleston, Whipple and Van Auken (2004) and therefore should be researched with more quantitative methods.
Based on these insights, it can be assumed that the negative emotions, stress and anger, are antecedents of repatronage intention. They will therefore be further examined in terms of their potential consequences and included in the conceptual model at this point.
Stuenkel and Anglin (1991) propose that stress can be assessed as a situational influence in consumer behavior. A study from the University of East London in partnership with Moneysupermarket found that for instance Christmas shopping could create stress, which then was found to be threatening physiological and psychological well-‐being of the participants (Dailymail 2008). Literature in the area of human psychology has identified two strategies of coping with stress, approach or avoidance (for a detailed literature review see for instance Roth and Cohen 1986), which can be applied to the shopping context in the sense that a customer is likely to avoid a stressful situation and therefore fails to repatronage a store.
Considering these aspects and the afore described studies about the effect of emotions on repatronage intention, the fourth hypothesis is formulated as follows:
H5: An increased level of stress will negatively influence the store repatronage intention.
Anger: Alike the literature for shopping related stress; research about the consequences of anger in a retail setting is limited. Anger in the retail setting can have profound consequences, which go beyond the effects of negative word-‐of-‐mouth intentions, like personal injury, loss of business, intimidation and a general decline in quality of life (Randall and Neidermeyer 1999). But the consequences of anger do not have to be that drastic to have a harmful impact for the retailer. Nyer (1997) describes in his study the act of complaining as a coping strategy of anger and concludes that anger can be a predictor of word-‐of-‐mouth. Further, anger has been found to work as a mediator on shopping satisfaction in different relationships: variables like the customers perceived control over the shopping experience, retail crowding and the success or failure of a shopping trip all have been found to have an indirect effect on shopping satisfaction through anger (Machleit, Eroglu and Mantel 2000; Machleit, and Mantel 2001).
Taking this findings and the before mentioned studies about the effect of emotions on store repatronage intention into account, the fifth hypothesis is formulated as follows:
H6: An increased level of anger will negatively influence the store repatronage intention.
specific brand over time, the latter concerns the motives behind these steady purchases. He stresses the crucial role of commitment in the relationship and builds up on the suggested conceptual approach of consumer loyalty by Dick and Basu (1994). These authors proposed a framework of customer loyalty that depends on the strength of the relationship between an individual’s relative attitude and their repeat patronage. Based on these two aspects, they identify four different types of loyalty: loyalty, latent loyalty, spurious loyalty and no loyalty (Dick and Basu 1994). Taking only repatronage intention as indicator for store loyalty intention into account, might lead to results that identify true loyalty, where it only is spurious loyalty (high repatronage intention but low relative attitude). This spurious loyalty might be found within a customer, who bases his store choice decision on the proximity of the store to his home. To avoid these misleading results, attitudinal loyalty is included in the present study.
2.5 Attitudinal Loyalty
According to Dick and Basu (1994), the advantage of their suggested construct is that it provides insights about how and why loyalty is created and how and why it might be changed. Bennett and Rundle-‐Thiele (2002) suggest that there are two distinct constructs within attitudinal loyalty, namely; a personality trait, which can be described as the customer’s propensity to be loyal, and a brand-‐specific aspect, which describes the attitude towards buying a specific brand. They further employ the definition of attitudinal loyalty by Jacoby and Chestnut (1978): “The consumer’s predisposition towards a brand as a function of psychological processes. This includes attitudinal preference and commitment” in their study (Bennett and Rundle-‐Thiele 2002, p.149).
The recognition of the role of attitudinal loyalty in brand loyalty literature has also been transferred to as the store loyalty literature by a few authors. The importance of personal relationships in a retail setting has been shown to influence store loyalty measured on loyalty as an attitude, purchase intention and proportion of total category purchase at the focal store (Macintosh and Lockshin 1997). Studies on the relation between customer satisfaction and store loyalty also have included both constructs, applying and validating the suggested framework by Dick and Basu (1994) (Bloemer and de Ruyter 1998, Sivadas and Baker-‐Prewitt 2000).
According to these insights, it can bee assumed that negative emotions like stress and anger would have an effect on attitudinal loyalty. These aspects will therefore be included in the analysis and the following hypotheses are formulated:
H7: An increased level of stress will negatively influence the attitudinal loyalty. H8: An increased level of anger will negatively influence the attitudinal loyalty.
Dick and Basu (1994) propose not only the consideration of attitudinal loyalty and behavioral loyalty but also point out that there is a relationship between those two constructs. The strength on this relationship builds up the loyalty concept. This relationship was the point of interest in a study by Bandyopadhyay and Martell (2007), who measured loyalty based on favorable repeat purchase pattern and favorable disposition towards the brand. They found that attitudinal loyalty could affect behavioral loyalty. This result is confirmed by a study of Bennett and Rundle-‐Thiele (2002), who found that the attitude towards buying a certain brand could be used to predict purchase behavior. Based on these insights, the last hypothesis concerns the relationship between attitudinal and behavioral loyalty and states that:
H9: Attitudinal loyalty towards a store will positively affect behavioral loyalty intention (increased repatronage intention).
3. Method
In the following section, the study design including the experimental setup and manipulation is described. Furthermore, the measurement approach and the respective scales are presented. At the end of this section, the sample is described in terms of its most important characteristics.
3.1 Study Design
Manipulation was carried out through a video that participant were asked to watch during the study. The video shown was created with the online game Grocery Simulator 2013 (Schluckebier 2013). The video simulated a shopping trip for three products, namely bread, milk and cereal, which are considered power items as identified by Granbois (1968) and Hui at el. (2013). In the control group the video was a rather short. Within 3 minutes and 25 seconds the three products were collected and the shopper proceeded to checkout. In the manipulation group the shopping trip was almost twice as long (6 minutes and 49 seconds) and was supposed to suggest the application of the marketing strategy to scatter power items. The increased amount of time resulted only from longer distances walked between the collections of the three items. No other aspects, like waiting time or additional purchases, were included. The manipulation was checked based on a two-‐item five-‐point Likert-‐type scale, asking the participants to indicate if they found the shopping trip rather long and if they found the distances walked during the shopping trip rather long.
3. 2 Measurement Approach
Validated scales have been adapted from respective literature to assess the latent variables stress and anger, as well as the intention to repeat patronage the store, the person’s relative attitude to the store and the overall store loyalty intention. These scales are described in the following section. Before the manipulation in from of the displaying of the video was carried out, the level of stress and anger of the participant before the treatment was assessed. This was done to ensure that the stress and anger level of the participants, assessed after the treatment, is a result of the treatment itself and not due to any preexisting conditions. With the same reasoning, loyalty proneness was assessed before the treatment. This variable is an indication on how inclined a person is to be loyal. Controlling for this aspect allows to conclude that the identified attitudinal, behavioral and over all store loyalty intention is based on the respective treatment and not due to a pre-‐existing condition or personality trait.
