An Empirical Examination of the Characteristics and Behavioral Tendencies of Swedish Consumers in Patronizing Different Retail Stores

ABSTRACT

The objective of this study is to investigate the characteristics and behavioral tendencies of Swedish consumers in relation to their involvement with various types of retail stores as well as their shopping and patronizing behaviors under varying circumstances. In particular, the study focuses on examining the underlying dimensions of Swedish consumers' retail shopping behavior incorporating their lifestyles and attitudinal orientations as well as demographic and socio-economic characteristics. Data for the study were collected through personal interviews in Sweden.

The study findings indicate that the most dominant lifestyle dimensions include fashion orientation, adventure orientation and aesthetic orientation. Several of these lifestyle dimensions apparent among the Swedish retail shoppers were found to be related to the number of stores shopped in a given period of time. Also, the most dominant factors were one-stop shopping, merchandise quality and assortment, and store communication factors. When the dimensions extracted based on the grocery store choice are used in explaining the number of stores visited, then we see an inverse relationship between the number of stores visited and the factors of one-stop shopping, merchandise quality, and poverty of time. On the other hand, there is a direct relationship between the number of stores visited and the factor of store communication and convenience. The findings of the study offer important research, public policy and managerial implications for retailer distributors and consumer goods manufacturers.

KEYWORDS:

• Swedish consumers
• retail stores
• behavioral tendencies
• life-style dimensions
• consumer orientation