Retaining Customers With Shopping Convenience

Abstract

Our empirical research investigates the impact of dimensions of shopping convenience (decision, access, search, transaction, and after-sales convenience) on customer retention, including customer behavioral loyalty (shares of wallet and visits) and attitudinal loyalty (exit intention). Our findings show that for utilitarian shopping, behavioral and attitudinal loyalty are partly affected by different dimensions. Decision and access convenience, dimensions that come into play prior to the purchase, are most important for share of visits and share of wallet. Apart from decision convenience, exit intention is very much affected by transaction convenience, which is an in-store dimension. Furthermore, comparing our results with results of hedonic shopping purposes shows that major differences exist.

KEYWORDS:

• convenience
• customer retention
• retailing

Notes

^aReverse-scored.

∗α < .1, one-tailed.

∗∗α < .05, one-tailed.

∗∗∗α < .01, one-tailed.