Title: Analysis of homogeneity between organised and traditional retailers with respect to customer loyalty

Authors: Shyamaladevi Balakrishnan; Ravilochanan Parthasarathy

Addresses: School of Management, SRM University, Kattankulathur – 603203, Kanchipuram Dist., Tamil Nadu, India ' School of Management, SRM University, Kattankulathur – 603203, Kanchipuram Dist., Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract: Huge numbers of traditional retail outlets are functioning at every metro, urban and rural locations of the country. Organised retail outlets are started to growing from last ecade. Competition becomes stiffer due to increased number of retail outlets. Hence, this study was conducted with the objectives of comparing organised and traditional retailers in terms of factors influencing customer loyalty in both formats. This study was conducted in Chennai, its suburban, Vellore and Coimbatore. Around six factors such as location, customer database, pricing, customer relation, customer profile and customer support had relatively strong influence on customer loyalty in organised retail outlets. Whereas, eight other factors such as customer profile, business expansion, business performance, customer database, inventory decisions, customer relation, customer support and working hours were turned out to be statistically significant for traditional retail which implied that all these eight factors were important for building customer loyalty in traditional retail outlets.

Keywords: customer loyalty; customer retention; customer satisfaction; organised retailers; traditional retailers; retailing; India; retail outlet location; customer database; pricing; customer relationships; customer profiles; customer support; business expansion; business performance; inventory decisions; working hours.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBEX.2017.081928

International Journal of Business Excellence, 2017 Vol.11 No.3, pp.301 - 319

Received: 28 Mar 2015
Accepted: 29 May 2015
Published online: 31 Jan 2017 *

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