نقش موقعیت یابی خرده فروش و دسته بندی محصولات بر رابطه بین مصرف نام تجاری (برند) فروشگاه و وفاداری فروشگاه

Recent empirical evidence regarding the relationship between store brand purchase and store loyalty suggests a nonmonotonic relationship (inverted U): positive up to a certain store brand consumption level, after which it becomes negative. To investigate this idea further, this research analyzes the role of (1) the retailer's competitive positioning, and specifically its price positioning, and (2) the product category. On the one hand, the more price oriented the retailer's positioning, the more favorable is the relationship between store brand consumption and store loyalty. The threshold level of store brand purchasing at which the relationship becomes negative occurs later, and this negative relationship is less prominent. On the other hand, the relationship between store brand consumption and store loyalty appears to differ across product categories as a consequence of several factors, including perceived risk. The relationship therefore appears more favorable for risky categories. An empirical study of ten retailers that adopt different price positions corroborates these propositions.

The recent growth of store brands has significantly influenced the retail industry, especially in the context of nondurable consumer goods; the modern economic downturn may induce further growth (Lamey et al. 2007). Various research efforts have analyzed the potential of store brands to improve retail performance, including how the effective marketing of store brands might differentiate a retailer in the marketplace (Richardson, Dick, & Jain 1994) and thereby enhance customer loyalty, sales, and, eventually, the retailer's profitability (Baltas et al., 2010, Corstjens and Lal, 2000, Steenkamp and Dekimpe, 1997 and Sudhir and Talukdar, 2004). From a more general perspective, recent research has analyzed whether brand mix management might enhance store loyalty and retail performance (Grewal et al., 2004, Mantrala et al., 2009 and Sloot and Verhoef, 2008). Other studies consider the relationship between store brand consumption and store loyalty from an opposite perspective, with the recognition that store loyalty relates to familiarity with, attitude toward, and trust in the retailer, as well as ultimately to the evaluation and acceptance of its private-label brands (Ailawadi, Pauwels, & Steenkamp 2008). Whatever the direction of causality though, most contributions in this field focus on testing a monotonic relationship between in-store private-label share and store loyalty. The findings are not conclusive: Some studies find direct relationships, others find inverse relationships, and still others do not find any relationship. Ailawadi et al. (2008) propose a nonmonotonic relationship between in-store private-label share and store loyalty, which is positive up to a threshold level of store brand loyalty and negative thereafter (inverted U). Their findings for two retail chains in Holland support this assertion, but because private-label strategies differ across retailers in terms of their value propositions and category focus (Choi and Coughlan, 2006, Kumar and Steenkamp, 2007 and Sayman and Raju, 2004), they call for further research to assess whether their findings generalize to other countries and formats. In response to this call, as the first objective of this study, we test the nonmonotonic relationship between store brand purchases and store loyalty for top retailers operating in the Spanish grocery market, which employ different formats and competitive positioning tactics. Moreover, we extend this idea to analyze the role of a retailer's competitive price positioning on the relationship between store brand purchases and store loyalty—a research question with increasing relevance as discount retailers evolve in contemporary markets. Discounters such as Walmart, Aldi, and Lidl challenge and distinguish themselves from traditional retail formats (BusinessWeek 2003) by adopting a low-price strategy, relying heavily on their own brands, and offering a relatively limited number of stockkeeping units (SKUs) in each category (IGD Research 2007). The close relationship between store brands and discounters also has prompted Kumar and Steenkamp (2007) to define a store brand profile linked to this business model. As these developments imply, retail price positioning affects the offer of private labels and customers’ motivations to purchase them: Price-oriented retailers tend to develop price-oriented store brand strategies, and their customers tend to be more price sensitive. Therefore, we expect that retailer positioning influences the relationship between store brand purchases and store loyalty. In particular, when a retailer's positioning focuses on price (e.g., discounters), the relationship between store brand consumption and store loyalty may be more favorable. Within the predicted nonmonotonic relationship (inverted U), the threshold level of store brand purchasing at which the relationship turns negative occurs later, and this negative relationship should be less prominent when the retailer focuses mainly on a price instead of quality positioning. Therefore, as a second research objective, we provide a theoretical argument and empirical evidence about the moderating effect of retailers’ competitive price positioning on the relationship between in-store private-label share and store loyalty. We also analyze the role of the product category on the relationship between store brand consumption and store loyalty. Corstjens and Lal (2000) call for research to extend the analysis of store brand share and store loyalty to multiple categories; Ailawadi et al. (2008) suggest that modeling the influence of the product category could be a fruitful area of research, but no cross-category comparative studies have been published yet. Product categories can determine a store's potential to engender differentiation, the importance of branding to customers, and customers’ price sensitivity, because the different categories entail different levels of perceived risk. As a consequence, we posit that the relationship between store brand consumption and store loyalty differs across categories. In particular, the relationship turns negative later and is less extreme when the private-label product represents a risky category. Therefore, as a third objective, we attempt to provide a theoretical foundation and empirical evidence about this moderating effect of product category on the relationship between in-store private-label share and store loyalty. Our analysis of ten leading retailers operating in the Spanish grocery market enables us to test our proposed hypotheses. We use data from a household panel, which conditions our research scope. That is, our research contribution pertains to the shape of the relationship between private-label purchases and store loyalty and the moderating role of a retailer's price positioning, not the direction of causality of that relationship. Our data do not include enough information to isolate the directions of causality. Moreover, we employ a behavioral perspective and measure store loyalty as shopping budget concentration with the retailer. Prior literature has conceptualized loyalty as the relationship between a consumer's relative attitude and patronage behavior (Dick & Basu 1994), and Chaudhuri and Ligas (2009) provide evidence regarding the relevance of both loyalty dimensions for retail performance. Analogously, we focus on the share of wallet that consumers grant to the store brands of each retailer. In the next sections, we present a review of previous research and offer some theoretical support for our proposed hypothesis. After we describe the methodology for our empirical analysis, we present and discuss the findings. Finally, we outline our main conclusions and some implications.

To investigate the relationship between store brand consumption and store loyalty, we consider the role of the retailer's pricing policy and the product category. Our theoretical and empirical investigation supports a nonmonotonic relationship between store brand share and store loyalty (Ailawadi et al. 2008) in ten store chains representative of the Spanish retail grocery sector. The relationship between private-label consumption and store loyalty is positive up to a certain threshold for the private-label share and negative thereafter. Furthermore, we corroborate the role of the retailer's price positioning on this relationship. With a price-rather than quality-oriented positioning, the relationship between store brand consumption and store loyalty is more favorable, such that the store brand share at which the relationship begins to be negative occurs later, and the negative relationship is weaker. Moreover, we find significant differences across categories in this relationship between in-store private-label consumption and store loyalty. It appears more favorable for personal care products than for household products and for household products than for food products. In this case, more favorable still implies that the negative relationship occurs later and is less significant. Therefore, we conclude that the relationship between store brand share and store loyalty is more favorable for risky product categories. These findings suggest several interesting interpretations and implications. First, store brands can contribute effectively to a retailer's performance, at least in terms of store loyalty. However, retailers cannot rely unconditionally on their store brands; rather, they need to determine an appropriate balance between private and national brands. The same applies to price-oriented retailers, though to a lesser extent. An intensive store brand strategy may align better with this business model, yet even these retailers cannot ignore the important role of national brands. Current trends reflect this result; for example, hard discounters such as Lidl recently started adding manufacturer brands to their assortments to improve their profitability (ICE, 2008 and IGD Research, 2008). Second, reverse causality should be borne in mind when designing the store brand strategy. The adoption of store brands by consumers may be a consequence of their store loyalty. Customers’ perception of store brands inherently relates to their perception of the retailer, so the success of a private-label strategy likely depends on its coherence with the retailer's positioning. This relation should be a driving force when retailers develop their strategies. Third, the nonmonotonic relationship between private-label share and store loyalty seems to reflect the balance of price-conscious versus quality-driven customers of a store. The latter, loyal customers initiate the positive relationship; the former are not loyal customers and therefore prompt the downward slope. Baltas et al. (2010) also find two observationally equivalent, latent segments that differ in their loyalty inclinations. Therefore, when developing store brand portfolios, retail managers should try to target both kind of customers to optimize store brand performance. Fourth, the positive relationship between store brand consumption and store loyalty seems more difficult to maintain when the retailer's positioning focuses on quality; the negative relationship begins at a lower level of store brand share. This result may reflect the difficulty associated with developing store brands that satisfy customers’ quality expectations across multiple product categories. By enhancing the quality of store brands and ensuring they are coherent with their existing quality positioning, stores might minimize this negative relationship. Furthermore, store brands initially focused predominantly on low prices, but many have evolved to adopt quality standards similar to those of national brands. The most recent step in this evolution has produced premium store brands that are growing quickly, both in Spain and internationally (Geyskens et al., 2010, Gómez-Suárez and Rubio-Benito, 2006 and Zimmerman et al., 2007). This trend presumably may induce a more favorable relationship between store brand loyalty and store loyalty. Fifth, retailers cannot ignore the relationship between store brand consumption and retail performance, nor should they forget the important influence of specific product categories on this relationship. A private-label retail strategy should acknowledge the varying potential of different product categories to establish store differentiation and stimulate store loyalty. Consumers’ purchase behavior in different categories of store brands also might have varying effects on their store loyalty, especially in relation to the risky nature of the product categories. A private-label strategy in turn should acknowledge store brand loyalty in risky categories may depend on the customers’ prior trust in the retailer or their loyalty to the store. Some limitations of this study also suggest further research directions. We investigate loyalty from a behavioral perspective (i.e., concentration of a household's shopping budget in particular stores or store brands); an attitudinal measure could provide further insights into the possible affective links between customers and stores. Nor do we consider other store loyalty determinants, such as store proximity, which could help explain customers’ spending patterns (Bell et al., 1998 and González-Benito et al., 2007). This approach admittedly might induce an estimation bias in the store brand effect. In addition, our data do not allow us to isolate directions of causality in the relationship between store brand consumption and store loyalty. The analysis could benefit from richer data, including suitable instrumental variables (Ailawadi et al. 2008), or an experimental design that can isolate the causal effects. Nor do our data support a more refined analysis across product categories. Food, household, and personal care categories are very broad product categories; though we offer empirical evidence of perceived risk differences across these categories, we also acknowledge the potential for great variation in the levels of risk for products within each broad category. Perceived risk differences might depend on the specific products that consumers think about when prompted by a question about a broad category. Therefore, perceived risk might not be the only driver of the observed cross-category differences in the relationship between store brand consumption and store loyalty. An analysis of narrower product categories could help clarify the role of perceived risk as a determinant of cross-category differences. Finally, our results require replications in other markets, chains, and retail sectors. Further research could explore other retailer attributes that moderate the relationship between store brand consumption and store loyalty (e.g., service, quality, assortment) or adopt a consumer perspective to address the relationship for different types of customers. It may be particularly interesting to investigate the potential moderating role of customer price sensitivity or budget allocation patterns across categories.