تجزیه و تحلیل مقایسه ای از واکنش متفاوت مصرف کننده در میان سوپر مارکت و فروشگاه تخصصی در بخش آب نبات

Retailing industry has undergone tremendous change in its complexity and sophistication over the past few years. Globally we are witnessing the evolution of retailing industry from traditionally micro-managed small retail formats like mom and pop store to modern corporate-managed large retail formats like supermarkets. Consumers are also shopping across these various store formats even for the products in similar categories. In this research, we posit that consumer purchases in the similar categories may very well be characterized by differential responses to marketing mix across different store formats. The proposed model accounts for the influences that these diverse response parameters and preferences have on one another as well as consumer heterogeneity. Our results show that sensitivities to marketing mix as well as correlations in preferences do indeed vary across formats for consumer purchases in similar categories.

Emergence of new retail formats provides opportunities and challenges to both traditional and new retailers. Five distinct store formats have been identified on the basis of their marketing instruments (M+M planetretail, 2004) namely, warehouse club, convenience store, discount store, hypermarket, and supermarket. On the one hand experimentation with new retail formats is an on-going process in American and European markets (Dawson, 2000), on the other hand markets in developing countries are struggling with re-structuring their retailing environment. For example, the Wall Street Journal (2011) reports, “The principal fear in India regarding the potential entry of Wal-Mart is that it will wipe out the “kirana” stores, the Indian equivalent of “mom-and-pop” stores in the U.S.” However, such conclusions are confounded and not true (Chari and Raghavan, 2011). Furthermore, the large retail formats, such as Wal-Mart, when expand into developing economics often fail to understand the small retail formats that are so pre-dominant in these economies (Lenartowicz and Balasubramanian, 2009). The emergence and operation of various retail formats can be attributed to three factors, competitive advantages sought by retailers, consumer trends and their purchasing behavior, and changing role of manufacturing industry (Ahlert et al., 2006). For example, with respect to competitive advantages, retailers have been quick to realize the potential of the store format in providing a tool that will serve not only to differentiate but also to target specific consumer segments. Thus, Office Depot in 2003 started offering its products via a new format they call M2 (or Millenium2) for the more price sensitive consumer. This newer format, the outcome of an extensive analysis of the retail environment, provides consumers with greater convenience, better service, knowledgeable staff support and product trial options, in addition to lowering operating costs and increasing operational efficiency ( DSN Retailing Today and Retail Merchandiser). Costco Wholesale, on the other hand, in serving a consumer with changing lifestyles, tested a new store format, Costco Fresh which would primarily focus on fresh grocery products (Drug Store News, 2007). Home Depot, meanwhile, offered a new urban format in traditional suburban locations to attract local consumers, a deviation from its strategy of opening stores mainly in city centers (Home Textile Today, 2004). In this research we identify one important consumer trend and their purchasing behavior that may explain the co-existence of large store format such as supermarket and small store format such as specialty store simultaneously in the market. Consumers tend to shop across various store formats even for the products in similar categories (Bell and Lattin, 1998, Bell et al., 1998, Chib et al., 2002, Soriano, 2003, Fox et al., 2004, Hansen and Singh, 2009 and Reutterer and Teller, 2009). Not only do the various formats offer distinct flavors in terms of customer service, product assortment, convenience, etc., but they also vary their marketing activities such as price and promotion (e.g., Gauri et al., 2008). Thus, convenience stores tend to offer smaller product assortments, but flexible operating hours and convenient locations, making them an attractive shopping option for consumers with time constraints and limited product category needs, while supermarkets with their larger assortments and price competitiveness provide a one stop shopping option for consumers. In contrast, specialty stores, with their narrow but deep category offerings of specialized products, serve the consumer looking for specialized and often more exclusive items not always available at most grocery stores. Thus, researchers have studied the importance of store and consumer characteristics as determinants of store format choice as far back as the 1990s (Bell and Lattin, 1998 and Bell et al., 1998 to name a few). A majority of the study has assumed that consumer responses and preferences remain constant across formats. In reality, however, given the distinct store characteristics across formats as well as the heterogeneous nature of consumer shopping behavior, the same set of consumers shopping across different store formats may very well show differential response behavior in terms of their preferences and sensitivities to marketing mix variables. Given the increasing competition in the retail industry and an ever increasing overlap in the kinds of products that can be obtained at each, it becomes critical for retailers to understand such variations in consumer shopping behavior, should they exist, across different store formats. We thus pose the following research questions: How do responses vary across different store formats? That is, do consumers show more/less responsiveness to marketing mix, product attribute and store characteristic variables across different store formats for similar product categories? Moreover, how do preferences for a category in one store format affect the preference for a similar category in another store format? How much is the variation in their differential response behavior across store formats? And finally, what are the strategic implications for the retailer in a given format? In order to address these issues, we propose here a heterogeneous model of consumer purchase behavior that studies differential response across different store formats. We account for prices and promotions, store characteristics such as distance and assortment, and external factors such as seasonal effects, while controlling for individual differences or heterogeneity by incorporating random effects. The model is estimated using a panel of households that shops across two different formats for similar sets of categories. Furthermore, we also conduct simulations to study price and promotion elasticities and estimate their impact on market share and profits. We show that consumer responses do indeed vary significantly over the different store formats even when purchasing in the same categories. Results show that marketing variables such as prices and promotions do indeed impact household purchasing behavior as a function of format. As a result, retailers must carefully tune their pricing and promotional strategies to their specific format in order to compete effectively. More specifically, we show that using such tailored strategies can in fact help specialty stores compete effectively with supermarkets. Finally, the simulation studies show how the impact of a retail strategy on response and therefore profits can vary significantly as a function of format. The rest of the paper is organized as follows: First, we do a background study with a brief review of the relevant literature and propose our research questions. Second, we develop our model and follow with a brief outline of the data we use for estimation. We then present our results followed by a discussion section summarizing the key findings. Finally, we conclude by discussing the managerial implications and providing some directions for future research.

Any given store format provides consumers not only with purchasing opportunities, but also with a shopping environment and context that consumers will experience apart from the specific category needs. A format thus offers a means of defining a positioning strategy for a diverse market characterized by heterogeneous consumer needs and intense competition. The format selection by retailers becomes even more critical given that the same set of consumers now tend to shop across different formats not only for products in different categories but sometimes in the same categories. Understanding consumer shopping behavior across different store formats therefore becomes critical for retailers in establishing an effective positioning strategy tailored to consumers and their purchasing needs. Our research uses a conceptual framework of heterogeneous consumer shopping behavior across different store formats for similar product categories, to offer a model which includes factors such as store characteristics, marketing variables, category characteristics and external factors (e.g. seasonal effects). The model also allows us to capture the correlations in utilities which help explain joint purchasing behavior and consumer preferences for categories within as well as across store formats. We find, as posited earlier in our framework, that consumers do indeed have a higher preference for categories in the specialty format compared to supermarket format, and that the relative impact of marketing variables (price and promotion) vary across categories and formats. Furthermore, the holidays, the assortment available as well as distance all play a role in purchase probabilities. These results speak to significant managerial strategy implications. For example, the low sensitivity to price makes the specialty format – relative to the supermarket format – particularly resistant to sales promotions. This is confirmed with our later simulation exercise demonstrating that a price cut neither helps nor particularly damages market share or profits for a specialty store relative to the supermarket format. On the other hand, the supermarket format is tremendously responsive to sales promotions. The specialty store format must therefore find another tool to compete with. Fortunately, our analysis reveals several countermeasures available to this formatting structure as well. For example, as is revealed by the utility correlation matrix, cross category joint purchasing behavior is far more prevalent in the specialty format relative to the supermarket format. This is an intuitively pleasing result given that for the specialty format where consumers make a deliberate and planned trip for confectionary goods, they will tend to purchase across the categories—whether anticipating future needs or avoiding a second trip. This inclination to ‘maximize’ the utility from a particular trip will not occur in the supermarket format given that this is a more frequently visited format with utility coming from several other categories as well. This clearly speaks to the retailer in terms of strategy—the customers of a specialty format, relative to the supermarket format, will clearly be more amenable to purchases beyond their immediate needs. Efforts on the part of the retailer to promote purchasing across categories within the broad banner of confectionary goods are more likely to be rewarded in a specialty format relative to a supermarket format. We also find that the specialty format is particularly responsive to seasonal or holiday dummies. Thus, a measure, albeit a non-price measure, to attract consumers to the store during holidays may prove relatively more effective for specialty formats relative to supermarket formats. Retail managers of specialty stores can thus take advantage of special occasions (including such holidays which results show above, significantly and positively influence consumer purchases). Since in this format the different categories are purchased together, a strategy that draws on several results could be to offer cross category purchasing incentives for the usual line of product categories, along with some newly introduced lines particularly for holidays. In summary, we find evidence of differential consumer response behavior for similar categories across different store formats. Our model can help retail managers explore factors that are responsible for this differential response behavior and ultimately, use them to exact a strong response from consumers and to differentiate themselves from other retail formats. Interestingly we find consumer perceptions for similar categories across different store formats do indeed vary. Therefore, the correlation matrix could be utilized by the retail managers in order to take marketing mix decisions effectively. External factors such as holidays have a differential impact across the different store formats. Retail managers could use these factors to increase their profitability and compete more effectively in a market place characterized by intense competition from different store formats. Furthermore, our study sheds lights on some of the concerns raised with regard to expansion of large retail formats not only in developed countries but also in developing countries that could very well raise the question of very survival of small retail formats. Even for shopping in the same category consumer needs could vary depending on the shopping context. Therefore, small retail formats could still manage their traditional marketing tools, price and promotions, efficiently to compete with these large formats as consumer responses to prices and promotions significantly vary across formats. Moreover, in some categories there could very well be no competitions at all across formats or the nature of competition could favor small formats (e.g., same categories are seen as complements in specialty store whereas they are substitutes in supermarket). Therefore, small formats selling those categories could very well survive harmoniously with large formats. There are some caveats to our analysis which we leave for future research to address. For example, while we do capture unobserved heterogeneity in our model it may be interesting to study the effects of psychographic variables.12 It may then be possible to form consumer segments that can be identified as patrons of specific formats. A second interesting avenue of future research is to study the decomposition of this differential response behavior into category specific and store format specific components. Clearly, the consideration of format – though relatively under used – is not only a rich and interesting tool in the development of retail strategy, but a critical one as well.