Developing a Conceptual Model of Store Patronage

In today's hypercompetitive marketplace where customers are spoilt for choice, retailers seek customer loyalty. As customer loyalty is manifested in store patronage behavior, studying patronage behavior and trying to find out the reasons for consumers’ behavior becomes pertinent. This paper studies the literature of store patronage theory andits models in order to identify the common constructs that find a mention in extant studies. These four identified constructs are customer attributes, customer psychographics, store attributes, and store patronage. The paper further attempts to propose a conceptual model based on literature with an addition of a construct ‘repatronage’ (meaning future patronage intention) separate from the construct ‘patronage.’ The need for this is that patronage of customers is not static but dynamic and high patronage need not necessarily mean high repatronage intention. The proposed model signals retailers to study repatronage and patronage together to identify if there lies a difference between the two and try to investigate reasons for the same with respect to the evaluation of store attributes and changing customer psychographics. The model doesn't include the construct of ‘customer satisfaction’ as it is assumed, based on literature, that high patronage and repatronage intention, hints at customer satisfaction, whereas high patronage and low repatronage intention at customer dissatisfaction if the extraneous variables of relocation to a new place and availability ot the store at the new place are controlled. After empirical testing of the patronage model in the context of different product classes and retail formats, it might serve as an input to retailers for obtaining customer insight. Based on this intelligence, retailers might identify the key customer segments to whom retailers might tailor the marketing mix.