The impact of quality on store loyalty: A contingency approach

This study's prime interest is to assist retail managers in deciding where they are likely to get the greatest response to their expenditures on quali ty improvement. An empirical test involving 287 consumers reporting on a wi de array of stores assesses whether the relationship between three quality dimensions (technical quality, functional quality and relational quality) a nd store loyalty is moderated by age, gender and store size. The structural equation model indicates that relational quality is the prime driver of st ore loyalty, seemingly overruling the impact of technical quality and funct ional quality. Most importantly, the results suggest that older consumers a re relatively more strongly affected by technical quality than younger cons umers. Another interesting finding is that retailers reap more benefits fro m their quality investments if they offer relational quality to female as o pposed to male consumers. Store size was not found to mitigate the impact o f the quality dimensions investigated.