Understanding of Chinese Consumer Behavior at Community Stores: The Case of Wal-Mart

Chan ZHANG, Yuerong ZHOU

Abstract


As living standards and consumption power increase, consumers’ purchasing power grows, becomes more diverse and complex, causing the community stores to react creating value for communities facing massive challenges. This paper is based on quantitative and qualitative methods, using both questionnaires and grounded theory. The objective of the research was to discover the rationale of Chinese consumers consumption patterns at Wal-Mart, and to map the influencing factors conditioning consumer behavior at Wal-Mart. Our study identifies five influencing factors, including pragmatic awareness, personalization, online store, word of mouth as well as engagement and experience. The study also targets the problems existing in consumer behavior (such as low engagement for its membership and fraud issues) to offer managerial recommendations for community stores to enhance consumer engagement, enhance customer’s satisfaction and consolidate their loyalty.


Keywords


Wal-Mart; Consumer purchasing behavior; Membership system improvement; Community store

Full Text:

PDF

References


Ahmad, F., Mustafa, K., Hamid, S. A. R., Khawaja, K. F., Zada, S., Jamil, S., ... & Anwer, N. (2022). Online customer experience leads to loyalty via customer engagement: Moderating role of value co-creation. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.897851

Algharabat, R. S., & Rana, N. P. (2020). Social commerce in emerging markets and its impact on online community engagement. Information Systems Frontiers. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-020-10041-4

Barhemmati, N., & Ahmad, A. (2015). Effects of social network marketing (SNM) on consumer purchase behavior through customer engagement. Journal of Advanced Management Science, 3(4), 307–311. https://doi.org/10.12720/joams.3.4.307-311

Dobre, C., & Milovan, A. (2015). Personality influences on online stores customers’ behavior. Ecoforum Journal, 4, 69–76.

Dudziak, A., Stoma, M., & Osmólska, E. (2023). Analysis of consumer behavior in the context of the place of purchasing food products with particular emphasis on local products. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20(3), 2413. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20032413

Hanus, G. (2016). Consumer behavior during online grocery shopping. CBU International Conference Proceedings, 4, 010. https://doi.org/10.12955/cbup.v4.737

Hawkins, D. I., Mothersbaugh, D. L., & Kleiser, S. B. (2020). Consumer behavior: Building marketing strategy (14th ed.). Dubuque: McGraw-Hill Education.

Hongsuchon, T., & Li, J. (2022). Accessing the influence of consumer participation on purchase intention toward community group buying platform. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.887959

Javornik, A., & Mandelli, A. (2012). Behavioral perspectives of customer engagement: An exploratory study of customer engagement with three Swiss FMCG brands. Journal of Database Marketing & Customer Strategy Management, 19(4), 300–310. https://doi.org/10.1057/dbm.2012.29

Kotler, P., & Armstrong, G. (2017). Principles of marketing: An Asian perspective. Singapore: Pearson/Prentice-Hall.

Mittal, A., & Jhamb, D. (2016). Determinants of shopping mall attractiveness: The Indian context. Procedia Economics and Finance, 37, 386-390. https://doi.org/10.1016/s2212-5671(16)30141-1

Niu, F., & Wang, F. (2021). How does China’s new consumption era reshape residents’ shopping behaviors from the perspective of community in Hohhot, China. Sustainability, 13(14), 7599. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13147599

Ratchford, B., Soysal, G., Zentner, A., & Gauri, D. K. (2022). Online and offline retailing: What we know and directions for future research. Journal of Retailing, 98(1). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretai.2022.02.007

Riegger, A.-S., Klein, J. F., Merfeld, K., & Henkel, S. (2021). Technology-enabled personalization in retail stores: Understanding drivers and barriers. Journal of Business Research, 123, 140-155. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.09.039

Singh, V. P., Hansen, K. T., & Blattbere, R. C. (2006). Market entry and consumer behavior: An investigation of a Wal-Mart Supercenter. Marketing Science, 25(5), 457-476.

Szwacka-Mokrzycka, J., Rivza, B., Lemanowicz, M., & Uljanova, E. (2021). A study on consumer behaviour in the food market Eastern European countries case. Poland: Warsaw University of Life Sciences Press.

Tao, H., Sun, X., Liu, X., Tian, J., & Zhang, D. (2022). The impact of consumer purchase behavior changes on the business model design of consumer services companies over the course of COVID-19. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.818845

Vivek, S. D., Beatty, S. E., & Morgan, R. M. (2012). Customer engagement: Exploring customer relationships beyond purchase. Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, 20(2), 127–145.

Woo, E., & Nam, K. (2021). Designing community‐based local shopping experiences. Design Management Review, 32(3), 38–43. https://doi.org/10.1111/drev.12270

Xu, X., & Hu, Z. (2022). Effect of introducing virtual community and community group buying on customer’s perceived value and loyalty behavior: A convenience store-based perspective. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.989463

Yi, Y., & Gong, T. (2013). Customer value co-creation behavior: Scale development and validation. Journal of Business Research, 66(9), 1279–1284. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2012.02.026




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/13229

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2023 Canadian Social Science

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Reminder

  • How to do online submission to another Journal?
  • If you have already registered in Journal A, then how can you submit another article to Journal B? It takes two steps to make it happen:

1. Register yourself in Journal B as an Author

  • Find the journal you want to submit to in CATEGORIES, click on “VIEW JOURNAL”, “Online Submissions”, “GO TO LOGIN” and “Edit My Profile”. Check “Author” on the “Edit Profile” page, then “Save”.

2. Submission

Online Submission: http://cscanada.org/index.php/css/submission/wizard

  • Go to “User Home”, and click on “Author” under the name of Journal B. You may start a New Submission by clicking on “CLICK HERE”.
  • We only use four mailboxes as follows to deal with issues about paper acceptance, payment and submission of electronic versions of our journals to databases: caooc@hotmail.com; office@cscanada.net; ccc@cscanada.net; ccc@cscanada.org

 Articles published in Canadian Social Science are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY).

 

Canadian Social Science Editorial Office

Address: 1020 Bouvier Street, Suite 400, Quebec City, Quebec, G2K 0K9, Canada.
Telephone: 1-514-558 6138 
Website: Http://www.cscanada.net; Http://www.cscanada.org 
E-mail:caooc@hotmail.com; office@cscanada.net

Copyright © Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture