Satisfaction, Loyalty, and Repurchase: A Study of Norwegian Customers of Furniture and Grocery Stores

Abstract

This article develops and tests a model to explain the variation in repurchase behavior between customers shopping for grocery products and furniture. The analysis and results of the research is based on interview data collected from 400 adult consumers in four different stores in Kristiansand, Norway. Among other findings, the effect of service quality on satisfaction is discovered to be more profound in the furniture branch than in the grocery branch of the four stores selected. This is seen as an indicator of the elevated importance of service in the furniture branch. On the other hand, loyalty seems to be more important in affecting repurchase decisions in the grocery branch. This might be a result of consumer shopping frequency plus heavier competition in the grocery branch, and it is posited that this is linked to the theory of cognitive dissonance. Based on the results of this inquiry, managers in the grocery sector should focus on marketing the retail chain in order to create satisfied customers and by that ensure higher levels of repurchase behavior and an increase in loyal customers. The use of structural equation modelling (SEM) techniques is deemed to be necessary to properly examine the linkages between related concepts such as service quality, satisfaction, repurchase and loyalty. Since the overall explained variance in repurchase was relatively low, it opens up the real possibility that there are other explanatory factors that need to be examined.