The impact of store image dimensions on buying behaviors of customers of gold jewellery stores: A comparison of local stores and shopping mall stores

The past of Turkey's goldsmithery is as old as the human history. Until today, every civilization, built in Anatolia, has contributed to the enrichment of this historical heritage. Turkish gold jewellery industry levered itself by using the accumulation of thousands of years to become one of the leading global jewellery industries in a short period of time starting 1980s when Turkey also began more integrated to the global trade. Both the increase in the consumer demand for gold jewellery items and the rapid development of the jewellery industry as a whole paved also the way to the expansion of the retail jewellery outlets in the country. Analyzing factors affecting customer buying behavior at the retail medium is an important topic of marketing. Evaluating customer-store relations within the framework of store image and store image dimensions will help us understand better what shapes the customer buying behaviors. In this respect, the study, regards the store image and buying behaviors as structures and analyzes the relations of the consistuent dimensions of these structures with one another to reveal the extent to which store image dimensions are effective in leading to a certain buying behavior. In this study, the customers of retail jewellery stores are divided into two groups: local store customers and shopping mall store customers. It is tested to see whether these two groups differentiate from each other on the basis of socio-economic attributes. Major differences have been observed between the two populaces with respect to some basic attributes. The effects of store image dimensions on buying behaviors have been analyzed via multiple regression analysis. The results demonstrate that store image dimensions have effect on purchasing behaviors. Additionally, differences in perceiving the store image between the two groups are analysed and the results show that the two groups perceive store image dimensions differently.