Determination of the factors affecting customer loyalty for discount market and supermarket using multigroup structural equation modelling

The subject of this study is, determination of the factors that are affecting customer loyalty for discount market and supermarket and making comparison between them. In line with this purpose, the part of the data that belongs to the SOBAG project with number 110K098 "Determination of the Factors Affecting Customer Loyalty for Supermarket" is used. This study have been conducted with 855 sample data from this SOBAG project. In this study, for determining the factors that affecting customer loyalty, a measurement model is established with latent variables customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, trust, comparative price perception, discount perception, value perception, service quality perception and product quality perception. To make comparison between two groups of market, measurement equivalence is examined and partial metric invariance is provided. Based on the previous researches on customer loyalty, a proposed structural model is generated and the proposed model's validity is tested with structural equation modeling. After the validation of the model, the factors that are affecting customer loyalty, and the relationship between these factors are examined between discount market and supermarket by multigroup structural equation modeling. In all analysis, Mplus 6.1 packaged software is used. The results of this study indicate that, customer satisfaction is the key element of the customer loyalty for both discount market and supermarket. The positive and significant effect of customer satisfaction on customer loyalty in supermarket is more than in discount market. However, in discount market there are positive significant effects of trust and value perception on customer loyalty, but in supermarket there is no evidence for the direct effects of these factors on customer loyalty.