Major factors affecting retail patronage behavior: Impact of personality type as moderating factor

Competition among retailers is becoming tougher as the number of players in retail business increases and the needs of the consumers become more complex. In this context, increasing retail patronage is becoming crucially important for retails to protect their consumer base and win in this competitive environment. This thesis focuses on key factors affecting retail patronage behavior among Turkish university students. Thesis is adding unique contribution to the literature in two folds. First, the impact of peer influence is being investigated first time as a factor that impacts on retail patronage behavior. Second, the moderating impact of different personality types over the retail patronage model adds a unique contribution to the studies in this field. Adding personality dimension in the model is expected to enable retailers to develop different communication strategies for different consumer personalities to drive their patronage. Managerial implications on peer influence impact are also elaborated at the end of the study based on the findings. Building on available studies in retail patronage models and personality types, a new research model is proposed and respective hypotheses are developed. The model is tested on a sample of 235 university students in Turkey. Analyses of the results revealed that the importance of some key factors affecting retail patronage behavior is significantly different among different personality types. Findings are interpreted to suggest different communication strategies for retailers to increase patronage behavior based on different personalities that they are targeting.