• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.11 no.9
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• pp.5-15
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• 2013

Purpose - The research aim is to shed empirical light on whether quality-focused retailer brands such as Premium brand of Tesco Korea, Prime of Lotte Mart, and Best of E-Mart in the grocery market, make a contribution to developing store loyalty in the Korean market particularly. Research design, data, methodology - After developing sixconstructs, such as higher quality, stock availability, price levels, national brands, retailer brand attitudes, and store loyalty, the authors adopted exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, chi-square test and structural equation modelling as a research technique. Results - It was found that higher quality strongly influences the retailer brand attitude formation, and that retailer brand customers were sensitive to price levels. Buyers are, nevertheless, relatively less aware of price levels, when purchasing quality-oriented retailer brand types. Conclusions - The research implied that quality-oriented retailer brand types make a significant contribution to retailer brands attitude formation, and further, building store loyalty.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.15-27
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• 2011

Although a huge number of academic researchers have paid considerable attention to exploring both the degree to which store image influences retailer brand customers and how to develop store personality, they have overlooked the contemporary retail context in which retailers have developed many different types of retailer brands, that is, price-oriented or quality-oriented retailer brands. Rather than focusing on the latter, much literature has looked at the former. Accordingly, even though there are many articles related to store image, a few authors have shown their interest in identifying the extent to which store personality affects customers purchasing retailer brands at lower prices. As a result, their efforts have been to illustrate the relationship between store image and consumer behaviours buying retailer brands. In that multiple retailers over the world such as E-Mart, Lotte-Mart, Tesco Korea and Tesco UK have actively introduced not only the quality-focused retailer brands that quality is better than, or equal to national brands, and prices are slightly higher than, or equal to them, but also price-focused retailer brands, academicians should make an effort to investigate how store image affects customers purchasing a quality-oriented retailer brand, comparing with previous research results. That is why the authors illustrate the extent to which store personality components influence retailer brand customers, including particularly quality-oriented retailer brand customers through an empirical research. By adopting a questionnaire method as a research technique to illuminate the relationship between store image components and retailer brand customers, research validity increases and further, data gathered through a field survey are analysed through a few statistic analysis methods, in order to minimise statistical deviations. Compared with the prior research concentrated on price-focused retailer brands, the authors have significantly shed light on customer behaviours purchasing retailer brand products with higher quality. When it comes to store personality components, the research suggests the following five items: merchandise attributes, services, physical facilities, promotions, and institutional image, considering the subcomponents mentioned by the previous research. Proposing the conceptual research model which those elements are differently hypothesised, according to retailer brand types: PR (Price-oriented Retailer brand) and QR (Quality-oriented Retailer brand), the research is proceeded. Through empirical research, the authors found that amongst the five items, only promotion influenced retailer brand customers in the Korean retailing marketplace, unlike other countries explored by many researchers, such as UK. Although much literature emphasises that those elements are closely related to retailer brand buying proneness, it is completely not fit to the Korean market. Also, research findings provide new insights into the degree of store image effects on retailer brand customers for academiciansand practitioners. Whether the retailer brand development program that a retailer has carried simultaneously both price-focused and quality-focused retailer brand types is practically profitable should be explored in the future.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.29-62
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• 2012

As distribution environment is changing rapidly and competition is more intensive in the channel of distribution, the importance of retailer image and retailer equity is increasing as a different competitive advantages. Also, consumers are not functionally oriented and that their behavior is significantly affected by the symbols such as retailer image which identify retailer in the market place. That is, consumers do not choose products or retailers for their material utilities but consume the symbolic meaning of those products or retailers as expressed in their self images. The concept of self-image congruence has been utilized by marketers and researchers as an aid in better understanding how consumers identify themselves with the brands they buy and the retailer they patronize. Although self-image congruity theory has been tested across many product categories, the theory has not been tested extensively in the retailing. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate the impact of self image congruence between retailer image and self image of consumer on retailer equity such as retailer awareness, retailer association, perceived retailer quality, and retailer loyalty. The purpose of this study is to find out whether retailer-self image congruence can be a new antecedent of retailer equity. In addition, this study tries to examine how four-dimensional retailer equity constructs (retailer awareness, retailer association, perceived retailer quality, and retailer loyalty) affect customers' repatronage intention. For this study, data were gathered by survey and analyzed by structural equation modeling. The sample size in the present study was 254. The reliability of the all seven dimensions was estimated with Cronbach's alpha, composite reliability values and average variance extracted values. We determined whether the measurement model supports the convergent validity and discriminant validity by Exploratory factor analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis. For each pair of constructs, the square root of the average variance extracted values exceeded their correlations, thus supporting the discriminant validity of the constructs. Hypotheses were tested using the AMOS 18.0. As expected, the image congruence hypotheses were supported. The greater the degree of congruence between retailer image and self-image, the more favorable were consumers' retailer evaluations. The all two retailer-self image congruence (actual self-image congruence and ideal self-image congruence) affected customer based retailer equity. This result means that retailer-self image congruence is important cue for customers to estimate retailer equity. In other words, consumers are often more likely to prefer products and retail stores that have images similar to their own self-image. Especially, it appeared that effect for the ideal self-image congruence was consistently larger than the actual self-image congruence on the retailer equity. The results mean that consumers prefer or search for stores that have images compatible with consumer's perception of ideal-self. In addition, this study revealed that customers' estimations toward customer based retailer equity affected the repatronage intention. The results showed that all four dimensions (retailer awareness, retailer association, perceived retailer quality, and retailer loyalty) had positive effect on the repatronage intention. That is, management and investment to improve image congruence between retailer and consumers' self make customers' positive evaluation of retailer equity, and then the positive customer based retailer equity can enhance the repatonage intention. And to conclude, retailer's image management is an important part of successful retailer performance management, and the retailer-self image congruence is an important antecedent of retailer equity. Therefore, it is more important to develop and improve retailer's image similar to consumers' image. Given the pressure to provide increased image congruence, it is not surprising that retailers have made significant investments in enhancing the fit between retailer image and self image of consumer. The enhancing such self-image congruence may allow marketers to target customers who may be influenced by image appeals in advertising.