I would like to thank all twenty interviewees for supporting me with great patience during the questionnaire interview. Convenience store offers simple shopping and plays a very important role in Thai's daily life, especially people living in the Bangkok metropolitan area. Dimensions of retail convenience, including access, search, transaction and possession convenience, are studied using in-depth interviews among Thai consumers living in Bangkok.
INTRODUCTION 1
- Convenience Stores in Bangkok context 1
- Company Background: “7-Eleven” convenience store 2
- Purpose of the study 4
- Research Questions 4
The 7-Eleven convenience store concept emerged after playing a key role of convenience for consumers, such as selling milk, bread and eggs (CP All Plc., 2014). They are also about location choices where customers are easy to access with high visibility (CP All Plc., 2014). 7-Eleven's food offering has various lines of prepared-fresh daily products, including ready-to-eat foods, sandwiches, salads and bakery (CP All Plc., 2014). The "Company") is the franchisee of 7-Eleven convenience stores in Thailand.
LITERATURE REVIEW 5
Convenience store concept 5
- Access convenience 6
- Search convenience 6
- Transaction convenience 6
- Possession convenience 7
Previous Study 9
Lassk, 2000 found that supermarket customers' view of product offering is to supply more products to maximize customer satisfaction. As stores have expanded in many areas, it is necessary for the convenience store to adapt store formats to suit their local area of residence (Worthington, S 1988). This study focused on stores in Northern Ireland and examined the unique characteristics of the supermarket (Worthington, S 1988).
The authors studied all three systems of convenience store management, including operation, product development and procurement, and supply chain management (Yahagi and Kar, 2009). Rapp and Islam, 2006 revealed that leading Japanese convenience stores (CVS) provide banking services as mini-banks. They found benefit of 24/7 strategy to attract consumer to convenience store because the stores earn commission from banking services (Rapp and Islam, 2006).
This is an interesting model to apply to convenience stores with similar circumstances, including 7-Eleven in the USA (Rapp and Islam, 2006). All mentioned studies focused on convenience stores in terms of segmentation of heavy and light users, internationalization and localization, creation of model for convenience store, relationship between consumer and employees and customer satisfaction. However, there is a certain gap between the consumer and a model of retail convenience in many aspects.
Therefore, it is interesting to investigate how four dimensions of convenience stores influence consumer behavior, especially in the leading supermarkets.
Conceptual Framework 10
This study focused on identifying the type of consumer by frequency of purchase (Pleshko & Al-Houti, 2012).
METHODOLOGY 12
Overview 12
Data Collection 12
It is a good model to study as it has seen significant growth for many years with the largest market share in the Thai convenience store market. Due to rapid changes in consumer behavior, especially people in Bangkok and urban areas, the target respondents for the interview were selected in the Bangkok metropolitan area. To answer all research questions, I choose an in-depth interview to collect data from the target group, as it provides an opportunity to answer my questions openly without being influenced by other respondents or limiting their opinions with closed answers.
Interview Process 13
This thematic article, “A study of behavior and consumer perceptions in leading convenience stores,” is based on four dimensions of shopping convenience. An important reason for shopping at the convenience store shows the relationship between time and effort. Customers prefer to have less time to go to the nearest supermarket if they want to get the products they want.
In conclusion, most participants care about "store layout" and "neat and clean store" because categorizing and standardizing store layout allows participants to easily access the desired products wherever they visit. Quick access to the store Parking availability Close to home Close to work Store opening hours. They only shop for raw materials or food and drinks at a convenience store when necessary.
They think in general terms: 'Shopping at the supermarket saves me time and effort.' This is similar to Beauchamp and Ponder, 2010, so the dimensions of shopping convenience allow the store to understand consumer behavior. Ease of access means a good location, close to home or work is a crucial feature, as respondents cite the main reason for shopping at a supermarket and confirm this in the following answers. Because the store is designed in such a way that the desired products are easy to reach and the categorization is well organized, customers are very satisfied.
The final research question is to elucidate how the perception of retail convenience for the convenience store shopper.
DATA ANALYSIS 15
Demographic Data 15
General Information 15
Data Analysis 16
- Retail convenience 16
The most popular products that customers buy at 7-Eleven are food and beverages, mainly convenience foods such as sandwiches, burgers, and convenience food boxes. They can find a variety of food and drinks in the 7-Eleven store and it is also different from other stores such as recipe, promotion and brand. Moreover, some respondents go to the store without any purpose, they just want to be relaxed by window shopping.
Second, some customers go to stores by walking, so they will visit the nearest store to shop. Third, some customers have limited time to shop, so they prefer to shop at one-stop shop. This means she does not go to other places to buy food (Female, 29 years old, working).
Before starting work, they can buy some products and go to the office on time. The convenience of searching has the following factors: orderly and clean store, service and advice of employees, safe environment and store layout (Bianchi, 2009). The majority of respondents cited a neat and clean store and store layout as the most important factors for shopping comfort.
Eight men and eleven women explain that store layout is important for shopping at 7-Eleven stores.
Data Discussion 21
They have many choices to get to the store, such as stopping cars on the street, letting someone buy things while the driver waits, or walking to the nearest store. Convenience of search is important for consumers because the store should provide easy access to reach desired products with simple layout. After the customer visits any 7-Eleven store, it is convenient to get the desired products without taking time because each store has similar store structure.
These characteristics are consistent with the finding that customers are satisfied with how stores display product at eye level, suitable shelving, and also excellent layout. Customers unfamiliar with the store layout can take advantage of the categorization, which improves speed and ease of reaching the required products. This is similar to customers in Bangkok who are also concerned about clean floors and neat shelves.
As they spend longer time to top up the card, it is double process. However, it is not similar to Sutton and Rafaeli, 1988, explain that the emotional factor relates to both customers and staff in stores. Some customers cannot get the desired products because the store's supply is less than the aggressive demand.
This does not affect customers in Bangkok because their main stores are not this leading supermarket, where they mainly buy the necessary items.
Recommendation 25
- Recommendation to Theory 25
- Recommendation to Implication 26
This is for the benefit of non-local residents who are not familiar with the 7-Eleven location. It will be more convenient for customers, but the company should study in depth for these services. The company should launch and develop regular price promotions to increase the sales of the store.
However, the store must also focus on long-term promotion, because discounts do not yield high profits for the supermarket. However, the store should not offer too much promotion to customers due to limited storage space and higher costs. In conclusion, the company should implement the plan step by step and evaluate store performance by hiring mystery shoppers to get feedback from overall store practice.
Although the selected age groups are limited, it is an opportunity to study different age groups in the future. Their behavior may be different from people in the capital, so it is a good opportunity for further research. Shopping in convenience stores is important because consumers concentrate retail convenience, which they value in time and effort.
They usually shift to other stores because they are low-involvement products, making it easy for them to find the products they want.
LIMITATIONS AND CONCLUSION 29
Limitations and Further Research 29
The researcher should limit the number of respondents to twenty people because collecting data from many interviewees takes a long time to interpret and analyze. A larger number of interviewees can provide more accurate information, but the data collection process must also take more time. This research focuses on the Bangkok area, which is an interesting place to study consumer behavior.
However, there are many provinces with high economic potential such as Chiangmai, Phuket, Chonburi, which are not covered by this study. Moreover, other issues such as the difference between rural and urban consumers should also be studied. Since this research uses the qualitative method for data collection, further research should study consumer behaviors with a quantitative method in a larger group of consumers.
Conclusion 30
The finding also proves that parking availability is important to customers and they do not try to find parking facility. Second, characteristics of search convenience are composed of store layout and neat and clean store. The finding suggests that store layout enables customers to access their desired products with few efforts.
However, the finding proves that there is less customer loyalty because they expect more convenience than limits in stores. In conclusion, the most important attributes are close to home or work in convenience of access, store layout in convenience of search, fast payment method in convenience of transaction, and discount and promotion in convenience. Retail convenience can help to diversify the general term of convenience by focusing on time and effort.
2013, "The role of store location in influencing customers' store choice", Journal of Emerging Trends in Economics and Management Sciences, vol. Decomposing the determinants of shopping facility choice using the method of hierarchical information integration: a supermarket illustration.
