| Summary |
Yu-Kai Huang, 2006.09
Institute of Traffic and Transportation National Chiao Tung University
Convenience stores in Taiwan have made remarkable successes with retail delivery services by integrating E-commerce and logistics systems to form a new retail delivery model: “On-line shopping with pick-ups at convenience stores.” Although choice behavior has been discussed in marketing, few studies describe the non-linear characteristic of choice behavior.
The main purpose of this study is to explore what kind of factors can influence the pick-up point choice behavior by using a catastrophe model. Firstly, the latent variables and manifest variables are defined in the Structural Equation Model (SEM). To explore the customers’ choice behavior of pick-up point, data were collected from 9278 respondents through on-line questionnaire and developed SEM to know relationship among loyalty, service quality and switching cost. The results indicate that the switching cost and service quality are the two major factors which can capture the choice behavior.
Secondly, the catastrophe model was used to analyze the linkages between customer satisfaction and switching cost on pick-up point service loyalty. The results indicated that the switching cost plays the splitting factor in the catastrophe model, and a high switching cost makes the discontinuous choice behavior. In the cusp catastrophe mode, “Reselection electronic map” is the main index of the splitting factor. Nevertheless, “The quality of relative service concerning the electronic map” is the main index of the normal factor.
Finally, the catastrophe characteristic of the choice behavior has been discussed and used by cusp catastrophe model that is based on the empirical data, and explained how the switching cost and service quality affect the choice behavior.
The outcome has shown that these characteristics include bimodality, hysteresis, and catastrophe are present in the research data. When increasing the value of the retail delivery services through some marketing strategies, such as premium programs, quick orderings, and some useful hints on the WebPages, the loyalty relationship between customer and convenient stores will be enhanced.
It has been expected that a catastrophe approach to discontinuous behavior has made clearly abundant implications. Based on the findings of loyalty in the application of cusp catastrophe theory, the cusp catastrophe model is an appropriate model to know the process of loyalty. It suggests that other researchers could consider the cusp catastrophe theory and other nonlinear techniques, especially for standard approaches not adequately to capture the underlying dynamic. |
