Consumers' Cross-Format Shopping Behavior in an Emerging Retail Market: Multiple Discriminant Analysis

The evolution of store formats and the resultant consumers' cross-shopping behavior has been the prevalent trends in Indian food and grocery retailing. More recently, however, the growing incidence of cross-format shopping-defined as consumers shopping regularly at each of two or more types of grocery retail outlets-has become a subject of research, as it is regarded as a necessary evil associated with concentric retail growth. The aim of the article is to identify factors influencing consumers' cross-format shopping in relation to four retail formats-kirana stores, convenience stores, supermarkets, and hypermarkets. Furthermore, it investigates the impact of identified factors on repatronage behavior relative to four types of retail outlets. The mall intercept survey method was used to collect data from 1,040 adult food and grocery consumers. Results from exploratory factor analysis and zero-order correlation matrix indicate that value for money, value for time, shopping situations, shopping motives, and store attributes are significant and positively correlated with cross-format shopping. The multiple discriminant analysis provides empirical support, suggesting that value for money, task definitions, value for time, shopping trip pattern, basket size, price-conscious and local shopping motives, price promotions, customer service, store environment, distance to store, and monthly household income are not only the significant predictors but also able to discriminate repatronage intentions toward four types of retail outlets in an emerging retail market. The present study provides useful information on consumers' intertype cross-shopping (e.g., crossing from kirana store type to supermarket type and vice versa) between four types of grocery retail outlets.