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Research Article

Store Convenience and Usefulness and Store Usage Intention

Choi, Nakhwan

Jeonbuk National University

Published: January 2012 · Vol. 41, No. 1 · pp. 33-56
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Abstract

The majority of consumer's shopping actions are executed on a routine basis in their daily lives. The major part of their daily shopping behavior is consistently and frequently exhibited in the same social and physical environment to maintain their ordinary consumption lives. These shopping behaviors can be determined by the experiences of using retail stores, but could not be mediated by attitude or other hypothetical constructs concerned with more deliberate or conscious processes. Without considering the strong attitude toward the store,consumers could have the intent to use it in their ordinary daily lives. The meaningfulness of using a certain retail store in their ordinary consumption lives could be sufficient to induce the using intent of the store. Ordinary consumption goal-directed shopping behaviors have taken places on a routine basis that helps researchers consider shopping value from consumers' experiential perspective, and helps recognize that using a certain store is related intimately to perceived convenience and perceived meaningfulness of using the store. The majority of attention in this research has focused on the roles of perceived convenience and meaningfulness of using retail store on the intent to use it in daily consumption lives. The primary reason of this research is to enhance understanding of the psychology of intention of using retail store in consumers' ordinary daily consumption lives. The perspective of this study to start in building a model of explaining the process of how consumers have intent to use a certain retail store is in the mediating roles of meaningfulness of using the store. To characterize this process it is needed to know the forces that enhance the perceived meaningfulness of using a store. Consumers purchase the products at the expense of psychological efforts, time, and money at the retail store. And many shopping activities produce both utilitarian and hedonic outcomes. Shopping behaviors at the retail store can be valuable or meaningful when both utilitarian and hedonic outcomes are perceived to be greater than the costs of psychological efforts, time, and money paid. Consumers code the acquisition of hedonic and utilitarian value as a gain and the forgone money, time, efforts as a loss. Acquisition utility is the value that consumers would place on getting the goods and feeling hedonic, minus the costs paid. Transaction utility is the perceived value of the difference between the amount costs and the reference price for the goods and services. Different types of costs can play different roles. The costs of psychological efforts and time can play roles on the perceived convenience. Frequencies of using the store reduce the psychological efforts necessary to use the store, and the location and operating times of the store are concerned with the consumers' time consumption behaviors that help consumers feel convenience. On the other hand consumer's self-efficacy in dealing with shopping environment is a matter of knowing what and how to do when they need to perform the shopping behaviors at the retail store. Consumers avoid activities that they believe exceed their coping capabilities, but they undertake assuredly those that they judge themselves capable of managing. In applying learned existing skills strong self-efficaciousness in using the retail store helps consumers feel little need to invest much preparatory effort in using the store. We propose that the perceived convenience of using retail store are affected by the location and operating times of the store,self-efficacy, experiencing amount of using the store. When consumers select the same store often and when these behaviors lead to achieving consumption goal in a satisfactory manner, the behaviors become mentally linked to the goal. Undertaking the same goal-directed shopping behavior frequently and consistently leads to association between the shopping goal and the instrumental behaviors of using the store. As a result the perceived meaningfulness of using the store from association between the shopping goal and the behaviors of using the store could induce the intent of using the store. What are the sources of helping consumers feel meaningfulness of using the store? Perceived convenience of using the store that could be induced by the amount of using the store,self-efficacy, and the location and operating time of it, are supposed to be the forces of leading to perceived meaningfulness in this study. And store that meets or exceed consumers'utilitarian needs and fulfills hedonic wants and response efficacy is also supposed to enhance consumers get the perceived meaningfulness of using the store. This research reviews the theoretical background about the mediating roles of perceived meaningfulness and convenience in using retail store, and develops the hypotheses like the above. Convenience store, supermarket, and mart are selected as experimental objects. The results of empirical study shows that there are the mediating roles of the perceived meaningfulness and the perceived convenience of using the store on the intention of using the retail store in consumers' daily consumption lives. The location and operating times of the store, self-efficacy, experiencing amount of using the store have positive affects to perceiving convenience of using the store. And the perceived convenience of using the store, fulfillment of utilitarian needs and hedonic wants give positive impacts to feeling meaningfulness of using the store, but response efficacy does not have positive impacts to feeling meaningfulness of using the retail store. And both the perceived convenience and the meaningfulness of using retail store are showed to play the positive roles on the intent to use it in daily consumption lives.
Keywords: 반응효능감이용경험이용실용성이용쾌락성자기효능감점포이용의 유용성점포이용의 편리성점포이용의도