EXPLORING THE CUSTOMER LOYALTY CONCEPT IN SHOPPING MALLS

Abstract

The retail sector in Singapore is increasingly dynamic and taking on an even faster pace with more supply in the pipeline and also refurbishment of current malls. Given the abundance of choices, consumers are spoilt for choice. Having a loyal consumer base in this arena would enable a shopping mall to retain a steady stream of human traffic and income. Increasingly, the concept of customer loyalty has been of great interest in recent years. Despite this interest, there has been a lack of studies done in this area in local context. This study aims to undertake this challenge and fill this void in order to open grounds for further research. The objective of this research is of an exploratory nature into understanding whether the customer loyalty concept is prevalent in local context and if so, whether the constructs of customer loyalty can be established. The strategy for this research is a sequential mixed methods design where a qualitative-quantitative approach is adopted. The qualitative phase of research is of an exploratory nature into the perceptions and reality of customer loyalty. It was from this phase where the constructs of the questionnaire was done for the quantitative phase. The questionnaire was done in two regions to provide a basis for comparison. A three-pronged analysis was done in order to provide a balanced and accurate finding. Descriptive statistics was used to provide a breakdown of the respondents and factor analysis was done to break down the attributes into labels for further analysis. Ordered logistic regression is done on the factor analyzed components to determine the significance of these factors in affecting customer loyalty. The result of this research was encouraging. Customer loyalty pertaining to a particular shopping mall exists and the attributes were found to be significant in affecting customer loyalty. Despite various limitations, this study does shed some light on this concept and has several implications on the sector. Being of an exploratory nature, this study could be used as a platform for future researches into this topic. More in-depth researches could be done in the future in order to provide more holistic picture of the customer loyalty concept in local context.