THE ATTRACTIVENESS OF WAREHOUSE RETAILING DURING FINANCIAL DOWNTURN

Abstract

The warehouse retail scheme has been a relatively new concept in Singapore. Although this concept of retailing has been the focus of many studies in other countries, no research was ever done to look into its impact on consumer behavior in Singapore, especially during the current financial downturn. The primary objective of this paper is to employ ordinal logit model to examine the impact of warehouse retail scheme during the period of financial downturn. The secondary objective of the paper is to identify important attributes that will affect its success in Singapore, with the aid of descriptive analysis technique such as paired sample t-test and correlation matrix. The sample of 365 warehouse mall shoppers consists of mainly residents living in the trade area of Bedok, Tampines, Pasir Ris, Sengkang and Punggol. Structured survey results indicate that respondents do not change their frequency of patronage to the warehouse retail establishment during financial downturn. Findings also reveal that accessibility and location are important influence of individual shopping trip. Warehouse retailers will have to adopt strategies such as providing shuttle services to increase consumer perception of accessibility of the location. Thirdly, anticipated job loss or wage cut seems to have a negative impact on the warehouse retail mall. Finally, the both the knowledge of inflation and anticipated job loss or wage cut, consumer’s visit to the warehouse malls are to infrequent, and likely to be once every 3 months.