Patterns of store choice

Kau, Ah Keng (1981) Patterns of store choice. Doctoral thesis, University of London: London Business School.

Abstract

Visiting stores is a commmonplace event in our everyday life. The purpose of this study is to establish empirical regularities concerning consumers' store-choice behaviour both in the buying of frequently purchased nondurable products as well as in the buying of specific brands of these individual products. Despite the seemingly complex way in which consumers choose stores and the numerous factors which are believed to exert influence on store-choice behaviour, many simple and highly regular patterns have been found. These various patterns are also predictable by the Negative Binomial Distribution and the Dirichlet models under stationary market conditions. For instance, given how many people buy a product or brand at a store and how often they buy it in a particular time period, it is possible to predict how many will buy the item in another period of different length, how many of the current buyers will buy it again in another period of equal length, and how often these repeat buyers will buy it. All these predictions can be successfully achieved without considering store characteristics such as location and merchandise offerings. This study establishes how people buy products or brands of products at a particular store or across different stores without attempting to explain these behavioural patterns. Nevertheless, this has also helped to provide greater insights into important aspects of consumer store-choice behaviour.