The impact of store satisfaction on consumer responses in out-of-stock situations

Abstract Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to test a conceptual model by means of which we try to establish the influence of store satisfaction and other variables (gender, mobility and availability of alternative stores) on consumers’ responses to out-of-stock (OOS) situations. Design/methodology/approach: The authors used a standardized questionnaire to gather data on consumer responses to OOS and then analyzed determinants including store satisfaction (for which reliability, validity and unidimensionality were tested). The survey was conducted in the four largest cities in Serbia. All respondents were interviewed randomly, through telephone calls, whereby 392 responses were gathered. The established hypotheses were tested by means of a multinomial logit model with the use of marginal effects. Findings: The results show that store satisfaction significantly affects three out-of-stock responses (store switching, postponement and product switching), whereas, positively in the case of product switching and postponement and negatively in the case of store switching. The results also show that store satisfied consumers, regardless of other factors, are not likely to switch stores in out-of-stock situations. Originality/value: As well as managerial implications, this paper included store satisfaction as an antecedent of consumer OOS responses for the first time. In addition, the impact of this variable on OOS responses was analyzed at both levels of the availability of alternative stores, gender and mobility.

摘要 研究目的：本文旨在检验一项概念模型，以此探究门店满意度及其他变量（性别、出行便利性与替代门店可得性）对消费者应对缺货（out-of-stock，OOS）情境时的反应的影响。
设计/研究方法/研究路径：作者采用标准化问卷收集消费者针对缺货情境的反应数据，并对包括门店满意度在内的影响因素展开分析（其中对门店满意度的信度、效度与单维性进行了检验）。本次调研在塞尔维亚四大城市开展，通过电话随机访谈的方式收集样本，最终回收有效问卷392份。研究所提出的假设采用多项logit模型结合边际效应进行检验。
研究结果：结果显示，门店满意度对三类缺货应对反应（门店转换、延迟购买与产品转换）均具有显著影响：对产品转换与延迟购买呈正向作用，对门店转换则呈负向作用。同时结果表明，无论其他因素如何，对门店满意的消费者在面临缺货情境时，均不太可能进行门店转换。
研究创新与价值：除具备管理实践启示外，本文首次将门店满意度作为消费者缺货应对反应的前置变量纳入研究范畴。此外，本文还分析了该变量在替代门店可得性、性别与出行便利性不同水平下对缺货应对反应的影响。