Reactions to Store Environment and Interpersonal Service Quality in Supermarkets vs Hypermarkets

Purpose: The purpose is to verify the impact of the store environment on interpersonal service quality (ISQ), shopping value and patronage intention, as well as the moderating role of the store format: supermarkets vs hypermarkets. This is significant as previous studies on retailing neglected the effect of interpersonal service quality on the experiential shopping value. The comparison of the model between two retailing formats (hypermarkets and supermarkets) provides a significant contribution and responds to a need to provide insights regarding the moderation of the store types on the contribution of interpersonal service quality and experiential value to customer’s retention. Research design, data, and methodology: The hypotheses have been tested after analyzing the data of a survey among 405 consumers exiting stores representing various retailing stores in Tunisia. A Structural model have been finally verified by a path analysis after applying a confirmatory factorial analysis. Multigroup analyses on AMOS allowed to verify the moderation of store types. Results: Results mainly show that patronage intention is affected by the experiential perceived value dimensions. The latter is a direct consequence of ISQ and an indirect outcome of perceived shopping environment. The impact of value, environment and ISQ is moderated by the store type.