Factors affecting the in-store purchase abandonment of shoppers in chain Stores

The increase of competition among retail chain stores is quite evident, and a growing number of customers have a large amount of information. At the same time, customers' attention to environmental factors along with their personality traits and experiences is more effective in deciding to buy and finalize the purchase. In the retail industry in such a competitive and information-saturated environment, marketers try to know the customer's attitude from the beginning of the customer's trip to the point of purchase and even after the purchase. By identifying the customer behavior, they study the factors influencing his or her attitudes. In this regard, marketers and retailers should be aware of any disruption in the customer journey, including the shopping cart abandonment in the store. Also, by identifying the causes of this behavior, they reduce the phenomenon of shopping cart abandonment as much as possible. Accordingly, identifying and reducing the areas of shopping cart release behavior is essential as an introduction to customer behavior management in the store. This study has been conducted with the aim of examining this issue. The areas and factors affecting the shopping cart release behavior of customers of chain stores have been identified and prioritized.

The research method is practical in terms of orientation. In terms of philosophy, it is a kind of research with interpretive philosophy. The research approach is deductive-inductive, and qualitative-quantitative in terms of time horizon and data analysis. Also, in terms of purpose, the present research is exploratory, and the research strategies are meta-combined. In this study, library information and a questionnaire were used for data collection. By a systematic literature review, the variables were extracted. The research was established in the two qualitative and quantitative stages. In the first stage, i.e., the qualitative method, 38 final articles were reviewed using the meta-combination method. In the second stage, the quantitative method, using the introductory research model, a questionnaire was given to 384 people to collect data. The participants were selected with the non-random sampling method. They were the customers of Refah chain store. Factor analysis and structural equation modeling served to validate the model using the SMART PLS software version 3.

According to the research findings, the effective factors in this model include two categories (customer, store), 15 concepts or themes (instant perceptions, customer characteristics, buying behavior, influencers, perceived risk, customer buying motivation, information, facilities, store planning, sales promotion, layout store, environmental conditions, design and architecture of the store, staff, goods) and 68 indicators. In the second stage, the quantitative method, the concepts of the research, designing questions, and forming a questionnaire are used to collect data from customers of Shiraz chain stores, and the one-sample test is performed to confirm the concepts using the SPSS software. Then, Shannon entropy is used to prioritize the concepts.

A one-sample test analyzed with the SPSS statistical software showed that the average score of all the concepts of cancellation behavior in the sample group is higher than 3. Also, their p is less than p < 0.05, which indicates the significance of the concepts that affect behavior. They insist on canceling the purchase. In the second part of the quantitative step, the importance and priority of each idea were determined and ranked using Shannon entropy. Based on the findings of Shannon entropy, the importance and priorities are goods in the first place, customer motivation to buy in the second place, and the next ranks are information, instant perceptions, store layout, store planning, sales promotion, influencers, employees, shopping behavior, customer conditions, environmental conditions, store design and architecture, facilities and risk. It can be said that paying attention to these concepts and indicators is very important in preventing the occurrence of customer withdrawal behavior inside the store. Managers and marketers in retail stores can reduce the cancellation rate among customers by planning and paying attention to these factors. Especially in chain stores with a significant number of customers, shopping cart abandonment occurs more than in small retail stores. Shopping cart abandonment in online purchasing has been among the topics of interest in previous studies. However, the abandonment of the shopping carts in brick and mortar stores has received less attention, where the cost of the customer's journey to the purchase place is significant for marketers. This study contributes to the field by addressing this issue.