Abstract

Background

The food retail business is characterized by fierce competition between a few large actors and low switching costs for consumers due to the similar offerings of the stores. In an oligopolistic market struc- ture like this it is critical for stores to create a loyal customer base in order to gain a competitive advantage. This is achieved through gen- erating customer satisfaction, which is an outcome of a positive evaluation of the store image. In the market of Jönköping there is one hypermarket, Ica Maxi, which enjoys a dominating market position over its two closest competitors, Coop Forum and City Gross, which must mean that more consumers chose to make their grocery shopping at this particular store. Therefore it is interesting to investigate the store image perceptions that the consumers of Jönköping hold of these three hypermarkets, and whether there is large difference be- tween them. 

Purpose

The main purpose of this thesis is to find out and measure how consumers in Jönköping perceive the store images of the three hyper- markets operating in the city, and what importance the different parts of the retail mix weighs on the consumers choice in what store to frequent. Further it aims to analyze the findings from the study in order to investigate if there are any differences in the store image perceptions, and if they might help explain a part of the dominating position Ica Maxi holds on the market. 

Method

Since store image is already a well defined concept within the marketing literature, it was most suitable to conduct a quantitative rather than a qualitative study. This was implemented through a questionnaire that was distributed to three separate samples, one per investigated hypermarket. The data collected was then processed mainly through One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), which allowed for comparisons between the three samples. 

Conclusion

The consumers of Jönköping ranked the influence of the store image dimensions on their choice of hypermarket as following; (1) mer- chandise, (2) customer service, (3) reputation, (4) location, (5) price, (6) store layout and design, and (7) advertising and promotion. The perceptions held of the stores images were different between the stores. Ica Maxi was shown to have the most positive store image, closely followed by City Gross, and Coop Forum had a significantly less favorable image than both its competitors. The difference between Ica Maxi and Coop Forum does explain why the stores have such different market shares. However, there was not a large enough difference in Ica Maxi’s and City Gross’ scores to justify the market share gap between them solely based on store image.