Why have consumers fallen out of love with department stores?
Attitude Change
Consumers are an important concern in bullying for goods and services in the marketplace. However, their behaviour changes as per the choice and new purchasing demands. One of the reasons for this sudden movement is the attitude change for consumer behaviour. This pattern of attitude change could be responsible for not choosing department stores. In general sense, attitude change theory is described as, a person altering their attitude so that they could align themselves with conflicting thoughts and beliefs (Cherry, 2020). For example, a person will change his or her attitude towards another person due to his dislike for others. He could be rude towards another person due to conflicting thoughts from cognitive dissonance, also known as psychological distress.
In context with consumer purchase behaviour, attitude change always impacts their buying habits. The attitude and perception towards one’s purchasing behaviour depend on the factors including involvement, knowledge, experience, situational factor and personality variables (Augusto Carvalho, 2007). Therefore, attitude change impact purchasing behaviour for not choosing department stores due to different factors working as the catalyst.
Reasons for Not choosing Department Store
Several reasons change consumer’s behaviour towards the department store:
#1: Lack of innovation for Consumers
The department stores right now are too simple and do not offer any innovations for consumers. For instance, stores do not have new product catalogue for different fashion upgrades. Whereas, same monotonous and out of fashion piece makes them bored and out of place for shopping.
Additionally, the interest in buying products which are current trend is always unavailable in store. Hence, the lack of innovation diverts consumers from buying something new from department stores.
#2: Change in Shopping style of Consumers
One of the huge trends for shopping is inspirations and suggestions for various style in context to fashion sense. Many social media stylists offer suggestions for buying clothes as compared with traditional salesman (Baird, 2016). People get influenced by fashion bloggers, and they only buy clothes, jewellery and makeup by source suggested from them. Hence, buyers change their attitude towards traditional department stores by opting online retailers.
#3: Difficult Layout Structure of Store
The department store has many sections in all directions, which disturb their layout and confuse consumers. Hence, people do not prefer such an extremely complicated layout structure of the store while they shop. It is a waste of time searching each product from every store corner without any help altogether.
#4: Specific Product Prefer Online shopping
There are a variety of products which are available in the department store generally. However, some specific product attribute changes consumer’s attitude and willingness for buying a product online (Kacen, Hess & Kevin Chiang, 2013). One example includes buying of shoes which are not available in the country and exported from outside. In this condition, women buyers will prefer online shopping which continues the shipping process for product home delivery outside the door. Hence, some products are unavailable and could only be bought with online shopping platforms.
References
Augusto Carvalho, C. (2007). Impact of Consumer Attitude in Predicting Purchasing Behaviour (pp. 1-12). IASO Consulting.
Baird, N. (2016). Here’s What’s Wrong With Department Stores. Retrieved 29 February 2020, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/nikkibaird/2016/06/02/heres-whats-wrong-with-department-stores/#4e5b465a4dcd
Cherry, K. (2020). How Can Our Attitudes Change and Influence Behaviors?. Retrieved 29 February 2020, from https://www.verywellmind.com/attitudes-how-they-form-change-shape-behavior-2795897\
Kacen, J., Hess, J., & Kevin Chiang, W. (2013). Bricks or Clicks? Consumer Attitudes toward Traditional Stores and Online Stores. Global Economics And Management Review, 18(1), 12-21. doi: 10.1016/s2340-1540(13)70003-3
Blog Post 2:
How does the need for touch influence shopping online or offline?
Need for Touch
Need for touch is a purchasing theory in which products are bought after touch and feel the process. For example, consumers try clothing, eyeglasses, and makeup products by touching and feeling as well as examine groceries before buying them to check whether it working or not. However, the need for touch influences consumer purchasing processes which they choose for online platforms as well as offline stores respectively for a particular product.
Effects on Online Shopping
E-commerce does not offer a need for touch influence because of online product buying and selling among consumers. Furthermore, with online shopping consumers can only access technical product description, product view, as well as contemporary consumers’ reviews after purchase but lacks the touch or feel on a physical level (González-Benito, Martos-Partal & San Martín, 2015). Hence, due to such a barrier, online shopping has become the biggest hindrance to sell or buy any product online. However, still, people prefer online shopping due to its extremely unique brand exposure style. Furthermore, there are few factors which make online shopping much better source with even influencing e-commerce businesses negatively.
- Fulfilling Need: A consumer requires some product which is not present at the store and hence chooses an online platform for buying it. Based on other consumers’ posts for the dress, she could buy it.
- Information source: There are different sources of information for picking the best product online, including neighbours, family members and online blogging websites (Sarkar & Das, 2017). With such suggestions need for touch theory do not exist as we believe in information source across our surroundings.
- Purchasing Price: As compared with traditional store prices, online platforms offer lower selling price, including some % off, offers for special occasions like new year, Christmas.
Effects on Offline Shopping
Offline shopping has always supported the theory of ‘need for touch’ while selling products or services including clothes, accessories, makeup products as well as groceries at local stores. The need for touch and feel of clothes for the best fit is always the priority for some consumer groups. However, not all consumers prefer the need for touch concept while they shop for clothes. Some sizes of clothing are always available online and thus preferred by many of them. Still, offline shopping gets more influenced by this theory because some people buy things after checking and inspection. One of the important aspects for offline shopping is that hesitant customers could always touch the product by interacting with a salesperson at the store location (“When Does the ‘Human Touch’ Matter in Retail?”, 2015). Furthermore, it positively affects offline shopping retailers with a couple of benefits.
- Product Returns: If the product does not offer any advantage after touch and feel, then it could be easily returned to the store.
- Quick Access: Offline shopping has one more benefit, which is instant access for product or service after the purchase.
- Size fitting: In context with clothing after feeling the product in trial rooms, as per size buying could be done. The fitting of clothes is always a concern for different sort of consumers. It is easily fulfilled after touching the texture, material, and other defects for clothing in stores.
References
González-Benito, Ó., Martos-Partal, M., & San Martín, S. (2015). Brands as substitutes for the need for touch in online shopping. Journal Of Retailing And Consumer Services, 27, 121-125. doi: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2015.07.015
Sarkar, R., & Das, S. (2017). Online shopping vs Offline shopping: A comparative study. International Journal Scientific Research In Science And Technology, 3(1), 424-431.
When Does the ‘Human Touch’ Matter in Retail?. (2015). Retrieved 29 February 2020, from https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/human-touch-matter-retail/