Study of Social Factors Influencing Customer Shopping Experience as a Predictor of Store Loyalty: Moderating Role of Physical Evidence

Present research aims to investigate social factors influencing customer shopping experience as a predictor of store loyalty with respect to moderating role of physical evidence, in order to determine which factors drive shoppers to gain more experience than others and what type of actions are taken following that experience. A group of sociologists have argued that human emotional experience results from his/her social meaning and thoughts, cognitions, attitudes, and beliefs are inseparably intertwined with emotions. To this end, we tested the research hypotheses using a quantitative approach on a group of 385 shoppers in Refah chain stores of Urmia city. Data was collected using questionnaires and results from data analysis via Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) showed that among social factors, customer orientation and respect, being honest with customer, patience, physical attractiveness and product knowledge of sales staff had the greatest effect on in-store customer shopping experience. Also, the moderating factor of physical evidence enhanced the effect of social factors on in-store customer shopping experience and respecting the fact that the effect size was higher than 35%, it is concluded that it was a factor with strong effect. Also, the results from bootstrap and Sobel test both showed that the indirect effect of retail environment social factors on positive word-of-mouth and revisit intention through in-store customer shopping experience was statistically significant.