Developing a Framework for the Intention to Buy from Discount Stores

Discount stores are widely available in our country today. Despite the rapid popularity of discount stores across the country, few studies have been conducted to investigate customers’ behavior in these stores. The consequence of such study gaps is that there is no proper understanding of customers’ attitudes toward discount stores and the shopping experience. Although the most important reason for buying from discount stores is the amount of discounts, there is only little knowledge about the customers’ attitude towards such discounts. The present study seeks to properly understand the customers’ attitude towards these discounts and their experience of buying from these stores by evaluating the behavior of the customers in the discount stores in Tehran.

This research is among the exploratory researches in terms of purpose and descriptive-survey in nature. This research falls into the inferential category in terms of the type of analysis and inductive content analysis in terms of the level of analysis which pays attention to the hidden content for interpretation. In this study, a qualitative research interview was used to collect the data and MaxiCode software was used to manage, encode, and develop the coding matrix. 18 customers of discount stores in Tehran participated in the present study. According to the requirements of the qualitative content analysis, the participants were selected using purposeful-judgmental sampling method among different classes of Tehran urban society e.g. different ages, genders, social status, educations, and personalities. The collected data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis (Siye and Shannon directional content analysis).

In terms of the attitude towards discount stores, four main categories were identified including the reasons attributed to the discount, emotional passions, social stereotypes, and perceived value of the purchase within a total of 36 codes. The investigation of the codes with previous researches showed that there are some differences between the findings of this research and the previous findings.

In addition to price discounts, ease of access, variety of products, and the quality of services are also important in evaluating the purchase value of the discount stores. In case of social stereotypes about the customers, buying from the discountstores in social judgment can be considered as an indicator of a person’s ability and social class which affects the shopping experience and emotional passions. Customers’ descriptions of the reasons attributed to the discount were reflected and the management suggestions were provided in order to change the customers’ attitudes.