How Situational Factors Affect Consumers’ Buying Behavior: Productivity of Kish Business Centers in Focus

In this paper, the effect of situational factors on the consumers' buying behavior has been investigated in order to increase the productivity of Kish business centers. This applied exploratory-explanatory research has a mixed (qualitative-quantitative) method design. The statistical population in the qualitative part included the managers of Kish business centers and in the quantitative part included the customers of Kish business centers. From the first group, 12 samples were selected through targeted snowball method and from the second group, 117 samples were recruited through simple random sampling procedure. Grounded theory was used to analyze the qualitative data and to analyze the quantitative data structural equation modeling was employed. The findings regarding the qualitative part showed that situational factors affecting the consumers’ behavioral tendencies include: available money, store browsing, social environment, seller attitude, physical characteristics, security and entertainment. It was also found that customers' behavioral tendencies affect their intention to buy. Additionally, it was revealed that marketing factors such as background conditions and management factors as intervening factors affect the customers’ intention to buy and make Kish business centers productive. The analyses of the quantitative data also confirmed the findings of the qualitative part sinc the results of the structural equation modeling showed that situational factors affect behavioral tendencies, behavioral tendencies, marketing and managerial factors affect shopping, and the intention to buy affects productivity. Therefore, it can be said that improving the productivity of Kish business centers is a complex process and is influenced by situational, marketing and managerial factors.