Analysis of Outlets Retail Market Based on Chinese Tourists

DAI Jingyu(戴竞宇) ,DAI Hongyu(戴鸿宇) ,XIE Yutong(谢雨彤)

1 College of International Tourism and Management,City University of Macau,Macau 999078,China2 College of Art Design and Media， Sanda University,Shanghai 201209,China3 College of Statistics and Mathematics,Zhejiang Gongshang University,Hangzhou 310018,China4 Center of Art Education,Shanghai University of Medicine & Health Sciences,Shanghai 201318,China

Abstract: Outlets are a new challenge to the retail industry after the continuous development of the market economy. However,academic research on outlets is very scarce. The purpose of this research is to study the relationship between outlets’ marketing methods and customer perception. This research cooperates with Shanghai International Fashion Education Center (SIFEC)，and conducts convenience sampling on the research objects as the samples. By using quantitative research methods and questionnaire survey tools,the researchers studied the relationships among experience marketing,perceived value,customer satisfaction and loyalty of customers to outlets. The research found that outlets’ experience marketing will influence customer perceived value effectively and affect consumer satisfaction and loyalty indirectly.

Key words: outlets; sustainable development; brand marketing; statistical analysis； quantitative analysis

Introduction

From the perspective of retail product sales,especially in the field of famous brand goods,manufacturers will encounter investory problems that due to some mistakes. For the brand goods sector,these products are expensive and maybe just a small mistake that prevents these goods from providing the noble experience that brand goods should provide. Out of competition and financial pressure,the prototype of outlets was born. Outlets tend to sell discounted goods centrally through hypermarkets in the form of broken code promotions and discount promotions.

With the development of the times,outlets have gradually become a new type of industrial model,and outlets are closely related to tourism. Many tour groups add outlets as one of the means to enrich the tourist experience. In outlets shopping,evaluation systems are mostly related to customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Experience marketing and perceived value are also related to customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.There is a big difference between outlets business and duty-free shop business,most of the duty-free business takes place in the airport,while outlets has a closer relationship with the scenic spot.

Reviewing and commenting on the existing literature,the researchers find that most of the existing literature is about the evaluation of sustainable development of department stores,and only a few people are based on the outlets shopping consumption in the brand field. On the other hand,the study found that most of the brand goods shopping research occurred in Europe and the United States,and little research on the consumption of outlets brand goods in Asia. This is also one of the starting points of this paper.

1 Suggest Hypothesis

Through literature review,Li[1]took the service industry as a sample and divided the perceived value of users into four dimensions: functional value,emotional value,cost value and social value. Many researchers had concluded that all dimensions of outlets personal experience marketing had an impact on customer perceived value.

Sensory experience marketing is a kind of experience marketing carried out by enterprises,which is moving with sound,pleasing with colour,attractive with taste and moving with emotion. Sensory experience marketing have a positive impact on the customer perceived value.

Wang[2]proposed a theory based on IKEA marketing means said that retailers should add personal emotions to each part of the sales when implementing experience marketing,to meet the needs of customer’ psychological and perceived emotional value,which will have a positive impact on customer’s perceived value. In addition,Zong[3]said through the study of experience marketing of men’s wear,the enterprises enabled consumers to deepen their understanding of the brand and promoted their creative thinking.

Most scholars have concluded that experience marketing and perceived value are positively correlated at the individual level. However,each scholar divides the dimension of perceived value differently and lacks the study of the outlets scenario. This research needs to focus on the impact of personal experience marketing on each dimension of perceived value under the outlets scenario.Based on the above,the following assumptions are proposed in this study.

H1: outlets personal experience marketing has a significant positive impact on customer perceived functional value.

H2: outlets personal experience marketing has a significant positive impact on customer perceived emotional value.

H3: outlets personal experience marketing has a significant positive impact on customer perceived cost value.

H4: outlets personal experience marketing has a significant positive impact on customer perceived social value.

Through literature review,the researchers found that many scholars’ research confirmed that the dimensions of outlets personal experience marketing had an impact on customer perceived value. According to Yuan and Lin’s[4]research on children’s clothing retail market,the action experiene acted as the critical part in experienc marketing. Liu and Liu[5]took the brand Three Squirrels as an example to study experience marketing,and pointed out that action marketing created a variety of experiential opportunities for consumers,the brand Three Squirrels communicated the core concept of brand and corporate culture connotation to consumers through interaction,and had a positive impact on perceived value. Liang[6]pointed out that once the operation of associated marketing is successful,this part of consumer groups will bring considerable profits to enterprises. Related marketing had a positive correlation with customer perceived value.Lin[7]studied the marketing strategies of hotel service industry and Lin believed that the fundamental point of joint marketing was that managers effectively implement the marketing strategies of sense,emotion,thinking and action.

In this study,we need to focus on the impact of personal experience marketing on each dimension of perceived value in outlets.

Based on the above,the following assumptions are proposed in this study.

H5: outlets social experience marketing has a significant positive impact on customer perceived functional value.

H6: outlets social experience marketing has a significant positive impact on customer perceived emotional value.

H7: outlets social experience marketing has a significant positive impact on customer perceived cost value.

H8: outlets social experience marketing has a significant positive impact on customer perceived social value.

This research also studies the relationship between customer perceived value and customer satisfaction.

In 2001,Bai and Liao[8]pointed out that customer perceived value was a customer’s evaluation and preference for products and services based on the balance between profit and loss,which was positively related to satisfaction. Li[9]pointed out that if the demand and expectation of consumers increased,the satisfaction of consumers would decrease. The perceived value of consumers had a positive correlation with consumer satisfaction. Oliver[10]assumed that consumers would not be satisfied and would not be dissatisfied if the perceived value met their expectations; consumers would be satisfied if perceived performance exceeded their expectations,and consumers would be dissatisfied if perceived performance was lower than their expectations. Based on Oliver’s theoretical model,many researchers had made an in-depth definition of tourist satisfaction. The conclusion was drawn that if the performance met expectations,the tourists were satisfied,and vice versa. Perceived value was positively correlated with satisfaction.

The above kinds of literature have discussed the relationship between different dimensions of perceived value and satisfaction in different scenarios,but the researchers need to continue to conduct in-depth research on the relationship between dimensions.

Based on the above,the following assumptions are proposed in this study.

H9: customer perceived functional value has a significant positive impact on customer satisfaction with tourism consumption.

H10: customer perceived emotional value has a significant positive impact on customer satisfaction with tourism consumption.

H11: customer perceived cost emotional value has a significant positive impact on customer satisfaction with tourism consumption.

H12: customer perceived social emotional value has a significant positive impact on customer satisfaction with tourism consumption.

In the literature review,many studies had confirmed that there was a significant correlation between customer travel consumption satisfaction and customer travel consumption loyalty. Cardozo[11]showed that as long as the consumer satisfaction was improved,consumers would have repurchase ideas (it is usually defined as customer loyalty).

However,some scholars pointed out that sometimes there was no high correlation between satisfaction data and corporate performance,and customer would be more satisfied if they bougnt elsewhere.

The existing theory is based on different industry perspectives,and this paper proposes the following assumptions based on outlets tourism shopping.

H13: customer satisfaction of tourism consumption has a significant positive impact on customer loyalty.

According to the features of the model,a certain mesomeric effect will be formed. In the study of relevant literature on mesomeric effect,the researchers found that many scholars believed that perceived value can be used as a mediator of experience marketing,customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Gallarzaetal.[12]proposed a loyalty model,which showed perceived value had a positive impact on experience marketing and customer loyalty. Wang[13]researched the tourism industry and IKEA. The research showed that emotional experience marketing would increase the awareness of the product by increasing customer perceived emotional value,thereby increasing the customer’s dependence and satisfaction on the brand,this indicated that the emotional perceived value had a mediator effect.

Based on the above,the following assumptions are proposed in this study.

H14: customer satisfaction of tourism consumption and customer perceived functional value have a chain-mediated effect between customer loyalty of tourism consumption and personal experience marketing.

H15: customer satisfaction of tourism consumption and customer perceived emotional value have a chain-mediated effect between customer loyalty of tourism consumption and personal experience marketing.

H16: customer satisfaction of tourism consumption and customer perceived cost value have a chain-mediated effect between customer loyalty of tourism consumption and personal experience marketing .

H17: customer satisfaction of tourism consumption and customer perceived social value have a chain-mediated effect between customer loyalty of tourism consumption and personal experience marketing.

In the literature review,many studies explored the relationship among experience marketing,perceived value,satisfaction and loyalty of customer. However,less research has focused on that perceived value and customer travel consumption satisfaction could both serve as a mediator effect,which had a mediator effect on experience marketing and loyalty. Therefore,this study explores the relationships between the above four.

When the customer’s perceived cost value increases,the customer’s satisfaction will be increased and the customer’s loyalty to the enterprises will also be increased.

Impact of brand experience on satisfaction is not statistically significant,some researchers ignoring the link between brand experience and customer perceived value. That is,perceived value is an important moderating variable among customer loyalty,perception or internal reaction.

User loyalty is a behavioural variable,which can be interpreted as the intention of reconstruction. Between user loyalty and perceived value,satisfaction can be used as a mediator effect.Perceived emotional value has certain positive marketing effect on repurchase intention,and also has a certain mediator influence on satisfaction.

According to Petricketal.[14],tourism experience,perceived value,satisfaction,revisited tourism and destination intention had a positive correlation with tourism loyalty,and perceived value and satisfaction had a positive correlation mediating effect. Yuan and Lin[15]pointed out that in social experience marketing,satisfaction was positively correlated with loyalty and action experience.

Many researchers indirectly show that perceived value and customer satisfaction in tourism consumption have a positive correlation with experience marketing and customer loyalty in tourism consumption. Because the samples come from various industries in the tourism field,there are few studies under the outlets scenario. Based on the above,the following hypotheses are proposed in this study.

H18: customer satisfaction of tourism consumption and customer perceived functional value play a chain-mediated role between customer loyalty of tourism consumption and outlets social experience marketing.

H19: customer satisfaction of tourism consumption and customer perceived emotional value play a chain-mediated role between customer loyalty of tourism consumption and outlets social experience marketing.

H20: customer satisfaction of tourism consumption and customer perceived cost value play a chain-mediated role between customer loyalty of tourism consumption and outlets social experience marketing.

H21: customer satisfaction of tourism consumption and customer perceived social value play a chain-mediated role between customer loyalty of tourism consumption and outlets social experience marketing.

This research is in collaboration with the Shanghai International Fashion Education Center (SIFEC),taking participants in the SIFEC’s tourism project “Japan Fashion Study Tour Project” as the research object. Among the tourism project,there are itineraries for shopping at local representative outlets. Each phase of the project are about 20 members. The members who participate in the projectduct all have experience of outlets shopping. The researchers selected the top quality group within two years,and ensured with the head of the group that those who participated in the questionnaire had traveled to the outlets area for shopping. The researchers eliminated the groups who did not enter the outlets for personal reasons,carried out convenient sampling,analyzed the samples and released the questionnaire.

Then from June 30,2019 to August 1,2019,the researchers entrust the overseas study tour department of SIFEC to scan QR codes face to face to conduct pre-suvery on the participants of “Japan Fashion Study Tour Project” through convenience sampling. In the pre-survey section,110 questionnaires were distributed and 102 were recovered. The incomplete and random questionnaires were eliminated,and 93 valid questionnaires were finally obtained for analysis,with a recovery rate of 92.73% and an effective rate of 91.18%.

Finally,this study used Statistical Product and Service Solutions(SPSS) 23.0 software to analyze the items,validity and reliability of the effective pre-survey questionnaire,and this study delete the unqualified items. Based on modifying,merging and again,the formal questionnaire is formed.

Due to the influence of brand people behaviour and habits,as well as the influence of the scale of boutique travel groups,the maximum number of formal research samples is 500,which is one of the research limitations.

2 Data Description

After the completion of the pre-survey,through the reliability and validity analysis,the questionnaire is found that the reliability and validity of the pre-test questionnaire are good and it can be used as a data collection tool for this study. The researchers conducted a formal questionnaire survey from August 2019 to December 2019.

In this study,a total of 460 questionnaires were distributed and 449 were recovered with a total recovery rate of 97.6%. SPSS 23.0 and AMOS 24.0 are used to analyze the empirical data of the questionnaire content,including the following aspects: first,the researcher conductd descriptive statistical analysis through software,then measured the model,and finally the researcher used software to test the hypothesis proposed in this paper.

2.1 Analysis of income disparity

To test whether consumers with different income levels have different willingness to shop at outlets,the researchers conduct a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA )to find out the results.

From Table 1,we can find that the single-factor ANOVA is less than 0.05. To get the concrete performance of the difference,we need to confirm the further analysis method through the homogeneity of variance test.

From Table 2,we can see that the significance of homogeneity of variance test is less than 0.05,which shows that it rejects the null hypothesis,that is to say,the variance is not homogeneous,and we must use Tamhane’s method to compare and analyze it after the fact.

According to the above variance homogeneity test,the following Table 3 is obtained by comparing the shopping willingness with Tamhane’s method after the event.

Table 1 ANOVA of consumer intentions with different income levels

Table 2 Homogeneity of variance test of consumer intentions with different income levels

From the data in Table 3,we can see that consumers with an income of 3 000 RMB or less are significantly less willing to shop than those with incomes of 5 000-8 000 RMB or more than 8 000 RMB. Therefore,low-income consumers are less willing to shop than high-income consumers.

Table 3 Multiple comparison of consumer intentions with different income levels

2.2 Analysis of differences in academic qualifications

From Table 4,we can find that the single-factor ANOVA is less than 0.05. To get the concrete performance of the difference,we need to confirm the further analysis method through the homogeneity of variance test.

Table 4 ANOVA of consumer intentions with different educational levels

It can be seen from Table 5 that in the test of homogeneity of shopping willingness variance,the significance of the test is less than 0.05,indicating that the test rejects the null hypothesis,which means that the variance is inhomogeneous,and it is necessary to use Tamhane’s method for posterior comparisons.Based on the above variance homogeneity test,the Tamhane ’s method is used to compare the “shopping willingness” afterwards,and the following Table 6 was obtained.

Table 5 Homogeneity of variance test of consumer intentions with different educational levels

It can be seen from Table 6 that the significance of the test is less than 0.05,which means that the shopping willingness of consumers with junior middle school and below is significantly lower than consumers with other educational levels. Therefore,consumers with low education level are less willing to shop than consumers with high education level.

Table 6 Multiple comparison of consumer intentions of different educational levels

2.3 Analysis of differences in nature of work

From Table 7,we can find that the single-factor ANOVA is less than 0.05. To get the concrete performance of the difference,we need to confirm the further analysis method through the homogeneity of variance test.

Table 7 ANOVA of differences in nature of work

From Table 8,we can see that the significance of homogeneity of variance test is less than 0.05,which shows that it rejects the null hypothesis,that is,the variance is not homogeneous,and we must use Tamhane’s method to compare and analyze it. According to the above variance homogeneity test,the following Table 9 is obtained by comparing the “shopping willingness” with Tamhane’s method.

Table 8 Homogeneity of variance test of differences in nature of work

As the tour group is targeted at white-collar workers,the preliminary survey is divided into two categories: white-collar workers and others. Table 9 shows the comparison of purchasing intention between white-collar workers and other work levels. We can see that the significance of the test is less than 0.05. That is to say,the working nature of the white-collar consumer’s shopping willingness is significantly higher than the working nature of the other consumers.

Table 9 Multiple comparison of differences in nature of work

2.4 Common method variance (CMV) test

In this study,the maximum likelihood method was used for confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation model test to estimate parameters,and a prerequisite for this method was that the sample data should be normally distributed.

Therefore,the skewness and kurtosis of all items were tested in this study,and the results showed that the skewness and kurtosis of all items in the questionnaire were within the required range,and accorded with the normal distribution,which can be further analyzed. In this study,the Harman’s single-factor method was used to test the results. The first explanation was 46.830%,no more than 50%. Therefore,the CMV of this questionnaire was not serious. Through the common method variance test (Table 10),researchers can further understand the composition of the data.

Table 10 Initial characteristic value

(Table 10 continued)

After the analysis and test of reliability and validity,it is proved that the data has corresponding validity and reliability.

The model was fitted by the statistical software AMOS 24.0 using structural equation modeling. It can be seen from Table 11 that the dimensions of service quality are good fitting.

Table 11 Conclusion of structural equation model

3 Analysis of Problems and Suggestions

3.1 Analysis of problems

Existing outlets marketing strategies lead to low loyalty and high liquidity. Loyalty and perceived social value is relatively low among the existing outlets consumers shopping intentions.

In terms of social cognitive status,the total mean value of the four items is only 3.93,which is the lower of each item on the scale. Consumers pay more attention to the products and brands of outlets but influenced by the corporate image of outlets and the consistent external discount route,its social status display function is weak.

Due to the openness and competition of the shopping market,and the positioning of the selling point as discount promotion,it will bring the risk of adverse selection of attracting price-sensitive customer,which is easy to lose and change customers,resulting in relatively low customer loyalty of outlets.

3.2 Research suggestions

3.2.1Promotionforqualityofoutletssalesstaff

With the rapid development of outlets industry,market competition becomes more and more fierce. To create differentiation and gain the greatest competitive advantage,outlets managers need to constantly improve their products and services,and based on improvement,they need to take the satisfaction of tourism retail consumers as the purpose and explore new ways.

In the process of service,the role of sales personnel is extremely important,and ultimately determines the consumption experience of some retail tourism consumers. Sales staff with high professional skills and a high sense of responsibility is an important asset for outlets managers. Outlets are not the distribution centre of fast-selling brands，discount products of brand goods are the main sales force. This special attribute is doomed to be a huge difference to fast-selling brands.

3.2.2Establishmentofagoodservicerelationship

From the perspective of the hypothesis,personal experience will have a significant impact on final consumption,which is stronger than social experience. In the process of service contact with tourism retail consumers,due to the high demand for professional needs,especially for aesthetic suggestions,tourism retail consumers are easy to rely on professional salespeople,thus to a certain extent affecting perceived value,affecting satisfaction,and loyalty.

Through improving the quality of sales personnel,service awareness,and paying attention to the emotional changes of tourism retail consumers will create a positive shopping behaviour of tourism retail consumers,establish a good interactive relationship with tourism retail consumers,and improve the satisfaction of tourism retail consumers.

3.2.3Establishmentofgoodafter-salesrelationships

The key groups of after-sales service are regardless of age,education,and gender,so this is more difficult to maintain,but every customer who goes out of outlets may need such follow-up services. If the tourism retail consumers are slow in this aspect,the service of outlets will bring some negative effects soon,and the customer flow and public praise that they have worked hard to obtain will be lost one day.

In the process of sales,it is necessary to emphasize the professionalism of sales staff. For example,many brand goods have after-sales attitudes such as “lifetime warranty” and “problem replacement” that also need to be inherited in outlets consumption.

4 Conclusions

The current marketing strategy of outlets leads to low loyalty and high churn rate. A good personal shopping experience can enhance consumers’ perceived value to outlets,which has a positive effect on the promotion of shopping intention. Paying attention to the customers’ perceived emotional value is the most important factor in the development of outlets. However,the perceived functional value is difficult to be reflected in the marketing means,and it is also difficult to improve customer satisfaction.Good social experience marketing will bring customers the awareness that shopping in outlets has a high social status. This can increase consumers’ perceived functional value. Good social experience marketing also plays a positive role in promoting shopping intention.In outlets scenario,the influence path of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty is affected by other different variables.