| Since China cancelled the limit of the region, the stockholder's rights and thequantity for the foreign-owned corporations on December 11, 2004, obvious changeshave taken place in China's retail market and the retail market has become one of themost intense industries in our country. At present, the main supermarket-generalmerchandise stores which are owned by the foreigners have occupied dominantposition, moreover this status also will continue. For example, there are 114 generalmerchandise stores in Shanghai by September 30, 2005. Among them, 60 generalmerchandise stores are owned by foreign capital, account for 52%, Chinese generalmerchandise stores are facing enormous challenge. In this new development pattern,in order to win its own market share in the competitive market day by day, retailenterprise must highlight its unique store image, and enhance customers' purchaserate. Although many scholars and managers have paid more and more attention to thestore image, in the past, the research on the store image in China was limited in thetheory, there are less empirical study, and they has not fully realized the importance ofthe store image for the managers to improve the retail management performance.There are more and more impulse buying in the supermarket since the expense ideahas changed a lot, and supermarket managers are facing an urgent question: how toform a good store image to stimulate the consumer's impulse buying.Therefore this paper analyzes factors which affect the consumers' impulsebuying from the store image angle, simultaneously also analyzes the differences ineach research variable among different consumer background and puts forwardfeasible proposal for the retail manager. In order to study the above question, thispaper carries on the questionnaire survey and takes consumers that are in five generalmerchandise stores in Qingdao as the research object, and analyzes 243 effectivesamples to carry on the data analysis. Main conclusions are as follows: (1) storeimage of general merchandise store consists of four dimensions: store atmosphere,service, convenience, promotion;(2) four dimensions of the store image are relevant tothe impulse buying, among them, service prominently influences impulse buying,other factors are also influential, but their respective influence degree is different;(3)there are remarkable variable sensation differences between store image and impulsebuying for the different consumer background characteristic customer. |
