Effect Of Store Images Gap And Ideal Self-image Congruence On Customers’ Spillover Patronage

Consumers’ spillover patronage in the shopping mall is the external manifestations of retail demand externalities. With the range of the consumers’ spillover patronage increases, the performance of retail agglomerations will be higher. In recent years, more and more scholars pay attention to the study of the consumers’ spillover patronage. There is a scholar who used self-image congruence theory to explain the consumers’ spillover patronage, he thought when the gap between the image of anchor store and that of non-anchor store is smaller, the typical shopper’s image of anchor stores and non-anchor stores will more congruent and the anchor store has a greater spillover effect on the non-anchor stores. Self-concept has four dimensions, which are real self, ideal self, social self and ideal social self. Many consumers choose to patronize a store, is not necessarily that the store satisfied his real self, it is possible that the store satisfied the consumer’s ideal self. Such as a consumer who desire to become a soldier, when he shopping in a shopping mall, he unconsciously that pay attention on military goods. Therefore, only from the perspective of the true self-image congruence can not explain all the spillover patronage, but also should consider the role of the ideal self-image congruence.In recent years, in addition, the consumers put the shopping mall as a place for leisure and entertainment. According to the theory of situation self-image, when consumers in a hedonic situation he will increase the display of ideal self. So, driven by the hedonic motivation, is the consumer more willing to patronize those stores who can meet their ideal self? There is no a reasonable explanation now.Based on the gap and the reality of the above research, this study will start with the gap of the store image, and consider the expression of the ideal self, to study the formation of the spillover patronage. This study specific to explore three issues: First, do the stores image gap between anchor stores and non- anchor stores impact to the spillover patronage? Second, does the anchor stores-non-anchor stores ideal self-image congruence impact to the spillover patronage? Third, the role of hedonic motivation between anchor stores-non-anchor stores ideal self-image congruence and spillover patronage.This study use of intercept access to the consumer research in Changchun City, the most representative of the two shopping malls(Wanda, New World), issued a total of 300 questionnaires(150 at Wanda, 150 at New World), and recovered 273 valid questionnaires. Through the analysis of the data, the following conclusions are obtained:(1) Store image gap has a negative effect on spillover patronage. This shows that consumers are more willing to patronize shops which have similar store images, and the non-anchor image can manage his own store image to share the consumer from the anchor image.(2) Anchor store-non-anchor store ideal self-image congruence has a positive effect on spillover patronage. If shops want to get more customers in shopping mall, not only should to consider of their own store image, but also should to consider the expression of the ideal self of consumers.(3) Hedonic motivation moderates the effect of anchor store-non-anchor stores ideal self–image congruence on spillover patronage. As the anchor store-non-anchor self-image congruence increases, the spillover patronage increases when shoppers have the hedonic motivational orientation. This shows that if the shopping mall to increase the customer experience, the possibility of consumers to spillover patronage will be improved.The contribution of this study is:(1) Examine the store-non-anchor store ideal self-image congruence influence on spillover patronage, to promote the study of the influence factors of spillover patronage;(2) Examine the moderating effect of hedonic motivation between the relation of anchor store-non-anchor stores ideal self–image congruence and spillover patronage. Further clear the scope of ideal self–image congruence e impact of spillover patronage.