Author(s): Mujibur Rahman, Md. Chand Rashid, Jitender Kumar and Ashish Gupta
In the fiercely competitive Indian retail sector, department stores are experiencing competitive pressures due to increased competition from discount stores, specialty stores, and aggressive e-commerce players. These stores are finding it difficult to hold their customers for a long time from switching to competing retailers and develop store loyalty for their success & growth. Given this backdrop, the present study aims to examine store loyalty across leading department stores and the impact of customer demographics (age, gender, marital and income on these departmental stores. The study was undertaken in the National Capital Region of Delhi and the primary data was collected from 287 respondents, who purchased regularly in one of the five leading department stores - Shoppers Stop, Lifestyle, Pantaloons, Globus, and Westside. Statistical analysis of the data was done with the help of SPSS 20 software. The key statistical tools applied were Independent sample t-test, one-way ANOVA and Post-hoc tests for data analysis. The results reveal significant differences in customer loyalty towards different department stores. Shoppers Stop emerged as the best department store in terms of store loyalty followed by Westside, Pantaloons, Globus and Lifestyle store. The study also reveals significant differences in-store loyalty between different age groups, male and female customers, as well as between different income groups.