In the highly competitive and dynamic world of fashion retailing, developing and retaining loyal customers is a requirement for survival, let alone success. Marketing practitioners have found that to keep customers loyal, a firm must go beyond merely satisfying to truly delighting them (Schlossberg, 1990; Arnold, Reynolds, Ponder and Lueg, 2005). However, only Arnold et al. (2005) explored the concept of customer delight in a generic (multi-format) retail environment. To the author’s knowledge, there has not been any similar research conducted in the South African retail environment and none specific to fashion apparel retailers. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine customer delight in the context of fashion retailing. Specifically, qualitative research was conducted to determine the antecedents and outcomes of delightful shopping experiences for these customers. Critical incident analysis of 33 depth interviews with shoppers revealed several factors associated with delightful shopping experiences and the resultant business outcomes. Together with presenting a model that fashion retailers can use to stage delightful shopping experiences, a number of strategic implications are discussed, and limitations and directions for future research are also addressed. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:up/oai:repository.up.ac.za:2263/23666 |
| Date | 31 March 2010 |
| Creators | Rawat, Junaid Ahmed |
| Contributors | Ms N Kleyn, upetd@up.ac.za |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Rights | © 2006 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria |
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