How do Customers Value the Use of Inner City Shopping? An Empirical Analysis
(A2019-9530)

AUTHORS

Stephanie Schwipper, University of Duisburg-Essen; Severine Peche, University of Duisburg-Essen; Gertrud Schmitz, University of Duisburg-Essen

KEYWORDS

Inner City Retailing; Inner City Customer Behavior; Value in Use

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study is to identify and empirically validate relevant benefits and costs of perceived value in use of an inner city shopping trip. Moreover, we examine the relevance of customers’ value perceptions for four behavioral outcomes. We identified relevant benefit and cost components as well as behavioral outcomes through a literature review and a qualitative pre-study (n=29) and developed a higher-order conceptualization of the perceived value in use. We tested our research model by conducting a variance-based structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) approach (n=314). Our findings suggest both retail-related and inner city-related benefits are important value components, which indicate that inner city retailers and city management must cooperate to increase customers’ value perceptions. Furthermore, our results demonstrate the importance of a high value in use of inner city shopping trips to generate competitive advantages over online retailers and peripheral shopping malls.