Fatores determinantes na escolha de supermercados em Santa Maria (RS)

Abstract

The business environmenttod today is unstable and within a context of strong competition from markets businesses requiring full knowledge of their customers to build competitive differential that makes them more able to confront the challenges of his. This study addresses the issue of consumer behaviour, from the viewpoint that consumers have about the determinants of choice of supermarkets, which contribute to the business sector of supermarkets adopt management practices in line with what is valued by customers. The research is quantitative in nature, based on questionnaires filled closed in the month of November 2007, for two hundred and four visitors from five different supermarkets in the city of Santa Maria (RS). The construction of these questionnaires for collecting data was supported in a literature review for support of research. The techniques used for the multivariate analysis of data were: analysis of conglomerates and factor analysis. The first is a multivariate technique that can be used in marketing to group similar variables among themselves. Already the factor analysis to verify the dimensions related to a particular construct identifying the existence of different dimensions of factors. The results show that five groups reflect the behavior of similarity of the original variables, which are: space, beauty, cost-effectiveness, comfort and physical-arrangement. In factor analysis six factors were extracted, representing 57.01% of the total variability of the data, these are internal organization, convenience, economy, array-physical, beauty and space. So, to see how similar found by the two multivariate techniques presented which demonstrates the consistency of results. Thus, it is suggested to entrepreneurs to implement actions that incorporates the variables of greatest impact in the choice of supermarket by consumers in order to leverage the performance of its business.