Study On Historical Changes Of Retail Formats Based On Consumer Behavior

In the context of economy uncertainty, the global retail sales in2010showed slowly unbalanced growth while China's retail industry has maintained steady and rapid growth, owning to the promotion of a variety of factors including the continued increase of residents'income, the transformation of economic growth, the promotion of scientific and technological changes, the acceleration of urbanization and industrialization process, the upgrade of residents'consumption structure and the effect of a series of consumption stimulus policies. During the12th Five-Year Plan period, Chinese government has formulated the methods to accelerate the economic development transformation and the expanding domestic demand strategy, providing an unprecedented period of strategic opportunities for China's retail industry development. Based on a view from the micro-perspective of consumer behavior, this study analyzes and researches how China's retail industry promotes effective competition in the new technology conditions, improving consumer's utility, thus to realize the upgrade of the retail structure and provide a theoretical basis and practical space for the expansion.In this study, we discussed the evolution of Chinese retail industry, including the development features, the influencing factors and the mechanism of actions mainly on the basis of Industry Organization Theory, Retail Industry Organization Theory, Elasticity Theory, Consumer Theory, Consumer Behavior Theory and Sustainable Development Theory. Based on this, we built a theoretical retail evolution model and generated the factors of consumer behavior that influence retail evolution and retail formats optimization trends through the questionnaire and empirical analysis. Finally we proposed some suggestions putting retail formats optimization forward on account of China's consumer behaviors features.Firstly, we systematically organized the theories of consumer behavior and retail industry organization. Using the Retail Industry Organization Evolution Theory and Consumer Behavior Theory as the main theoretical basis to organize literatures related to the retail formats definitin, retail formats structure, retail space structure, and retail evolution based on the consumer, thereby laying the firm basis of building the theoretical model of this study.Secondly, we generated a comprehensive summary of China's retail evolution history, development characteristics, opportunities and challenges it faced with and its development trends. For historical review, we divided development cource into three stages since the reform and opening up of China's retail industry. We summarized the development characteristics of retail industry from five aspects including the scale, performance, competition, formats structure and regional structure. Then we analyzed the opportunities and challenges China's retail industry faces in the new economic situation and put forward that China's retail industry presents six development trends.Thirdly, we reasonablly generated a retail formats evolution theoretical model based on consumer behavior which is the core theoretical part of this study. We believed that retail formats evolution and optimization is the balanced results of formats competition under a newer technology condition meeting with consumer utility in a larger extent. Therefore, we chose to explore the retail formats evolution from the micro-perspective of consumer behavior. And then we analyzed the influencing factors as variables how consumer behavior influence retail formats, so as to build a theoretical analysis framework.Fourthly, through practice we researched the impact consumer behavior has on retail formats evolution and optimization. We used the questionnaires and Structural Equation Modeling analysis to test26hypotheses proposed in the theoretical model and13of them are supported, and came four basic conclusions:First, the concentration of traditional formats, significantly influenced by consumers' income, quality preference, convenience preference, is correspondingly increasing and there is enough space for formats optimization. Second, the concentration of combined formats, tending to fall, is remarkably affected by consumer income and their service preference, and the formats competition is relatively stable. Third, the concentration of contemporary formats, rapidly growing, is largely influenced by the level of consumers' education, service preference, institution environment and financial service standard, and they are increasingly competitive. Fourth, the portfolio of commodities is signally and positively affected by the institution enviroment with the commodity structure improves to be specialized and ecological.Fifthly, we further analyzed the consumer behavior features in China and proposed some suggestions aimed at the optimization of traditional formats, combined formats and contemporary formats, according to Guidance of the12th Five-Year Plan Period and Program of Quality Development (2011-2020). We also suggested it necessary to keep the balance of layouts structure of retail stores, formats structure in urban and suburb areas and market competition structure.The innovation of this study is mainly reflected in three aspects:1. That we choose to take a view from a micro-perspective to analyze the evolution of retail formats, so as to meet with the demand of the consumer needs and improve consumer utility. Unlike most the similar study based on macro and meso perspectives, this paper specialized in a micro-perspective. Moreover, a small amount of articles aiming at optimizing retail formats from the perspective of consumer behavior are always based only on one single format. The reason might be that the variables involved in consumer behavior are mostly multi-scale variables that are unobservable, the differences among customer behaviors are quite significant, the influenced factors are very complicated, and the design and data is really hard to deal with. This study spares no effort to conquer these difficulties mentioned before, chooses Two-Oriented Society to construct the experiment district as the data sample, takes the characteristics of urban consumer behaviors into account, cooperates with a consultant company to design the survey research, organizes questionnaire survey in large scales and operates it strictly regulate, so as to obtain the precious original data, providing a reliable data base for the empirical research.2. In this study, we have a strict logical theory deduction of the influencing factors of consumer behavior, retail formats evolution and its mechanism of action. Unlike the researches done before, we classified the retail formats into3types as traditional formats, contemporary formats and combined formats taking4factors into account as the income-demand elasticity of products, the consumer demand levels that the products meet, the operation types combination degree and the technology levels using in retail management. Thus we came to the conclusion that the retail formats evolution is the equilibrium of the competition of the3types of retail formats on a new boundary line of technology supply. In addition, we evaluate the retail formats evolution by Pareto Optimality standard as improve both the industry performance and consumer utility, which means the inside effect and the external spillover effect of retail industry evolution. When both of the2conditions are improved, retail formats evolution can reach the Pareto optimal. The consumer behavior analysis framework in this study is based on the theory proposed by Engel, Kollat&Blackwell, namely, the consumer behavior consists of personal factors, intrinsic psychological factors and external environmental factors. Meanwhile, the external environmental factors are the antecedent variables of internal psychological factors.3. We use the management analysis tools to solve the problem under the economics analysis frame. To conquer the relatively complicated problem and the difficulty on the access to data, we spent a lot of time on cooperating with a consultant company to design the survey, organizing questionnaire survey in large scales and operating it strictly regulate, and finally we obtain the precious original data, providing a reliable data base for the empirical research. On the other hand, through a series of correlation, regression and structural equation analyses, we find the influencing factors of retail formats evolution based on the consumer behavior and its development trends, which provide a theory base for the proposal for the retail formats optimization.