Research On Effects Of Activity-Involvement On Place-attachment And Cross-buying

With the increasing competition of the retail industry, it is becoming more and more difficult to attract new customers. So, how to effectively promote cross-buying of the existing customers to earn more profits has become an important means to gain a competitive advantage in retail enterprises. In this context, a growing number of domestic and foreign scholars began to study the drivers of cross-buying, these studies have focused on two levels:First, the customer level; second,the enterprise level. These studies have achieved remarkable results, but there is obviously insufficient, most of them ignore the connections between the consumers and the stores, particularly the emotional connections.In many cases, customers are happy to go shopping in specific stores because they have a special attachment with the stores, this attachment contains both a functional dependency and an emotional recognition. This kind of attachment is called Place-attachment, it has two dimensions:Place-dependence and Place identity. In addition, consumers’attitudes towards shopping will impact their actions too. These attitudes of consumers’towards certain activities are called Activity-involvement. Activity-involvement has three dimensions:Attraction, Self-expression, Centrality. Studies have shown that consumer’ Activity-involvement will impact their place attachment level.Based on the analysis above, this paper tries to do the empirical research on department store customers to explore the relationship among Activiy-involvement, Place-attachment and Cross-buying. In order to achieve the goal,this paper builds a model of Activiy-involvement, Place-attachment and Cross-buying, conducts investigations of department store customers,uses SPSS19.0to analysis the data collected, then draws the conclusions according to the results of data analysis.The main conclusions are as follows:(1) Activiy-involvement has a significant positive effect on Place-attachment. Both Attraction and Self-expression have a significant positive effect on Place-dependence and Place-identity. Centrality has a significant positive effect on Place-identity,while the effect of Centrality on Place-dependence is not obvious.(2) Activiy-involvement has a significant positive effect on t cross-buying. Both attraction and self-expression have a significant positive effect on cross-buying.The effect of centrality on cross-buying is not obvious.(3) Place-attachment has a significant positive effect on cross-buying.Both place-dependence and place-identity have a significant positive effect on cross-buying.(4) Place-attachment plays a part of the intermediary role to the relationship between Activiy-involvement andCross-buying.Based on the conclusions,this papeer proposed three suggestions to retailers. First, classify the customers according to the degree of Activiy-involvement,then develop different marketing measures to different customers. Second, create a good shopping situations in order to enhance the activity-involvement of customer. Third, meet customers’multi-level needs in order to promote their place-attachment level.