Possible marketing solutions to attract the customers to coop mart can tho, viet nam

Using primary data of 110 observations and statistical and EFA analysis, the paper show that few groups of factors that may affect on using decisions Coopmark Can Tho are reasonable pric

Volume2, Issue 1, Page No: 09-23

January-February 2016

ISSN:2455-1651

Possible marketing solutions to attract the customers to Coop Mart Can Tho, Viet Nam

Vuong Quoc Duy

College of Economics,

Can Tho University, Viet Nam

vqduy@ctu.edu.vn

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the possible marketing solutions to attract the customers to Coopmark Can Tho Using primary data of 110 observations and statistical and EFA analysis, the paper show that few groups of factors that may affect on using decisions Coopmark Can Tho are reasonable prices, good products quality, shopping experience, advertisement and decoration methods, safety and comfortable of additional services On the given basics, the paper suggests possible marketing solutions to attract the customers to come with Can Tho Coopmark more affiance

Keywords: Coopmark, Customers, Marketing, EFA analysis

INTRODUCTION:

In the era of economic integration in the world, economic

experts evaluated that Vietnam is a market of great

potential In addition, the business activities of

enterprises in the country are facing the risks and

challenges Due to the volatility of the overall economy

and demand as well as the purchase behavior of

consumers change, propose marketing solutions for

business enterprise, especially the retail business to

business sales is essential issues

The retail market in Vietnam is becoming more quite

competition Besides the traditional markets, the general

stores, the representative store, the appearance of many

retail supermarkets have been established The emerging

of the supermarkets that matched the diversified

demand of customers is promoting to change the

national economic development With the increasing of

the customer shopping demands, various suppermarkets

have been appearanced such as Coopmark Can Tho, Big

C, Metro, Vincom and supermarket Lotte Mark

Moreover, many foreign retailers are already looking for

opportunities to join the Vietnam market

Can Tho, a big city with the crowded population has

become a major consumption markets that many of

geared to businesses In the competitive market, each

supermarket itself needs to propose the Marketing solutions in order to create competitive advantage and the difference to consumers increasingly trust and use the goods To attract and retain customers, the essential step is making consumers aware of and interested in the supermarket In the experience in Coopmark Can Tho, current and potential risks have been presented Therefore, the study of “possible marrketing solutions to attract the customers to Coopmark Can Tho” is naturally neccesary

II Theoretical framework and Methodology 2.1 Theoretical framework

2.1.1 Supermarket concept

Currently, regarding to the views of each of the country, the supermarket is defined differently First, the United States admitted the supermarket is "self service store relatively large levels of low cost, high profit rate and the high volume of goods sold, to ensure full satisfaction of consumer demand on food, laundry detergents, cleaners and care homes" (Philips Kotler) Second, a supermarket

in France is considered as "retail stores according to the method of self service area from 400 m 2 to 2500m2 mainly selling food" (Marc Benoun, 1991)

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In Vietnam, according to the regulations of the

supermarket issued on 24 September 2004 of Vietnam

Trade Center (now the Ministry of trade of Vietnam), the

supermarket is the type of modern stores; general

business or sales professional; the category of cargo

abundant variety, quality assurance; meet the standards

of the business area, the technical equipment and the

level of management, business organization; There is the

method of service of civilization and convenient to the

customers’ shopping demand

2.1.2 Consumption behavioral theory

Leon G.Schiffman & Leslie Lazar Kanuk has defined that

"consumer behavior is the entire action that consumers

revealed in the course of the exchange of products,

including: the investigation, procurement, use, and

evaluation of handling waste product removal and service

satisfying their needs"

The purchasing decision process is a sequence of stages

that consumers spent in shopping decisions a product, of

any service That process consists of five stages:

Needs awareness  search products and related

information  Analysis, compare the products among

brands  purchasing decision  evaluate the products

after use

2.2 Factors affecting on the buying decision

Individuals and groups have been considered by the

consumer behavior as they select, purchase, use and

dispose products, ideas, services or experiences

Consumers seek items to satisfy their basic needs and

desires event their children needs Therefore, consumer

behavior is much more than studying what consumer

buy It is expected to understand how the

decision-making process goes and how the consumers’ buying

behavior is affected (Solomon, 2004)

A consumer’s buying behavior is influened by the social,

cultural, personal and psychological factors Given

behavior is a part of human behavior and by studying

behavior, the making purchasing decisions of consumers can be predicted and estimated Following parts focus on the social, personal and psychological characteristics of consumer behavior

2.2.1 Social characteristics:

Perreau (2014) found that social factors affect consumer behavior significantly Every individual has someone around influencing their buying decisions The important social issues included reference groups, family, role and status

Every consumer is an individual and still belong to a group which is classified directly or simply.The behavioral consumer can be affected by a reference group The reference group provides some points of comparison to consumers about their behavior, lifestyle or habits Reference groups are often from smaller groups such as family member, close friends, neighbors, work group or other people that consumers associate with Sometimes, the consumers can be affected by the group to which they do not belong yet Above groups are group where a consumer aspires to belong and wants to be a part in the future (Kotler and Amstrong, 2009; Khan, 2006)

Consumers’ buying behavior can affected by the family member A family forms the environment for an individual to acquire value, develop and shape personality This environment provides the possibility to develop attitudes and options towards several subjects such as society, social relations and politics A family makes first perceptions about the brands or products and consumer habits (Kotler and Amstrong, 2009)

Individuals play various different roles in their lives Each role consists of activities and attitudes that are expected from an individual to perform according to the persons around him/her Social status reflects the position that individuals have in social groups based on such things as wealth and money, education or occupation In the world, social status is significant and people want the

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admiration of others Product and brand selection often

reflects the social role and status (Wright, 2003)

2.2.2 Personal characteristics

Personal factors such as a buyer’s age and life sycle state,

occupation, economic situation, lifestyle, and personality

and seft concept have affected on an individual’s

decisions The decision of consumers have changed

during their life and buying of products alter depending

on age and stage of life Age related characteristics are

such as taste in food, clothing, recreation and furniture

In addition, the values, environment, lifestyle, hobbies

and consumer habits change during lifetime Traditionally

a family life cycle include only married couples with

children and young singles Recently, the concept of

family life have been changed to vary such as unmarried

couples, childless couples, same sex couples, single

parents and singles marrying later in life (Kotler and

Amstrong, 2009) It is assumed that consumers’ buying

decision at super market can change during lifetime and

has effect on good and products selection in different

stages of life

Purchasing decisions and buying behavior have been

affected by a consumer’s occupation and purchasing

power The income level influences what consumers can

afford and the perspective towards money Similar taste

in music, clothing and leisure activities are the tendency

of the people who have similar occupation People often

socialze with each other, and share the same kind of

values and ideas Solomon (2004) found that what

consumer can afford and perspective towards money can

affected by the income level Individuals from lower

income groups are probably more interested in buying

products that are necessary for survival than buying

luxury brands good and products

Consumers’ life style tells how the person lives and

spends money It is combined from earlier experiences,

current situation and congenital characteristics The

product choices that consumer s make are related to

their lifestyle An individual’s lifestyle consists of different life style dimensions (Khan 2006) These dimensions are activities describe how consumer s spends their time, e.g work, hobbies, or vacations; Interests are consumer s ’ preferences and priorities e.g family, home or food; and Opinions tell how consumers feel about different issues, e.g themselves, politics or products (Plummer, 1974)

Above dimension express a person’s pattern of living Lifestyle will influence consumer’s buying behavior and dicision

Individual traits have been considered as personal standard to distinguish one person from another These individual traits can be self-confidence, adaptability, sociability and dominance (Kotler and Amstrong, 2009) Personality determines how we see ourselves and the world arond us as well as how other people see us Our personality can be shaped by the attitudes, values and people around us Wright (2006) indicated that the personality change during life when a person grows up and changes surroundings Moreover, Kardes et al (2011) describes the self-concept as follows: ”Self-concept is often discribed as the totality of an individual’s thoughts and feelings regarding him herself as an object”

2.2.3 Psychological factors

A buyer’s choices are also influenced bu four psychological factors such as motivation, perception, learning and beliefs and attitudes A consumer is an individual who has different kind of needs These needs can be biological like thirst or psychological arising from the need of recognition or beloging as proposed by Abraham Maslow which are: Phyciological need; Safety; Belongingness needs; Ego needs and Self-actualization

A person acts regarding to his or her perception of the situation Each person receives thousands of sensory stimuli like light, color, sound, smell, taste and texture per day Perception is the process through which these sensations are selected, organized and interpret to form

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meaningful picture of the world A consumer only focuses

on a few stimulus that he/she is exposed Consumer

might follow many stimulus in the environment and only

focus on those related to their current need Selective

distortion shows how people will interpret information in

the way that it supports what they already believe Due

to their experience, beliefs and attitudes, consumers

have different perception Selective distortion may lead

people to situations that are compatible with their beliefs

and values

Since motivated, they are ready to act Learning comes

from action Learning illustrates changes in a person’s

behavior that emerge from experience Consumer can

also learn by observing others without having their own

personal experience Learning can happen even

unconsciously Consumers can learn all the time

Consumers’ knowledge of the world changes constantly

as they are exposed to new stimuli and situations They can receive feeback that allows them to change behavior when finding themselves in the same kind of sitution than before (Kotler and Amstrong, 2009)

Through learning and experiencing, consumers acquire beliefs and attitudes, A belief is a vision that consumer has on something It can be based on real knowledge, faith or option Consumer’s buying behavior can be affected by the external factors like family or neighbors combined with learning produces beliefs Different types

of people have different attitudes concerning religion, politics, food, music and others The attitude describes consumers’ feelings or evaluations toward an object or idea Both beliefs and attitudes are rarely to change Those are anchored deep in consumers mind and can be part of a person’s personality ( Kotler and Amstrong, 2009

Figure 1: Proposed research model 2.3 Literature reviews:

More attention on determinants of buying decision have

been focused both on over the worlds and Viet Nam

Firstly, Uddin et al., (2014) studied the factors affecting

customers’ buyinh decisions of mobile phone in Khulna,

Bangladesh Data used in the paper were collected from

those people live in Khulna city maintaining equal ratios

of various groups like male, female, businessmand,

employees, students and others To select desired respondents, convenient sampling method was used A structured questionaire designed based on previous study with five points Liker scale was uses to interview respondents Factor analysis was applied to exact the underlying factors affect mobile phone purchasing decision The findings show that the most important factor is physical attributes Other factors are pricing,

Individuals

Good & Product quality

Services quality

Price

Promotions

Buying decision

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charging and operating facilities, size and weight, friends

and colleagues’ recommendations, recommendations,

neighbors’ recommendations and afvertising

In the case of Pakistan, Waheed et al (2014) also

investigated the factors that affect consumer buying

behavior Through in depth analysis of the available data,

it has confirmed that the level of education and income

level are only two key determinants of consumers’

response to product offer In addition, the consumers’

are not homogeneous in terms of their response to

product offer in context of level of education and income

level Consumers who earn more i.e have high income

level are more responsive to product offers as compared

to those who earn less within a month Convincingly, the

consumers with high level of income have adequate

saving and surplus amount to spend on such extra

product offerings Contrary, consumers with limited

earnings do not have something extra to pay agaisnt such

product offers

Also in 2014, Al-Azzam evaluated effect of social factors

affecting consumer behavior in purchasing home

furnishing products in Jordan The data used were

collected by the questionaires from 400 respondents

Descriptive analysis, factor analysis, test of reliability,

correlation test, and regression analysis were used in the

study The findings shown that there is a significantly

positive relationship between purchasing decision and

reference group such as family, price, quality and color In

addition, implications of the work and directions for

future research are discussed

In Vietnam, Lan (2010) investigated the “Improvement

Marketing strategy-Mix to attract customers of Saigon

limited company - Kien Giang Province" The article used

the method of comparing absolute figures, relative,

descriptive statistics, frequency analysis, and SWOT

analysis to analyze the situation of business activities of

the company, evaluate the level of satisfaction of clients

of the Marketing activities from which to build strategies

to attract customers Research article shows there are many causes that affect the number of customers are attracted, and the cause is mainly due to the irrational price policy and the need to give much more marketing strategies to find and attract customers

Hoang Anh (2010) studied “Solutions to attract the customers for Wellcome Mark in Can Tho city” Data comparision, descriptive statistics and frequency analysis were used to determine the factors affecting on buying decision of customers at Wellcome Mark, then investigated the shopping habits and satisfication level of customers for possible solutions to attract them for the Mark The findings showed that determinants of buying decision at Wellcome Mark are women customers from

22 to 45 year of age, officials, workers and businessman/woman and income ranked from 1,5 to 5 million dongs In addition, the customers are mainly experience clients and have known the Mark by observation and convenience 4 main factors that Wellcome Mark may target are comfortable, product quality, economic issues and spiritual interest group

2.4 Methodology 2.4.1 Data collection

This article used primary and secondary data to achieve the objectives Primary data was collected from 130 customers shopping at the supermarket on the information influencing to the customer's purchase decision Besides, secondary data from other sources: the report results of operations, personnel reports, customer information collected from the administrative, accounting and marketing of Tho can tho co.op Mart supermarket Additionally, other data have been gathered from observing and learning the staffs in supermarkets

2.4.2 Data analysis

Besides compare descriptive statistics and frequency, the Alpha Cronbach's test to check the level of rigor that the items in question due to correlate with each other and

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the EFA factor analysis were used to identify those groups

of factors that affect the customer's shopping decisions at

the supermarket

Factor analysis model:

i i m im i

i i

(2.1)

Where:

i

X : Variable I standardization

ij

A

: standardized regression coefficient factor of j to the i

F : the common factor

i

V

: Standardized regression coefficient factor of I to I

i

U : the characteristic factor of the variable i

m : Number of common factor

Typical factors are correlated with each other and form new public factor The common factor groups themselves can be expressed as the linear combination of the variables observed:

Fi = wi1 x1 + wi2 x2+ …+ wik xk

Where: Fi: estimation for factor I; Wi: the weight or variable factor score coefficient

K: Variable

3 Findings 3.1 Sample structure by occupation:

Figure 2: Sample structure by occupation

Figure 2 illustrated that respondence are mainly official

staffs (38,5%), students (28,5%), businessman and

business women (15,4%), housewife (6,9%), then workers

(4,6%) and others (6,2%) About 50% of respondences are

official staffs having limited time for shopping rather than

traditional markets

3 2 Sample structure by gender

In General, Customers of supermarket are mainly female

(60%) while male account for 40% Because the majority

of females have more powerful in selection and buying

decisions, spending the majority of the consumer goods

in the family

3.3 Sample structure by age:

Figure 3: Sample structure by age

Figure 3 represents the sample structure by age The highest percentage of customers are between 22 to 30 years of age with 33.1% 31,5% illustrates for the clients aging ranked between 30 to 40 years of age The other two groups of below 22 and ablve 40 are 19.2% and 16.2%, respectively

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Dưới 2.000.000, 9,20%

Từ 2.000.000 đến dưới 5.000.000, 56,20%

Từ 5.000.000 đến dưới 10.000.000, 32,30%

Trên 10.000.000, 2,30%

3.4 Sample structure by income:

Figure 4: Sample structure by Income

As shown in figure 4, the income of customers are vary

The income from 2 to 5 millions and from 5 to 10 millions

are 56,2% and 32,3%, respectively The customer with

highest income (more than 10 millions) accounts for 2,3%

while those with lowest income is only 9,2%

3.6 Characteristics of customers 3.6.1 Shopping habits of customers at Co.opMart Can Tho

Table 1: Shopping frequency of customers by occupation

Shopping at Co.opMart within month Occupation < 1 time 1 – 2 times 3 - 4 times >5 times Total

Source: Survey in 2015

Table 1 depicted that the shopping frequency of

customer at Co-opmark Can Tho fluctuated from 1 – 4

times accounts 70% The customers come to Co-opmark

mainly students and official staffs because their income

are often constant A small part of customers who are businessman/women go shopping 5 times/month approximately 20% The rest 8% are not going to shop during a month due to their work too busy

Figure 5: Shopping frequency by day within week

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In 130 observations, customers shooping at the Saturday

accounts for 74,6% and Sunday 66,2% Such highest

percentages are due to the fact that at the weekend

everyone is often free for their habits and various

promotions are often happened In addition, Tuesday is

also a good day for customers shopping due to a high sale

off and promotion and discount programs such as

“Tuesday is free to accumulate grades” Other days, it is

rarely from custormer to go shopping due to the strict of

their working times

However, customers are occasionally attracted to the shops during the vocation and holidays times Such times are interesting not only for the customers but also for their relatives and friends Given source of customers can contributed highly revenue for the supermarket

Table 2: Revenue of Coopmark during vacation and holiday times

(Unit:milliondongs)

2015

Source: Co.opMart Can Tho

3.7 Factors affecting on buying decision of customer at Coopmark Can Tho

In order to factor analysis, the confidence of the factors need to be tested by Cronbach’s Alpha procedure in table 3:

Table 3: Results of Cronbach’s Alpha test

number

Least correlation to general variables

Cronbach’s Alpha

Confident evaluation

Good and Products

Proper

Source: Result from SPSS software The Cronbach’s Alpha test illustrated that the scale has

highly significant confidence thus the factors are granded

to be used in the model

After running regression model by SPSS software, EFA

procedure has been used to analyze and drop the

inappropriate variables Consequence of given procedure, there are 22 variables affecting on the model with highly importance as shown in table 4

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Table 4: Average significant level of factors affecting on buying decision of customer at Coopmark Can Tho

Mức độ quan trọng bình quân

Diversification samples 4.18 Vary quantity products and goods 4.09 Strange and new characteristics 4.25

Safe and large parking 4.06 Modern Cashier Machines 4.39 Staffs are welling to serve 4.40

Comfortable environment 4.39 Proper price compared to public market 4.36 Lower price compared to other super markets 4.42 Price is good as quality 4.28

Building good customer relation 4.18 Various promotion programmes 4.38 Various advertisment methods 4.56 Attractive docoration 4.43 Building Co-opmark prestige 4.38 Times from houses to Co-opmark 3.95 Having relative shopping together 4.24

Source : Result from SPSS analysis

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Table 5: Matrix factor table after rotation

Factor F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6

The staff always ready to serve 0,948

There are many promotions 0,930

Building supermarkets 0,924

Modern computer systems 0,923

The prices are often cheaper than other

The prices are not much higher than the

Build good customer relations 0,865

The prices match the quality 0,800

Time cost from House to the supermarket 0,834

The way the article's featured attraction,

Table 5 shows 6 group factors affecting on buying decision of customers at Coopmark Can Tho as follows:

+ Factor 1 (F1): includes variables G1 (The prices are not

much higher than in the market), G2 (Price is usually

cheaper than other supermarkets), DV2 (modern system),

DV3 (employees are always ready to serve), CT2 (has

many promotions) and CT5 (build prestige for supermarket)

+ Factor 2 (F2): includes the G3 (the prices match the quality), G4 (prices listed), HH2 (diversified), HH4 (new features) and CT1 (build good customer relations)