NOT JUST SATISFACTION: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RECURSIVE AND NON-RECURSIVE MODELS ON MODERN RETAIL CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to compare recursive and non-recursive models that explain the influence of employee friendliness (courtesy), understanding of the products sold, and the variety of product items on consumer loyalty through customer satisfaction at modern retail stores in the city of Surabaya. The object of observation is consumers who visit modern retail stores to shop. The convenience of consumers in shopping will lead to satisfaction and, in turn, can lead to loyalty to keep shopping at these modern retail stores. In serving consumers, a sales assistant must show friendliness and be able to explain the function of the product being sold. Another factor is the variety and completeness of the product items sold, which can cause consumers to feel their desires fulfilled, so they do not have to go shopping elsewhere. However, other expert opinions state that loyalty must be created first to cause satisfaction. In this study, observations were made of 200 consumers who were shopping at modern retail stores, provided that the consumer has made at least five purchases at the same modern retail store anywhere in Surabaya. There are two SEM models analyzed, namely: (a) recursive SEM (with exogenous variables: friendliness of the salesperson; understanding of the salesperson of the product, completeness, and variety of available product items; endogenous variables: customer loyalty; intervening variables: customer satisfaction); and (b) a non-recursive SEM model (with the same variables, but there is an alternating relationship between the endogenous variables and the intervening variables). The findings and results of the research show that from comparing the goodness of fit of the two models, the recursive model is better at explaining the phenomena studied. Thus, these findings further support the theory that loyalty arises after a person is satisfied.  Article visualizations: