Factors influencing customer satisfaction towards shopping malls: evidence from tier II cities

Abstract

Shopping malls in India have seen an upsurge over the last couple of decades with only five malls in 2001-2002 to more than 500 in 2017. Having achieved the milestone in tier I cities, retailers and mall developers are allured by the enticing opportunities like low rentals and comparatively lesser competition in tier II and tier III cities. Customer satisfaction is an important factor to be tracked in order to earn more loyal customers. The present study is an attempt to identify the factors which impact customer satisfaction towards shopping malls in tier II cities. It attempts to conceptualise and validate the factors driving customer satisfaction. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used for data reduction on a sample of 178 respondents. Six comprehensible factors were obtained from a set of 24 mall attributes. Results of the study depict that customer satisfaction is an outcome of six factors - mall infrastructure, convenience, customer service, time saving, promotional offers and stress-reliever. Further confirmatory factor analysis was applied to validate these factors. These results provide insight to mall managers and retailers to retain the customers.