engleski

Image as a competitive factor of retailing industry

During the last decade Bosnia and Herzegovina has gone through very rough political, economical and social transitional changes which had great impact on transformation of retailers. Huge European retail chains entered the market and forced small retail stores to adjust their strategies in order to survive the new competition. Those which did not adjust their strategies to new competition were wiped out of the market. One of the best new marketing strategies for retailers was driven by new image formation in order to keep their consumers satisfied and loyal. This study was designed to show the process of store image creation, which attributes influence store image formation, whether those factors differ between small retail outlets and big European based hypermarkets and in which way those factors influence store satisfaction, store loyalty and at the end lead to competitiveness of retail stores in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the last decades marketing academics and practitioners have been integrated in effort to show the relationship between store image, store satisfaction and store loyalty. In other words store loyalty leads to competitiveness of retailers in the market. One of the questions which is still argued is whether positive store image leads directly to store loyalty or is there an indirect relation through store satisfaction. In this paper we attempt to answer this question.

image; retail image; consumer loyalty; consumer satisfaction; competitiveness

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