Factors Affecting Satisfaction and Loyalty among Customers of Local and Foreign Hypermarkets

Retailing is evolving into a global, high-tech industry that plays a major role in the global economy. In the retail industry, hypermarkets have undergone drastic changes since 1990's; they now offer more varieties of products and services to consumers. Along with today‘s modernised store concepts, consumers' behavior and attitude towards shopping and choice of store has equally evolved. As a result, more and more retailers pursue growth by expanding their operations to other countries. More foreign retailers have also entered the Malaysian market and this has caused aggressive competition among hypermarket retailers in the country. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to identify the factors that affect the satisfaction and loyalty among customers of local and foreign hypermarkets in Malaysia. This study adapts the Kano‘s Theory to form a theoretical framework to test the research hypotheses. A multi-stage random sampling technique is used to collect a total of 500 data from both local and foreign hypermarkets in Melaka. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences statistics (SPSS version 21) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) - AMOS 21 software were used for hypothesis testing and path modeling