Competitive Analyses for Shoes Retailers: A Correspondence Analysis

During the past five years, the footwear industry has shown signs of growth as economic conditions have improved, generating an increased consumer demand for shoes. As footwear is becoming more recognized as a fashion product, apparel designers establish footwear collaborations and putting a big focus on shoes (Butler-Young, 2018). In this growing shoe market, consumers have enjoyed increasing numbers of retail outlets including department stores, specialty stores, discount stores, online stores, warehouse clubs, and catalogs. Although previous studies on shoes identify retail attributes leading to customer satisfaction such as assortment, service, brand names, materials, convenience, price, and atmosphere (Endo, Yang, & Park, 2012; Silva & Giraldi, 2010; Wang, 2014), the literature fails to reveal evidence about where consumers shop frequently and why. In this competitive environment, shoe retailers must assess who patronize their stores through a segmentation analysis and assess what retail attributes contribute to their customers\u27 patronage through a positioning analysis, which is the aim of this research