Exlporing deviant consumer behaviour in grocery retailers in the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality

Grocery retailers are faced with many challenges. Among them are competition, employee theft and deviant consumer behaviour (DCB). Deviant consumer behaviour violates generally accepted norms of consumer behaviour in retail settings. There has been a lot of research conducted on DCB and different terms and phases have been used to describe the behaviour, ie “dysfunctional customer behaviour”, (Daunt and Harris, 2012), “aberrant consumer behaviour” (Fullerton and Punj, 1993) and “consumer misbehaviour” (Fullerton and Punj, 1997). However, the research conducted on how the behaviour affects retailers, particularly grocery retailers has been limited. The primary objective of this study was to examine how DCB affects grocery retailers in Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality. More specifically, the relationship between DCB (dependent variable) and independent variables - impact on profits (RPROF), impact on inventory (INV), impact on grocer security (SECU), impact on employees (EMPL), impact on customers (CUST) and measures to minimize or stop DCB (STOP) was established. Questionnaires were used as a measuring instrument. Out of the 100 questionnaires distributed, 70 were usable. The empirical results showed that there is a significant relationship between DCB and the independent variables. Recommendations on how best the stores can deal with DCB were made and measures to minimize or stop DCB were presented. Recommendations for future studies were also presented