Customers Switching Intentions Behavior in Retail Hypermarket Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (ePub)

Retail Service Quality is a vital driver in determining customer satisfaction, which in turn promotes customer loyalty and reduces switching intentions. Service quality is a solution to build customer satisfaction which could lead to customer loyalty hence reducing switching intentions. The current study has investigated the interrelationship between service quality, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty with switching intentions of customers, and the moderating role of price discounts and store ethnicity, in a single framework. Random sampling was used by administering standardized questionnaires personally to 450 hypermarket customers located in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. The results confirmed that retail service quality has significant positive influence on customer satisfaction, and the positive effect of customer satisfaction on customer loyalty. Besides, the study verified store ethnicity and price discounts acted as moderating mechanism for explaining the switching intentions of satisfied and loyal customers. The results serve as a guideline for top managers of the hypermarkets to design appropriate policies and strategies in terms of retail service quality, price discounts and identifying the needs of ethnic groups in a particular region. This will help to enhance customer satisfaction and customer loyalty hence reducing switching intentions of customers.