Exploring the main drivers influencing brand loyalty to motorway services areas in Italy

Abstract

Due to the emergence of new shopping trends in alternative retailing formats, the paper aims at exploring the role of assortment levers to increase customer loyalty to the retailer’s brand in an on-the-go retailing format, such as motorway service areas (MSAs). Specifically, the paper investigates how the grocery assortment perception (GAP) of MSAs influences shopping satisfaction and shopping enjoyment, generating customer loyalty to the MSA. A mobility proxy, measured in terms of the number of kilometres driven in a month, was included as an antecedent of consumers’ loyalty to MSAs. Survey data were collected from 526 respondents during their stop in three MSAs. The covariance-based structural equation model was computed to estimate the direct and indirect effects. The findings show that the perception of assortment is a significant driver of loyalty to the MSA retailing format. Most remarkably, the results show a positive relationship between the customer’s mobility and his/her loyalty to the MSA brand. The paper focuses on an emerging, although poorly investigated retail context, MSA, in which companies are enlarging the grocery assortment to offer the opportunity to shop during the consumption. Implications in terms of competition between incumbent grocery retailers and companies operating MSAs are derived. Moreover, a new conceptualisation of consumers’ mobility in influencing the retailer’s brand loyalty is prosed when shoppers are on-the-go.