A Study On Experiential Marketing With Reference To Mega Malls In Chennai

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1 A Study On Experiential Marketing With Reference To Mega Malls In Chennai Ms.S.Suchitra, Mba., Msc., M.Phil., Assistant Professor, Department Of Management Studies, Muthayammal Engineering College Rasipuram ABSTRACT The shopping mall becomes one of the most popular shopping and leisure places. Because of enhancement of consumption level and life style, the consumption experience trend can be seen today. In this mega trend, many shopping malls management did gradually providing merchandise the stress on more leisure esthetics and high quality. However, although the large-scale shopping malls are so popular to customer, it is quite little quantitative research from the experiential marketing view point to investigate consumers opinions and experience. Thus the main purpose of our research is to find which of the SEM (strategic experiential module) like sense, feel, think, act and relate have maximum impact on customer loyalty. Out of the five modules, Sense and Feel are the important predictors for the Customer loyalty. Introduction The idea of experiential marketing is an important trend for the economic era. It means a marketing idea featured with both rationality and sensibility. Therefore, the decision of shopping activities made by consumers will be influenced by sensory factors to a certain degree. Recently, experiential marketing has become a prevalent trend. Also, it seems that this prevalence also influence malls. Aside from enhancing comfortable space and well-organized shopping routes, malls also integrate the effort from various types of vendors to hold several promotion campaigns and enhance the circulation of advertising information. Such effort aims to create the environment for both recreation and shopping quite different from past settings. With various types of promotion campaigns, effort is made to increase operation performance. With the rapid development of malls in Chennai, malls have deeply influenced the shopping habits of local consumers. In view of catering to the demands of consumers for lower prices and better service, operators of malls have adopted various measures to satisfy consumers demands with the highest profit reached. Under such a background, experiential marketing is also an important factor to influence customer loyalty. This point is worthy of exploration and it means the motive for this research. Background of experiential marketing Pine and Gilmore (1999) were the original researchers who introduced experiential marketing in the economic literature. They explained that When a person buys a service, he purchases a set of intangible activities carried out on his behalf. But when he buys an experience, he pays to spend time enjoying a series of memorable events that a company stages to engage him in a personal way Holbrook and Hirschman (1982) stated experiential marketing is a consumption of fantasies, feelings and fun. The idea of experience has been wide spread in the marketing literature in different contexts comprising brand experience, consumption, product experience, shopping experience and service experience (Brakus et el., 2009; Zanrantonello and Schmitt, 2010). It is generally believed that today s consumers not only purchase products or services based on the functional usage but also consider the experience with the products/services offered. It results in new marketing strategies in order to create a successful business, satisfy customers demand and build customers loyalty. Review of Literature Experiential Marketing Experiential Marketing means unforgettable memory or experience rooted deeply in people s mind. It can be from the definition of experience, in modern consumption environment, consumers > RJEBS: Volume: 04, Number: 04, February Page 17

2 emphasize their own experience during consumption process. It can allow consumers with sentimental and impressive emotion to intensify consumers purchase desire and increase additive value of products. Experiential marketing aims to request marketing staffs to emphasize the overall experience quality for consumers passed by brands, including rational decision-making and sentimental consumption experience. Kotler (2003) also indicated there have been more and more companies starting to develop non-rational image request and ask for the aids from anthropologists and psychologists to develop messages to make deep soul touched. It is noteworthy experiential marketing never ignores the quality of rationality and claim of functions. It is based on quality to intensify sentimental and functional claims. Schmitt (1999) used to propose 5 strategic experience modules composed of consumers 5 various experience types, namely sensation experience, emotion experience, thinking experience, action experience and relate experience. Customer Loyalty Piotr (2004) indicated loyal customer s shows 3 characteristics as below. (1) They spend more money in purchasing products or service of a company. (2) They encourage others to purchase products or service of a company. (3) They believe it is valuable to purchase products. Namely, consumers show a behavioral intention willing to continue the relationship with a certain brand or a company. Actually, in the field of marketing science, customer loyalty is vested with highly mature conceptions. With past effort made by several scholars, we have known much about the definition of customer satisfaction. Chaudhuri and Holbrook (2001) revealed customer loyalty is established by attitude loyalty and behavior loyalty. Attitude loyalty means the loyalty in attitude and the tolerance to price. Behavior loyalty means continuous purchase and recommendation behaviors. Gronholdt etal. (2000) indicated customer loyalty is composed of 4 indicators including customer s re-purchase intention, tolerance to prices, the willing to recommend a brand or a company and the willing to conduct cross purchase. Also, the said 4 items can act as the measurement indicators for customer loyalty. (Ismail, 2010) concluded that emotions, feelings and sensations are the stimuli experience that provokes during experiences. However, in the marketing literature Schmitt (1999a, p.57) argued that experiences occurs as a result of encountering, undergoing or living through things provide sensory, emotional, cognitive, behavioural, and relational values that replace functional values (Schmitt,1999a, p.57) The Relationship Between Experiential Marketing and Customer Loyalty In the research conducted by Lin, Lin and Lee (2007), taking four famous coffee chain stores in Taipei for example, the research aimed to explore the relationships among experiential marketing, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, research results showed (1) feel experience and relation experience have significantly positive influence on customer satisfaction;(2) Customer satisfaction has a significantly positive influence on customer loyalty; (3) The relation experience has a greatest influence to customer satisfaction. Huang, Huang and Su(2007) conducted their research is targeted at the visitors of Non-Smoking Paradise Special Exhibition at National Science and Technology Museum to explore the relationships among experiential marketing, service quality, satisfactions and loyalty, research results showed :(1) Experiential marketing and service quality have significantly positive influence on visitor's satisfaction. (2) Visitor's satisfaction has a significantly positive influence on visitor's loyalty. (3)Sense experience of experiential marketing has the most influence on the satisfaction of special exhibition. (4) Action experience of experiential marketing affects National Science and Technology Museum the most. (5) The tangible service quality has the most influence on the satisfaction of special exhibition. (6) The guarantee of service quality affects most on the satisfaction of special exhibition. All the aforesaid scholars affirm significantly positive correlation exists between experiential marketing and loyalty. To summarize above mention, the research hypotheses are proposed as below: > RJEBS: Volume: 04, Number: 04, February Page 18

3 Null Hypothesis: Experiential Marketing has a significant positive effect On Customer Loyalty. Methodology: To accomplish the aims of this research, an empirical study is carried out with a self-administered questionnaire to measure each of the constructs of the study; it developed from a basic of the literature review. A self-administered questionnaire is distributed among 102 customers who visit the shopping mall that located at Chennai. The questionnaire had been designed with Likert scale style to measure the study constructs. Respondents were asked to rate their agreement with each item on a five-point Likert scale ranging from (1) strongly disagree to (5) strongly agree. Thereby, some questionnaire items were taken from preciously valid scales. Data Analysis and Findings Table 1: Socio-demographic Profiles of Respondents Variable Frequency Percentage Gender Male % Female % Age Below 25 years % years % years % Above 45 years % Marital status Married % Single % Educational qualification Schooling % Graduates/ Diploma holders % Post graduates % Professionals % Frequency of visit Weekly % Monthly % Occasionally % As shown in Table 1, the majority of respondent are aged between 25 years representing 20.6%,29.4% are years, 31.4%% are years. The majority of the respondents were single. They are mostly graduates/diploma holders representing 33.3%. Most of the customers visited the malls on monthly basis (43.1%). Table 2: Reliability coefficient: Cronbach's Alpha S.No. Factors 1 Sense Feel Think Act Relate Overall reliability of the study.874 The research instrument was tested for reliability using Cronbach s coefficient alpha estimate. The degree of consistency of a measure is referred to as its reliability or internal consistency. A value of > RJEBS: Volume: 04, Number: 04, February Page 19

4 .874 (87.4%) is deemed to be indicative of good scale reliability (Hair, Black, Babin, Anderson, & Tatham, 2010). The Cronbach s alpha for the five factors range from to 0.973, suggesting that the constructs measures are deemed reliable. Table-3Correlation Analysis: Sense Feel Think Act Relate Sense 1 Feel.725 ** 1 Think.489 **.688 ** 1 Act.412 **.615 **.765 ** 1 Relate.391 **.447 **.634 **.745 ** 1 ** indicates correlation is significant at 1% level (2-tailed) Table 3 reveals the correlation between the dependent variables. There is significant correlation noted between sense and feel (r=.725), which is good. Significant correlation observed between sense and think(r=.489), which is moderate. There is significant relationship between Sense and Act (.412), which is moderate, Significant correlation noted between Sense and relate (r=.391), which is not up to the mark. Significant positive correlation noted between feel and think (r=.688), which is good. Significant relationship noted between Feel and Act (r=.615), Significant correlation noted between Think and Act (r=.765), which is good. Also significant relationship noted between think and relate (r=.643). Relationship between Relate and Act is significant(r=.745), which is good. All the correlations depicted above are all positive and significant at 1% level. A step - wise Multiple Regression Analysis was conducted by taking Customer loyalty as dependent variable and Sense, Feel Think, Act and Relate were taken as independent variables. Sense Feel Think Act Relate Table 4: Results of stepwise regression analysis of Assessing customer loyalty Predictor Variables R 2 Standard Beta F t-value p value * (*indicates the model is significant at 5% level of significance) The regression model shows 60.1% of variability. Sense, Feel, Think, Act and Relate emerged as predictors of the dependent variable Customer loyalty. Out of the 5 independent variable, Sense and Feel are the important predictors for the Customer loyalty. Hence the above said variables will serve as significant predictors and explains the variability of Customer loyalty Conclusion Experiential marketing has innovative features with respect to the traditional one. The traditional utility criterion to evaluate goods is used together with hedonistic criteria which consider pleasure, aesthetic experience, and fun. Customers are not only seen as rational, but also sensitive, since experience makes them think, sense, feel, act, and relate to other people. These aspects emerged from a literature review and an exploratory survey. Comparing the different sources, a list of items was given to 102 respondents. This study tests the relationship between the five strategic modules and customer loyalty. The empirical results suggest that sense and feel has significant effect on customer loyalty and the other three modules like act, think and relate has no effect on customer loyalty. References > RJEBS: Volume: 04, Number: 04, February Page 20

5 13(2), Schmitt, B. H. (1999). Experiential Marketing. Journal of Marketing Management, 15(1), Shankar, V., Smith, A. K., and Rangaswamy, A. (2003). Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty inonline and Offline Environments. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 20(2), (2),81-93.Gronholdt, L., Martensen, A., and Kristensen, K. (2000). The relationship between CustomerSatisfaction and Loyalty: Cross-Industry differences. Anderson, R. E., and Srinivasan, S. S. (2003). E-Satisfaction and E-Loyalty: A ContingencyFramework. Schmitt,B.,Fisher,B/. Experiential Marketing: A New Framework, CEIBS.pdf, > RJEBS: Volume: 04, Number: 04, February Page 21