Factors Influencing Retail Outlet Choice of Women Purchasing Fresh Fruits in Trinidad and Tobago

Abstract

Many consumer business decisions may eventually be reduced to a dichotomous choice, such as, where to purchase fresh fruit in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) – Traditional outlet (public market and roadside stand) or Modern outlet (supermarket). From a retail outlet perspective, traditionally fresh fruit was predominantly sold in the public markets and roadside stalls in T&T. Today the shopper is presented with an expanded range of options, including domestic and foreign supermarkets. Binary Logistic regression is used to determine the impact of multiple independent variables presented simultaneously to predict membership in one or the other categories of the dependent variable, in this case Traditional or Modern retail outlet. This study focuses on the retail outlet attributes and socio-economic attributes of females as factors influencing retail outlet choice for fresh fruits in T&T. The results obtained indicated that income and a factor called “Service” obtained from factor analysis of the store attributes are statistically significant in the choice of retail outlet for the purchase of fresh fruits by women in T&T. This information should assist retail outlet managers in the development of their business strategies.