Store choice: How understanding consumer choice of ‘where’ to shop may assist the small retailer

• Store choice influence better segments the market than traditional demographics.
• Reasons for store choice identify the three types of store format.
• Retailers can match their offer with their target markets choice influencers.
• Rise in large store format is not necessarily the end of small retail.

Recent decades has seen continued rationalization in the retail sector and the growth of ‘big-box’ or ‘category-killer’ store formats leaving the small business struggling to compete and at a loss to determine how it can ‘win’. We propose that a segment of shopper exists that shop at small businesses for specific reasons. Using a choice experiment approach to investigate the reason consumers choose where to shop amongst small, independent and large scale retailers we see this different segment of consumers appear. Best:worse is a choice method that forces choice amongst a range of variables, designed to uncover ‘actual’ reasons for decisions made. This paper finds consumer choice for retail stores types identifies a segment that may assist in the sustainability of smaller stores if they cater to the attributes their target consumers seek. This is a contribution to small business researchers and small business strategy and practitioner effort in the marketing and design of small retailer offering.