Store format choice and relationship quality in apparel retail: A study of young and early-middle aged shoppers in New Delhi region

•Relationship quality factors influence the choice of store format.•Conflict due to store and combined overall RQ significantly influence the store format choice.•Exclusive stores were found the best among the three formats in terms of significant RQ factors.•All the three store formats were highly competitive based on store reliance and employee performance.•MBOs and exclusive outlets need to re-work their RQ strategies to ward-off threat from the Discount stores.

Shopping format choice has been an interesting and important area of research in the academic literature from long time. However, research in this area is presently at a nascent stage in India. There are a very few studies which focus on store format choice in India which includes the works of Anand and Sinha (2009), Prasad and Aryasri (2008), Sinha and Banerjee (2004) and Tripathi and Sinha (2008). The present study compares three different retail formats (Discount stores, Exclusive stores and Multi-brand outlets) based on the shopper's perception of relationship quality (RQ) of these stores using multivariate techniques. For addressing, the objective of this study a sample of 313 shoppers is used. Results suggest that “conflict due to store” and “combined overall RQ due to the store and its employees” influence the store format choice. The RQ levels among the apparel store format are highly competitive.