Purchase Decision Attitudes and Their Impact on Satisfaction of Supermarket Customer

The main objective of this paper was to identify relations between customer satisfaction and its antecedents in groups of supermarket customers presenting different purchasing attitudes. The research was focused on supermarkets from southern Poland and their clients. Data used in this study was collected through the surveys. The questionnaires were using the snowballing method. The research problem was exploratory and confirmatory in nature. The exploratory problem was the answer to the question whether there are any groups of customers with different purchasing attitudes in the surveyed sample. To answer the question, we used clustering with k-means method which allowed us to distinguish four groups of customers. Based on the literature we proposed a conceptual framework of customer satisfaction with supermarkets. Then we examined, how the satisfaction and its antecedents vary in every groups of customers. In this area we noticed certain differences between groups. In the group 1 (prudent consumers), there is no significant impact of expectations on customer satisfaction, but there is a strong relationship between perceived quality of goods and customer satisfaction. In the second group (rapid buyers) the perceived quality of goods and services is more determined by expectations. In the third group (quick individuals) the perception of quality depends on expectations, but satisfaction already depends on other factors not included in the model. And finally, the proposed conceptual model seems to best describe the satisfaction in the fourth group of clients (uncertain shoppers). Satisfaction is largely determined by the perceived quality of the goods. Expectations greatly affect the perception of service quality.