Shopping Environment Stimuli and Their Effect on Customer Satisfaction and Purchase Loyalty in Supermarkets

Understanding the association between supermarket environments and customer satisfaction and loyalty is important for food retailers. Based on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) model, this study examined the associations of store design, price fairness, and product variety with customer satisfaction and purchase loyalty among consumers of fast-moving consumer goods in supermarkets. Using a quantitative cross-sectional design, questionnaire data were collected from 367 supermarket customers in the Antofagasta region of Chile through non-probability sampling and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling. The results of the study showed that store design (β = 0.357), price fairness (β = 0.447) and product variety (β = 0.260) were positively associated with customer satisfaction, with price fairness being the strongest environmental antecedent, while customer satisfaction showed a strong positive association with purchase loyalty (β = 0.751; p < 0.001) and statistically mediated the associations of store design (β = 0.268), price fairness (β = 0.336) and product variety (β = 0.195) on purchase loyalty; in addition, the R² values of the model explained 51.6% of the variance in customer satisfaction and 56.3% in purchase loyalty. These findings refine the application of the SOR model in supermarket retail by showing that environmental stimuli differ in their relative explanatory strength and that customer satisfaction operates as the central mediating mechanism linking these stimuli to purchase loyalty.