حفظ مشتری و نقش میانجیگری از ارزش درک شده Customer retention and the mediating role of perceived value in retail industry

INTRODUCTION The rapid growth in competition among organizations of all types has posed several challenges for them regarding maintaining their customers and achieving business objectives. Due to that, organizations have shifted from traditional marketing towards relational exchange practices with customers that could yield greater business profits on the long term. For this reason, focusing on customer retention has become very important for improving organizational performance and competitiveness. In order to achieve customer retention, it is important to note that customers tend to evaluate their purchase experiences in terms of the perceived value that results from the amount of money spent to get a product or service and the benefits received in return. Therefore, a positive customer experience has a significant impact on customer retention and purchase behaviour (Bapat and Thanigan, 2016). To sustain customer relationships and ensure organizational effectiveness, it has become vital to understand what constitutes customer retention (Afzali and Ahmed, 2016). In order to respond the intense competition among businesses, it is as become important to search for the drivers of customer retention. Previous studies examined several factors and predictors of customer retention in different industry contexts. However, the nature of these factors tends to be different from industry to industry. This study focuses on Malaysian retail sector to explore customer retention and its antecedents as the majority of previous studies on this topic were investigated in western cultures and only few were done in Asian countries, particularly in retail sector. According to Tamuliene and Gabryte (2014), although a significant amount of research has been conducted on examining the repurchase intentions of consumers, there is no consensus agreement on what constitutes customer retention. Moreover, Mandhachitara and Poolthong (2011) stated that corporate social responsibility is an important factor that affects consumer behaviour, but most of the previous studies on this concept were investigated in Western countries, and only few were done in Asian context.