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Reciprocal behavior and the rural community: Consumers' perceptions of retailer-consumer exchange relationships
Abstract
In rural communities, the retail market structure often fails to meet consumer needs. This results in dollars spent outside the community, reducing both the local retailer's economic status and the economic stability of the community. The purposes of this research are to: (1) explore the construct of reciprocity and how it might facilitate development of rural retailer-consumer exchange relationships, (2) analyze the rural consumers' moral, social, and economic motives, and their level of satisfaction with interpersonal reciprocal exchange in the community as factors contributing to the intention to reciprocate in a market place exchange with local retailers, and (3) identify general patterns or relationships for a number of consumer predispositional characteristics such as socio-economic background and lifestyles. Likert-type scales were developed and reliability determined for the consumers' three motivations, the level of satisfaction with community reciprocal exchange, and the intention to reciprocate with local retailers. These scales were incorporated in a mailed questionnaire. The product category of home furnishings was selected as the stimulus consumers considered for their purchase intentions. From two rural communities, with populations less than 10,000 and with agricultural-based economies, a random sample of 1200 adult consumers was determined. A sample size of 469 useable responses, representing approximately half of the sample from each community, resulted. Major findings include: higher levels of satisfaction with community reciprocal exchange behavior and social motivations facilitate consumers' intentions to reciprocate with local retailers; higher levels of economic motivation inhibit the consumers' intentions to reciprocate with local retailers; moral motivation did not significantly influence the consumers' intentions but was found to be highly correlated with social and economic motivations; predispositional characteristics contributed to explaining variability in the motivations and satisfaction with community reciprocity scores; and social desirability was present as a response bias affecting consumers' evaluation of the three motivations and satisfaction with community reciprocity. This research contributes to theories concerning interpersonal social exchange and market exchange by focusing on reciprocity as a contributor to building and maintaining retailer-consumer relationships.
Subject Area
Social psychology|Marketing|Home economics
Recommended Citation
Miller, Nancy Jean, "Reciprocal behavior and the rural community: Consumers' perceptions of retailer-consumer exchange relationships" (1994). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9500608.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9500608