The relationship between activities of category management and customer satisfaction in supermarkets

Abstract

Category Management (CM) is a reality in large supermarket chains and has provided several benefits to consumers and retailers, such as: better exposure/supply, greater variety of brands/sizes, competitive pricing and efficient promotions in order to reduce inventory and to increase turnovers, profitability and, at the same time, provide greater customer satisfaction. In the available literature, there are no attempts to measure the satisfaction related to levels of services offered by supermarkets that apply CM. The problem situation of this article came from the observation that, on the one hand, the implementation and operation of CM are targeted towards customer satisfaction but, on the other hand, cannot identify the degree of satisfaction provided by the services offered. This study aimed to relate CM with the satisfaction of supermarket customers. We conducted a field survey of a descriptive nature with a random sample of 250 consumers residing in the ABC Paulista region responsible for decisions and purchases of personal care and beauty products in supermarkets. For results analysis we adopted the technique of multiple linear regressions, as it is the appropriate technique when the research problem involves a single metric dependent variable related to other two or more metric independent variables. Although the concept of satisfaction is complex, making it impossible to enumerate all the possible variables connected to it, it was possible to identify the important aspects taken care of by CM in the composition of consumer satisfaction.

Key words: financial statements analysis, indices, solvency, declaratory accounting core, Rough Sets Theory.