A Model of Retail Format Choice for a reasoned purchase: Conceptualizing role of Perceived Risk, Norms,

and Behaviour Control in Indian Culture

by Anoop Kumar Gupta, A.V. Shukla
Abstract: Extant literature suggests that perceived risk affects retail format choice for important purchases like
buying of shopping goods. A customer of a shopping good essentially makes a choice of retail format between online,
organised, or traditional formats. The purpose of this study is to understand this choice behaviour by conceptualising
a new risk-behaviour framework, with Fishbein and Ajzen's (2010) reasoned action model (RAM) as its' theoretical
backbone. An extensive literature review regarding role of perceived risk in retail format choice and application of
RAM in consumer behaviour has been done to develop the propositions and the conceptual framework. Additionally,
owing to the collectivist nature of Indian culture, RAM has been contextualised, and interdependencies among its
determinants have been proposed for Indian customer. The proposed reasoned retail format choice model and
propositions are empirically testable for validation in future studies.
Keywords: retail format choice; reasoned action model; perceived risk; attitude; perceived norm; perceived
behaviour control; conceptual framework; shopping good; collectivism; Indian culture.
DOI: 10.1504/IJICBM.2019.10019253