Retailing 8th Edition by Patrick Dunne,Robert Lusch, James Carver

Exercise 16

Let's look more closely at some of the attributes that often influence choice of patronage at home improvement and hardware stores. Nine frequently cited attributes are:
1. low prices,
2. choice of national versus private labels,
3. ease of parking and loading,
4. fast checkouts,
5. product quality,
6. convenience (including hours, location, ease of entrance and parking, ease of finding items),
7. services (including credit, delivery, return policy, and guarantees),
8. store personnel (including helpfulness, friendliness, and courtesy), and
9. advertised "specials" in stock.
For your assignment, you are to rank these attributes in order of importance to you. After ranking them, take the most important attribute and assign it the value of 10, take the second most important attribute and assign it the value of 9. Continue to do this for your top five attributes, with your fifth attribute getting a value of 6.
Now visit two hardware stores or home improvement centers and assign a value (1 being very poor, 10 being very good) to the stores' performance on your five attributes. Multiply your rank value by their performance value for each attribute and sum the total. Is the store with the highest total points your favorite If not, why is there a difference