The intensity of competition for local merchants (i.e., those locally-owned and operated) continues to increase as regional, national and international retailers expand. In one of the few studies to address loyalty to local merchants, Stone (1954) interviewed married females regarding the reasons they patronized local merchants or larger chain stores. While adding to our general understanding of local merchant loyalty and female consumers, Stone’s (1954) study was exploratory in nature, thus lacking a theoretical framework, and focused solely on married female consumers. Given the importance of this topic to local merchants and the lack of research in the area, the purpose of this study was to contribute to the literature by providing a theoretical foundation, to gain insights into the factors driving loyalty to local merchants. As such, we develop and test (through a national survey data collection of 754 consumers) a model in which a consumer’s gender influences loyalty to local merchants both directly and indirectly (indirectly through gender’s influence on various shopping motives).

The findings from the study present insights into three important areas: (1) how gender influences consumer shopping motivation, (2) how gender influences loyalty to local merchants, and (3) how shopping motivation influences loyalty to local merchants. First, our findings indicated that males are more prone to information attainment and convenience seeking, whereas females are more prone to uniqueness and assortment seeking, social interaction, and browsing. In addition, to this indirect effect of gender on loyalty to local merchants (i.e., through shopping motives), the findings demonstrate that gender also has a direct effect on loyalty to local merchants, with females being more loyal to local merchants than males. Finally, several shopping motives were found to influence consumers’ loyalty to local merchants. Specifically, consumers who place a higher priority on the shopping motives of information attainment, merchandise uniqueness, social interaction and browsing are more likely to be loyal to local merchants.

These findings, viewed jointly, can provide retail academics and practitioners a better understanding of how to segment markets. For example, the results suggest that local merchants may be able to increase loyalty by developing marketing programs emphasizing specific motives to differing segments. A local merchant could develop gender specific advertising campaigns, with the primary theme of the campaign targeting males focused on the merchant’s knowledgeable sales staff (i.e., the motive for information attainment) and the campaign targeting females focused on the merchant’s unique merchandise (e.g., we carry products that you can’t find anywhere else). By employing such a campaign a local merchant is able to capitalize on each gender’s disposition toward specific motives as well as the ability of specific motives to stimulate loyalty to local merchants. Additionally, the gender specific advertising campaigns can vary in format and medium. For example, given gender based information processing differences, retailers targeting the presentation of product and pricing information to females should focus on more elaborative, verbally descriptive messages, which would be most consistent with magazines or newspapers. When targeting males, on the other hand, more visual depiction of information (e.g., animated illustrations) would be best, which might be best achieved through interactive ads on the Internet and television. As such, even though our findings showed that males tended to seek product information more than females, retailers can alter the presentation and dissemination of this information to help females in the attainment of this information.

Another interesting aspect of the findings relevant to merchants pertains to the relation of gender to certain motives. Specifically, females are more prone to social interaction and browsing motives than males. We can observe from the results that although social interaction positively influences loyalty to local merchants, browsing motives work to the local merchants’ detriment. This may stem from the over attentiveness of local merchants that actually hinders consumer loyalty as opposed to stimulating loyalty. This would suggest that local merchants develop their customer service policies taking this issue into account, sensitizing retail employees to this distinction and train them to take cues from female consumer segments to better understand these segments’ desired interaction level. This is especially true since social interaction and browsing had the strongest influence on consumers’ loyalty to local merchants.

Finally, the findings suggest that female consumers are more loyal to local retailers than males. These results suggest that females have a greater sense of community than males and that females view local merchants as an important part of the community in which they live. This suggests that local merchants may be able to capitalize on this disposition by emphasizing the issue of community and the role of local merchants in the community when interacting (either via advertising or in-store interactions) with female consumers.