Interação consumidor-funcionário no varejo de confecção sob a perspectiva da classe média

Abstract

The point of sale atmosphere is composed of environmental, social and design factors, and its relevance to the retail is recognized through academic research carried out in the field and through investments made by retailers to build more favorable environments to achieve their objectives. However, theoretical review has presented an opportunity to carry out further investigation on consumer-employee interaction, in which was found that only a handful of studies truly examine the relationship between the quality of consumer-employee interaction and the purchase intention and store recommendation intention variables, which justify the interest for this theme. Given the above, this study aims at analyzing the influence of consumer employee interaction quality in store recommendation and purchase intentions from a clothing store for middle class consumers. The economic importance of retail clothing within the retail industry, the pre-disposition for interaction among the social factors in this segment and the fact that more than half Brazil s population is part of the middle class, based on CPS/FGV (NERI, 2012) have contributed to the selection of this sector and this social class as the focuses of this study. In order to meet the objectives of this dissertation, two research studies were carried out sequentially. The research started with a qualitative exploratory phase conducted through interviews and a focus group, followed by a quantitative step implemented through a conclusive causal research through an experimental study. The combination of these methods has addressed the investigation of these study objectives, and the outcomes from the studies have shown that there is a high correlation between the quality of consumer-employee interaction and store and recommendation and purchase intentions of the clothing store in the studied segment. How much more positive interaction between the middle class consumer and employees of the retail clothing industry, the greater the purchase intention and recommendation of the consumer, while the reverse is also true, how much more negative the interaction between the consumer and the retail clothing employee, the lower the purchase intention and recommendation of the middle class consumer.