Retailers around the globe survives and prospers when they satisfy customers’ needs more effectively than its competitors. Thus retailers offer unique benefits using different retail formats to satisfy the ever-changing customers’ needs and to create the brand loyal customers who patronize their stores. Though retailers have been experimenting with the new and innovative retail formats, spending millions of dollars in designing new formats, little academic research is available which investigates the most sought after retail format in the consumer durables market of South Africa. This research paper attempts to explore the effect of retail formats on the customer buying behavior in the consumer durables market by examining a random sample of 96 respondents from the Gauteng province of Johannesburg, South Africa. The empirical research findings suggests that there is significant effect of Discount Stores, Super Stores, Hypermarkets and Warehouse Stores on the customer buying behavior in the consumer durables market of South Africa
Keywords: Consumer Durables, Customer Buying Behavior, Retail Formats
