Shopping Behavior Of Supermarket Consumers In Kuwait

This study determines the product selection processes from Kuwaiti nationals based on their shopping habits in the Co-Operative Supermarkets (A government owned grocery stores).  This paper expands the concept of Consumer Satisfaction and includes an evaluation of the post purchase affective response. It presents the development of a consumer typology based on affective response, basically broken into two groups. The first group is formed by consumers who face grocery shopping as their duty the second group considers grocery shopping as their pleasure. The paper also presents the implications of such typology in the Co-Op operation itself. The literature on consumer behavior and store choice suggests that consumers make decisions to patronize a particular store on the basis of a set of attributes that they view as important. This study attempts to explore the determinant attributes that influence the patronage decisions of supermarket consumers in Kuwait. Based on a descriptive analysis of data collected via an accidental sampling procedure, fourteen store attributes were identified. These attributes were factor analyzed, generating four image dimensions intuitively labeled merchandise, personnel, accessibility and promotion. A stepwise regression showed that merchandise image was the most salient in determining the frequency of supermarket shopping. None of the demographic characteristics of consumers did seem to have an impact on the perceived importance of the promotion image. Most of the differences among the categories of the consumers' demographic characteristics were found in the accessibility image, providing possible explanation for why the rank of the importance of accessibility elements varies considerably from one study to another. &nbsp

On The Experience Of The Arab Open University With The Standard Deviation Method

The Arab Open University (AOU) has adopted the standard deviation method (SDM) as a grading system in replacement of a fixed scale. Adopting SDM was intended to remedy a problem that has resulted from discrepancies between AOU's graduation requirements and those of its partner, UK Open University. This paper aims mainly at investigating whether SDM has served the purpose for which it was selected. A data set of the final letter grades of students enrolled in 18 licensed courses from UK-OU at Kuwait branch was used. These letter grades were analyzed in comparison with the letter grades that would have been assigned to students had the fixed grading scale been utilized. The results of the comparative analysis revealed that SDM resulted in benefiting 39.4% of all students and lowering the letter grades of 10.4% of the students. Despite its positive results, SDM has not contributed significantly to remedying the problem in question. Thus, a case for withholding the D grade while continuing with using SDM was presented