A Study on Factors Influencing Consumers’ Usage of Self-service Stations

• Main Authors: Chih-YungShih, 施志勇
• Other Authors: Meng-Kuan Lai
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/90300089034920020766

碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 高階管理碩士在職專班(EMBA) === 103 === INTRODUCTION The liberalization of domestic gasoline market since 1987 put an end to government-monopoly gasoline market and changed the structure of gasoline market completely. With the growth of private-owned gasoline stations, the supply of gasoline exceeds the demand which leads to the trend of low daily gasoline consumption. The other threat to the operation of gasoline stations is the problem of low fertility which leads to labor shortage. In addition, raising labor consciousness and the raising minimum wage incurring the operational cost have made the operations of gasoline stations face unprecedented challenges. The successful business in Japan constructing self-service stations could be a good reference for Taiwan gasoline industry. To date, self-service stations account for 24% gasoline stations in Japan. In terms of the development of self-service stations in Taiwan, with the leading of CPC (Chinese Petroleum Corporation), consumers’ acceptance of self-service stations have greatly enhanced. However, compared to the preferential price of self-service stations in Japan, there is still much room for Taiwan to improve. Owing to labor shortage and increasing personnel costs, domestic gasoline industry hits a bottleneck on management. What’s more, because self-service stations are cheap, convenient, time-saving and controllable, consumers are willing to adopt self-service stations instead of the traditional ones. Therefore, this research aimed to find out the relationship between demographic variables and price sensitivity via questionnaires. And this thesis further analyzed the effect of price sensitivity and service convenience to perceived value and willingness to use self-service stations. The results provide a reference for gasoline industry to promote self-service stations in the future. MATERIALS AND METHODS This study proposed to examine consumers’ perceived value and willingness to use self-service stations under different price sensitivity and service convenience. The framework includes two independent variables, price sensitivity and service convenience; a mediator variable, consumers’ perceived value; and an independent variable, willingness to use self-service stations. Nonetheless, independent, mediator and dependent variable may have cause and effect relationship, and the two independent variables may have interaction effects. Thus, this study adopted factorial experiment design to collect data and prove research hypothesis. There are six research hypothesis. H1: Different ages have a significant influence on price sensitivity. H2: Price sensitivity has a positive effect on consumers’ perceived value. H3: Service convenience has a positive effect on consumers’ perceived value. H4: Consumers’ perceived value has a positive effect on willingness to use self-service stations. H5: Consumers’ perceived value is a mediator between price sensitivity and willingness to use self-service stations. H6: Consumers’ perceived value is a mediator between service convenience and willingness to use self-service stations. Furthermore, questionnaire design contains four parts. For the first part, items measure the independent variable, price sensitivity. In the second part, items measure service convenience which includes location and time. In the third part, items measure consumers’ perceived value for self-service stations. Finally, items measure consumers’ willingness to use self-service stations. We employ 5-point Likert scale for all items. In the end, we ask background information of the respondents including gender, age, education, monthly income, occupation and marital status, as demographics variables for hypothesis testing. We focus on 10 stations which have most daily gasoline consumption in Tainan city to distribute questionnaire. Five of them are equipped with self-service stations. Each stations have 35 respondents. Simple random sampling was adopted. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The results revealed that consumers’ price sensitivity has a positive effect on perceived value. For price-sensitive consumers, the preferential price of gasoline stations will increase perceived value of the usage of self-service stations and lead to the willingness to use them. Thus, gasoline owners should think about the price difference between self-service stations and the traditional ones. Furthermore, service convenience also has a positive influence on consumer perceived value. It means that service convenience (time and location) will increase consumer’s perceived value to and willingness to use self-service stations. Therefore, the location of self-service stations should satisfy consumers’ need for convenience which means it can save their time and effort while filling fuel. Moreover, due to the trend of labor shortage and increasing personnel cost, if gasoline owners can provide flexible service time, then they can satisfy consumers’ need for convenience and reduce their time cost. In terms of analysis of relationship between demographics variables (age, education and monthly income) and price sensitivity, the results revealed that there is no significant relationship between them. We infer that it may because the car and motorcycle density is high in Taiwan, gasoline can be seen as a daily necessity. Its price elasticity is small and consumers’ price sensitivity toward it is small. What’s more, most respondents belong to young and highly educated population who are low price sensitive. In consequence, demographics variables, age, education, and monthly income in this research have no significant relationship with price sensitivity.