Retailing and consumer patronage behavior constitute fascinating research areas within the field of marketing. Retailing contributes to an increasing proportion of gross national products and employment but is, however, also faced with problems and opportunities like increased product complexity, rapidly changing consumer expectations, and the introduction of new technologies. Also, consumers are facing markets of increasingly complexity when making decisions on how to conduct their behavior, primarily as a result of new technologies, shorter products life cycles in general, and higher complexity of products and services. In this book, we present and deal with various topics in relation to retailing and consumer patronage behavior. Together, these topics involve different problem settings and draw on different theories, models and statistical techniques. However, it is common to all the results presented in the following chapters (with the exception of chapter II) that they, in total or in part, rest on a major survey, which was conducted by the authors in 1999. Our now retired colleague, Hans Engstrøm participated in preparing this survey and did a great job in providing research ideas. For this, and for many stimulating discussions, we are highly grateful.
