Physically disabled people as customers within Finnish grocery retailing: is the physical impairment an obstacle in the accessibility of grocery retail services?




Anna-Maija Kohijoki

Harry Timmermanns

2010

Conference Proceedings of the Recent Advances in Retailing and Services Science

Recent Advances in Retailing & Services Science

978-90-6814-180-1




This article deals with a study on the physically disabled people as customers within Finnish grocery retailing. Based on a web-based survey, the shopping behavior of physically disabled people and their experiences of the accessibility of grocery retail services were examined. The aim was to identify if the physical impairment creates an obstacle in the accessibility of grocery retail services and whether it creates a consumer disadvantage. According to the results, a large part of the physically disabled people can be classified as disadvantaged consumers but in spite of that they are fairly satisfied with the manner in which they are treated in the Finnish grocery retailing. The main difficulties the physically disabled experienced in the accessibility were caused by their own impairment not by the operation of the retailers. In addition to difficulties which were related to the physical accessibility, one major obstacle in the accessibility was created by the fallacious views and attitudes of nondisabled people. Thus, developing grocery retail services equally accessible to everyone is not the responsibility of the grocery retailing business alone, but also the society and the consumers themselves have a part to play. Therefore, it is important to recognise the experiences and views of the disabled consumers in grocery shopping, but it is also necessary to increase the communication between the different actors.

 

 

 




Last updated on 2024-26-11 at 11:51