THE USE OF RGT (REPERTORY GRID TECHNIQUE) IN MEASURING THE IMAGE OF SHOPPING CENTERS

With the number and variety of shopping centers in Brazil increasing, there is greater pressure on the practitioners of marketing to better understand how consumers choose shopping centers both as shopping and leisure areas. This study suggests that the technique of the repertory grid (RGT) is superior to other techniques which are generally used to evaluate the dimensions which a consumer uses to evaluate a shopping center. The main advantage of the repertory grid is that the dimensions through which an object is evaluated and its relative importance are directly obtained from the consumer with no interference from the researcher. The study introduces a number of necessary basic concepts to understand the application of the technique and the theory on which it is based, the psychology of personal constructs developed by Kelly (1955). The study also presents a number of hypothetical examples of how to apply the technique and its main limitations.