**4. Research Design**

The subjects of this study were three major chain convenience stores: 7-Eleven, Family Mart, and Hi-Life. We discussed the differences among the three rival enterprises and analyzed the differences in various consumer groups' brand attachments. The subjects of the questionnaire were loyal consumers who used the apps of these brands. After discussions with three experts from 7-Eleven, Family Mart, and Hi-Life, we learned that the best way to distinguish the main consumer groups of convenience stores was to divide these consumers into groups by age. Taking convenience into consideration, the experts suggested dividing these consumers into a young consumer group and an older consumer group. The young consumer group consisted of consumers 30 years of age or younger. Meanwhile, the older consumer group consisted of consumers 31 years of age or older. The analysis was performed on the basis of these definitions.

The main reference of the questionnaire was the concept of brand attachment proposed by Malär et al. [15] and Thomson et al. [21], which was adjusted to fit the purpose of this study. By interviewing chain convenience store owners, we developed a questionnaire about convenience store brand attachment containing four parts. The first part followed the standard and method of classifying brand attachment attributes, the second part tested the importance of brand attachment attributes, the third part analyzed consumers' shopping characteristics, and the last part assessed the subjects' shopping patterns and basic information.

In addition, this FQFD-based research was divided into two steps. The first step consisted of building the hierarchical structure of consumer brand attachment on the basis of a literature review and applying it as the basis of the evaluation of the importance of attachment attributes. We targeted consumers of 7-Eleven, Family Mart, and Hi-Life to complete the questionnaire and obtained the weight sets of all kinds of dimensions and attributes. According to McLean et al. [32], consumers who have frequently used an app for more than 6 months have more awareness of experience with the brand's app. Therefore, if one meets the conditions listed below, he/she was defined as a consumer expert: (1) the subject "agreed" that he/she was a loyal consumer of a brand, (2) the subject had been using the brand's app 11 or more times per month for more than 6 months, and (3) the subject had engaged in consumption using the brand's app. The questionnaire was distributed at stores of the three brands and on the Internet. The number of questionnaires distributed at 7-Eleven stores was 71; 63 were valid, and 8 were invalid. The number of questionnaires distributed at Family Mart stores was 86; 60 were valid, and 26 were invalid. The number of questionnaires distributed at Hi-Life stores was 108; 60 were valid, and 48 were invalid. The organized data are listed in Table 3.

**Table 3.** Analysis of returned valid copies of questionnaires from consumer experts.


The second step consisted of the literature review; we organized the strategic managemen<sup>t</sup> plan items used by brands when creating a consumer brand experience, and we used those items as test targets for the questionnaire evaluation tool. This part of the questionnaire was for senior employees and managers who were well acquainted with the operations and app of the brand. Through the questionnaire, we were able to understand the degree of relevance between consumers' brand attachment attributes and brands' experience strategic managemen<sup>t</sup> plan items, as well as the self-performance evaluation of each experience strategic managemen<sup>t</sup> plan item. In the current study, 13 questionnaires were completed by personnel from 7-Eleven, 13 were completed by personnel from Family Mart, and 12 were completed by personnel from Hi-Life. The profile of the experts, including their educational level, age group, and education, is shown in Table 4.


**Table 4.** Expert profile statistics.
