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The present study investigates changes in the shopping behavior of today's mall patrons as opposed to those in the early 1990s. Data collected in the sample surveys included respondents' demographic attributes, shopping motivations, situational factors, and purchase behaviors. Although no differences were found between the demographics of the respondents in the earlier and later periods, we discovered significant differences in shopping patterns and purchase behaviors. Compared with the shoppers in the early 1990s, today's mall patrons tend to be more leisure driven, they have a greater concern for merchandise selection, and they visit the mall less often but make more purchases per visit. The findings also reveal that situational variables are more likely to have an impact on shoppers' purchase decisions today than they did before. Based on the study's findings, we suggest a number of pragmatic strategies to aid store and mall managers in their marketing efforts with regard to consumers today.

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Purpose -To investigate the impact of situational factors on mall shoppers' buying decisions. Design/methodology/approach -Based on Belk's framework on situational factors in a sales situation, the study employed a dataset of mall shoppers in the USA, China and Hong Kong and logistic regression for analysis. Findings -It is found that, whether in the combined sample or in the individual samples, nine of the 13 situational factors considered significantly affected shoppers' purchases of food or non-food products. However, situational influences on purchases varied according to the types of products bought. More importantly, the findings on the impact of some factors were consistent across three or two samples, suggesting that their external validity may be extended to certain conditions. Research limitations/implications -The study had a limitation in the selection of the malls where the interviews were conducted, so some of the findings may be mall-specific rather than representative of the general population of shoppers in the nations or regions. Practical implications -The information disclosed here may help the practitioners to better understand shoppers' (especially Chinese shoppers') behaviour in malls and, as a consequence, to undertake more efficient marketing strategies in malls (especially in the malls in China). Originality/value -The distinguished feature of this paper is that it simultaneously examined the impacts of 13 situational factors on mall shoppers' purchase decisions with multinational data. This allowed researchers to check both the internal validity and the external validity of the observed impacts of the situational factors. IntroductionRetailers and manufacturers are very interested in how shoppers make their purchase decisions, as well as when, why and whether a shopping trip leads to a purchase. Such information is critical in formulating marketing strategy (Kotler, 2000) and retailing planning (Levy and Weitz, 1992). Marketing literature has revealed that many factors may affect shoppers' purchase decisions, including individual and psychological characteristics, cultural, social and environmental variables and promotional strategies. Belk (1975) made a distinction between situational and non-situational factors. He suggested that situation factors, such as task definition, physical and social surroundings, temporal perspectives and antecedent states, may play a major role in sales situations, and thus deserve special attention from marketers.This study, based on Belk's framework, focused on two important issues regarding the impact of situational factors -specifically on the significance of different factors when examined collectively rather than individually; and when conducted simultaneously in several countries/regions rather than in just a single country.The impact of situational factors has been examined extensively (see the literature review below for details); however, most of these studies have focused on particular types of situational influences and have left the question, "...

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