Shoppers' Movements outside Their Local Retail Area

Abstract

What types of shoppers are most loyal to their local retail area? What types are most likely to travel long distances in order to shop in other areas? What do these out-of-town shoppers buy? This analysis of out-of-town shopping by the residents of a small Pennsylvania city investigates the relationship between shoppers' personal characteristics and attitudes toward local market conditions and their movements outside their local retail area.

A review and extension of the outshopping paradigm to the Indian context

“…Ini tial stud ies used frequency of outshopping trips (Herrmann and Beik 1968;Thomp son 1971;Hop per and Lipscomb 1991;Reynolds and Darden 1972;Samli et al 1983;Hawes and Lumpkin 1984;Wee et al 1988 andBudden 1989). How ever, within this method of eval u a tion there were dif fer ences among the re search ers.…”

“…Thomp son (1971) de fined outshoppers as those who made out-of-town pur chases within the past six months. Herrmann and Beik (1968) con sid ered outshoppers as those who have made at least one out-of-town shop ping trip per year, while Reynolds and Darden (1972) defined them as one who make at least 12 out-of-town shop ping trips per year. Later re searches clas si fied outshopper on the ba sis of pro por tion of to tal out-of-town pur chases (Samli and Uhr 1974;Papadopoulos 1980).…”

“…Most im por tant form of outshopping highly reviewed by past in ves ti ga tors have been that from a smaller ur ban es tab lishment to that of a larger ur ban es tab lish ments, ex pected to have larger re tail fa cil i ties and thus greater num ber of op tions. Most of the ear lier stud ies in Amer i can lit er a ture stud ied outshopping un der this kind of set ting (Herrmann and Beik 1968;Thomp son 1971;Samli and Uhr 1974;Darden and Perreault 1976).…”

“…Lim i ta tions of eco nomic motivators and an a lyt i cal mod els was iden ti fied from the very be gin ning by var i ous re search ers study ing outshopping behav iour, there fore many of them started study ing cer tain de mo graphic, psychographic and store re lated vari ables. Pi o neer ing work in this di rec tion has been done by Thomp son (1971), Herrmann and Beik (1968), Darden and Perreault (1976) etc. Each one of them has car ried out stud ies in se lected ur ban lo ca tions and tried to iden tify the vari ables hav ing an im pact on outshopping be hav iour.…”

“…They gained prom i nence as trade out flow ow ing to such move ments re sulted in fall of rev e nue for lo cal re tail ers and had other snow ball ing ef fects. Stud ies were aimed to un der stand the rea sons be hind this kind of trade flow and em pha sis was on study ing the con sumer be haviour be hind this kind of move ment (Herrmann and Beik 1968;Thomp son 1971;Darden and Perrault 1976;Samli and Uhr 1974;Papadopoulous 1980 etc).…”