The shopping experience of female fashion leaders

Abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to explore how the shopping mall environment impacts on hedonic and utilitarian shopping experiences, and approach behaviour of fashion leaders and followers. Design/methodology/approach -Fashion shoppers' response and behaviour has been modelled in an invariant multigroup latent structural path analysis. Paths were initially constrained and then released as required. More than 300 usable questionnaires were acquired from a mall intercept in a regional urban middleclass shopping centre. Participants were probed on their attitude about fashion, perception of the shopping mall, present mood, shopping value and approach behaviour toward the mall. Findings -The mall environment directly influences fashion leaders' hedonic shopping experience and approach behaviour. Fashion followers' hedonic shopping experience may be mood driven, while that of fashion leaders' is triggered by higher involvement cognitive processing. Research limitations/implications -This study was carried out in one fashion-oriented urban mall in Montreal, and should be replicated to other locations and markets. A larger sample would allow the inclusion of additional constructs. Practical implications -Mall owners and developers might appeal to fashion leaders through offering services that will speed up their shopping trip, using high-tech methods to convey fashion information and by branding the mall. Fashion followers and laggards are likely to respond to experience-oriented strategies that make their shopping trip more pleasurable. Originality/value -Although fashion consumer groups have been studied from various perspectives, no research was found that investigates the integrated shopping experience of fashion shoppers in a shopping mall setting. This study fills the void.

Consumer perceptions of higher and lower-level designed store environments

“…Locations were chosen after the checkout and sufficiently deep into the store to allow consumers to observe the design before responding to the survey questions. Both in-store survey administrations were comparable, and the prospective influence of situational variables was reduced in line with the approaches suggested by Spies, Hesse and Loesch (1997), Yoo, Park and MacInnis (1998), Mulhern and Padgett (1995), and Michon et al (2007).…”

Consumer innovativeness: Impact on expectations, perceptions, and choice among retail formats

“…Babin and Darden (1995) suggest that consumers engaged in hedonic pursuits are more susceptible to contextual influences and consequently evaluate shopping environments along different criteria than do shoppers driven by more utilitarian objectives. Michon et al (2007) build on this research, finding that innovative shoppers respond more strongly to retailer efforts to create functional improvements than to efforts to increase hedonic appeal. Perhaps this occurs because these shoppers select environments already offering high levels of hedonic attributes.…”

How can shopping mall management best capture mall image?

“…Similarly, malls that are moderately arousing are likely to be more favored than malls that are perceived to be highly arousing or not arousing at all. There is much evidence in the retailing literature to support the notion that mall atmosphere is an important factor in mall evaluation, patronage, and loyalty (e.g., Andreu, et al, 2006;Babin and Attaway, 2000;Grewal, et al, 2003;Keng, et al, 2007;Michon et al, 2005;Michon et al, 2007Michon et al, , 2008.…”