27 - The shopping experience

Abstract

Models for exploring a consumer’s rational assessment of product qualities leading to product purchase are complemented with models for exploring the effects of the broadly defined shopping environment on hedonic aspects of experience and consumer behaviors beyond product purchase. The shopping experience entails consumer processes and responses affected by aspects of the shopping environment, situation, and consumer characteristics. This chapter explores shopping experience. It presents two models and a typology that capture variables explaining the current nature of the shopping experience, to give order to the expansive topic, accompanied by examples of empirical research. It emphasizes research regarding the brick-and-mortar retail shopping experience and weaves in examples of literature addressing other retail venues. It also discusses emergent marketing trends transforming the shopping experience. Much of the research regarding consumption experience during the 1970s was grounded in the information-processing approach that regarded the consumer to be a logical thinker who aimed to purchase the best product from available product choices. Based on this approach, the consumer is envisioned to be a goal-directed problem solver who searches for product-related information, weighs evidence, and arrives at a carefully considered evaluation leading to a purchase decision. In contrast to the information-processing approach, some consumption experiences are better explained by an experiential approach. This approach posits that an interaction with the product, service, and/or shopping environment can be intrinsically satisfying, or satisfying for its own sake. Information search activity during the shopping experience has more to do with providing sensory or cognitive stimulation and satisfying curiosity than determining a product’s potential for utilitarian functionality.