Unraveling Consumer Motivation To Shop Local: Clothing vs. Grocery Stores

Abstract

A recent survey showed consumers overwhelmingly support local businesses and plan to do so in the future (Mint, 2021). Still, previous research on local retailing is mostly limited to food/grocery shopping (Hashem et al., 2017; Memery et al., 2015), and academic research to understand consumer motivation to support local clothing stores is rare. Thus, the current study aims to investigate motivations for consumers’ willingness to shop at local retailers over national chains in two store categories, grocery and clothing stores. Drawn from the local identity and local consumption literature, this study tested the interactive effects of the localness of the store, consumer local identity, and product category on consumer willingness to shop. a 2 (store: local vs. national) × 2 (product: clothing vs. grocery) × 2 (local identity: low vs. high) between-subjects online experiment (n=189) revealed that consumers are generally willing to shop at local stores over national chains for both altruistic and self-interest motivations. Perceived quality of products explained the local store preference effect only for grocery stores. Importantly, the local appeal was limited to grocery stores for consumers with low local identity whereas consumers with high local identity showed a local preference for both products.