Hedonic and Utilitarian Shopper Types in Evolved and Created Retail Agglomerations

Abstract

This paper focuses on the impact of hedonic and utilitarian values of shopping on retail agglomeration patronage issues, in particular on the shopping behaviour and the perception of retail agglomerations. Our empirical study is based on a discussion of agglomerations’ potential to attract utilitarian and hedonic shopper types. A sample of 2,139 customers were interviewed in a peripheral shopping mall and an inner city shopping street and confronted with a multi-item scale operationalising shopping values as developed by Babin et al. (1994). Using a standard fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm we identify four distinct shopper types. The results show that hedonists are represented by a higher number of females, earn lower individual incomes and are less educated compared to utilitarians. Interestingly, a higher share of hedonists visited the shopping mall. Overall, they make more shopping trips to agglomerations, stay there longer, visit more stores and – depending on the agglomeration format – spend less than or the same amount as utilitarians. Finally, we see that those customers who are attracted by agglomerations because of atmospheric and price stimuli are typical hedonists.

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