CHAPTER 1 - University of Exeter

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Chapter 1 - Introduction
one of these typologies does include some sort of a recreational shopper (Stone’s
personalizing shopper, Lesser and Hughes’ active shopper to name a few). This is a
shopper who is characterised by being an individual who enjoys the activity of going
shopping in its own right. He or she sees shopping as something that is done for fun
and not just when it is needed. As mentioned before Bellenger and Korgaonkar
(1980) developed a more detailed profile of recreational shoppers and argued that
these shoppers (apart from enjoying shopping as a leisure type activity) are more
likely to be women who are
looking for a pleasant atmosphere with a large variety of high-quality
merchandise. Compared with the economic shopper [as identified by Stone,
1954] the recreational shopper tends to spend more time shopping even after
making a purchase, is more prone to buy something she likes irrespective of
urgency or need, and spends less time deliberating before making a purchase”
(Bellenger & Korgaonkar, 1980, p. 84-91).
Consequently, it can be argued that shopping behaviour is more than just
maximising instrumental utility, and therefore motivations and hedonic experiences
need to be considered as well and will be discussed in the sections below.
Shopping Motivations
Almost parallel to the development of shopper typologies, another line of
research appeared in the early 1970s, which investigated people’s motivations for
going shopping. Research investigating shopping motivations was different from
shopper typology research conducted up to this time in that it was more general in its
approach. It focused on all reasons why people shop, rather than focusing on reasons
consumers patronise certain retail outlets.