CHAPTER 1 - University of Exeter

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Chapter 1 - Introduction
people may be born to shop while others are born to buy, bargain, etc. (Mooradian &
Olver, 1996).
Experiential aspects of consumption
In the early 1980s Hirschman and Holbrook (1982) and Holbrook and
Hirschman (1982) were the first to talk about what they called the experiential
aspects of the consumption process. They argued that since for a number of
consumers shopping mainly is a leisure type activity those aspects that relate to the
experience of shopping (e.g., consumers’ feelings, fantasies) need to be
acknowledged as well as the practical (e.g., utilitarian) side of it (Hirschman &
Holbrook, 1982). Shopping is not only done to fulfil an identified need for a certain
product (i.e. we’ve run out of milk so new milk needs to be bought) but also for
reasons solely related to the hedonic aspects of shopping. Just as Bellenger and
Korgaonkar’s (1980) research had demonstrated already, many consumers are
recreational shoppers meaning that they enjoy shopping in its own right, without the
need to buy a certain product.
Csikszentmihalyi (1975) explored the concept of flow in several activities,
namely rock climbing, playing chess, dancing and playing basketball. He defined
flow as a cognitive state characterised as an optimal experience that is intrinsically
enjoyable. There are several aspects involved in the flow experience: a centring of
attention on a limited stimulus field, a loss of self, but at the same time a feeling of
being in control of one’s self and environment, and there is an ‘autotelic’ aspect so
that the activity is its own reward. Novak, Hoffman and Yung (2000) put this
research into a consumer behaviour context and showed that consumers can also
have similar experiences to flow when shopping. For example, Novak et al. (2000)