Hedonism and Culture: Impact on Shopper Behaviour

Abstract

Increasingly consumer shopping behaviour is being seen from the holistic perspective of the entire shopping experience. The experiential view of shopping takes a far more holistic approach to the consumption process, right from involvement to post purchase usage, and incorporates the hedonistic perspective into the existing, primarily cognitive- rational information processing view of consumption (Hirschman and Holbrook, 1982). Hedonic shopping value refers to the sense of enjoyment and pleasure that the consumer receives from the entire buying experience associated with shopping at a store (Griffin, Babin and Modianos, 2000) and this value perception could vary depending on individual shopping orientations, the cultural orientations as well as the economic and competitive environment in which the consumer shops (Woodruffe, Eccles and Elliott, 2002). This paper attempts to understand the impact of all three factors on the purchase behaviour of shoppers by examining hedonic value across different product categories signifying different shopping orientations; across culturally distinct countries; across developing and developed economies; and across different stages of retail evolution