Contexto / Ambiente:

By contrast with Foxall’s Regulatory Forces, one of the most widely referenced taxonomies of shopping situation was devised by Belk, and rather than ‘Regulatory Forces’, for many years

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‘task definition’ and ‘antecedent states’ prevailed. Task Definition relates to the goal of the trip (Thelen and Woodside 1997), and was shown to exert a framing influence on the consumer, ultimately deriving store-attribute saliences (Van Kenhove and De Wulf 2000) and driving their memory of stores and shopping centres, and informing their choice of store and shopping centre.. Researchers see shopping trip context as being either utilitarian, hedonic or gift driven (Hirschman and Holbrook 1982; Havlena and Holbrook 1986; Babin and Darden 1996; Babin and Babin 2001). Task definition sets the scene of the particular shopping situation, and determines the goals of the shopping trip, whether completely utilitarian, hedonic or gift oriented, or encompassing several of these activities.

Depending on the shopping goals (task definition), consumers will retrieve different sets of potential shopping centres from memory, relating to the benefits those centres afford in

achieving their goals (Thelen and Woodside 1997). A customer preparing for a monthly grocery shop is engaging in a utilitarian task, and the salient attributes of the stores considered in this context may relate to price and range of items, while a customer preparing to pick up a few necessities is also engaging in a utilitarian task, with convenience and store location being the most salient points for this task, as the goals are more urgent (Van Kenhove and De Wulf 2000).

In another context, a consumer may visit a shopping centre to meet a friend to browse through shops together, and go for a relaxing meal, which may be categorised as a hedonic task. To best achieve this task, they consider those shopping centres which will best enable the achievement of the task goals (Thelen and Woodside 1997). In other contexts, a shopper may be looking around to buy or get ideas about a gift for a family member’s upcoming birthday. While the literature on hedonic and utilitarian shopping is quite broad, few of these studies have focused on how the task context specifically impacts on aspects of consumer behaviour.

Research on the effect of task orientation on shopping behaviour is not extensive, and the studies that exist do not always report similar results. In one of the earlier studies, examining purchase of an item for oneself, as a gift for a close friend, or as a wedding gift for a friend, it was discovered that there was little difference in time spent searching for information when searching for a gift for a close friend or for oneself. However, when comparing searching for a wedding gift with searching for oneself, research found that shoppers spent significantly less time searching for information about a product when looking for a wedding gift (Heeler, Francis et al. 1979).

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However, in another study conducted at the same time, it was proposed that customers put more effort into gift purchases than for own-use purchases. This research suggested that for low involvement purchases, but not high involvement purchases, task importance relates positively with purchase effort, increasing the effort made for a purchase when the task importance is high. It was suggested that this was likely to be because otherwise private (non-visible) items a customer purchases for themselves, when considered as a gift, suddenly become publicly visible items, and that publicly visible items are usually afforded greater care and effort during the purchase decision stage than privately consumed items. Items that are otherwise low involvement purchases, when bought as gifts, become more important, and involvement increases, to such an extent that, during holiday gift-giving periods, otherwise low-involvement products (such as confectionary) are afforded a significantly higher amount of attention from customers (involvement increased as importance increases) and retailers (increased sales efforts) (Clarke and Belk 1979).

Research suggests that choice of store or shopping centre, as well as shopping activities, depends partly on whether a customer is shopping for themselves or for a gift, proposing that customers shopping for a gift are more likely to acquire less information and spend less time deliberating about a purchase, and to visit stores with a quality image (Mattson 1982).

Some task related research has sought to segment customers on the basis of their shopping type, defining the main forms of shopping as hedonic or utilitarian. ‘Recreational’ shoppers, those who are engaging in hedonic shopping, are seen to spend longer shopping and continue to shop after making a purchase, and more likely to make unnecessary or unplanned purchases

(Bellenger and Korgaonkar 1980). They also pay more attention to wider retail attributes, such as atmospheric (physical) and social attributes of the environment (Arnold and Reynolds 2003), and merchandise quality, variety and display. Value derived from hedonic shopping relates to the experiential benefits offered by stores or shopping centres; excitement, enjoyment, escapism, etc., with actual purchase incidental to the experience (Babin, Darden et al. 1994). Hedonic shopping orientation, along with sensation-seeking tendency and shopping motives, affect perceived excitement of store and desire to stay in a store, by affecting a customer’s perception of the store (Han and Koh 2000). The ‘utilitarian’ shopper, places greater importance on convenience, and spends longer considering a purchase (Bellenger and Korgaonkar 1980).

Utilitarian value relates to time and effort expended shopping to achieve the intended outcome,

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i.e. to find and purchase everything needed as expediently and painlessly as possible (Babin, Darden et al. 1994).

Belk’s category ‘antecedent states’ is not represented in Foxall’s behaviour setting stimuli (Foxall 1999). They are proximal attributes, momentary moods and conditions are factors a consumer carries with them, and mediate the affect of the behavioural setting on the consumer.

Momentary moods included anxiety, pleasantness, hostility and excitement. Momentary states may include cash in hand, hunger, fatigue and illness. They are therefore to be viewed very cautiously, and difficult to classify as part of the situation. They can instead be considered as indirect evidence of the evoked emotional response of the consumer, and comprise part of the learning history. This links back with the associative learning work of Watson, examining the emotional as well as physical response to stimuli. They are also susceptible to the other variables in the behaviour setting outlined above, and can change within the span of a single synomorphic situation.

From the earlier sections regarding physical surroundings, social surroundings and temporal perspective, and the preceding section on task affect and antecedent states, the following hypotheses are proposed for Study 1, considering Belk’s taxonomy.

H1: Shopping centre response is affected by situational variables