Engaging the purchase motivations to charm shoppers

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to give retailers an insight into consumers' capacity for feeling pleasure associated with specific purchase motivations across different product categories.

Design/methodology/approach

A hedonic regression model was estimated from data collected from shoppers in shopping malls that enabled the generation of implicit prices of each constituent purchasing motive.

Findings

Hedonic values of consumer motivations vary for different products categories. Convenience items, like bread, allow little scope for self‐congruence, whereas shampoo offers significant scope for pleasurable emotive appeals to boost consumers' status enhancement and social image. This study identified opportunities to create good feelings for the purchase of both bread and shampoos, by engaging shoppers' attention on themes relating to social referents and family values. Shopping items like apparel and specialty items like cosmetics offer prospects of titillating consumer motives of status and self‐image enhancement, respectively, by engaging them with reputable merchandise in reputable settings.

Research limitations/implications

No insight was sought on the hedonic value of consumers' buying motivations of impulse purchases.

Practical implications

Products that are used in public (apparel) or whose consumption outcome is manifest in public (shampoos and cosmetics), have purchase motivations that are susceptible to hedonic appeals. On the other hand, only a few purchase motivations for products like bread, with limited “public face”, have some hedonic value. The results of this study inform retailers on choice of purchase motivations to direct engagement appeals in order to generate emotional excitement. Getting consumers to fantasize on themes relating to relevant purchasing motives could facilitate their purchase choice.

Originality/value

Targeting consumers' preferred urges is an efficient way to stimulate buying intentions.

Citation

Miranda, M.J. (2009), "Engaging the purchase motivations to charm shoppers", Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 27 No. 1, pp. 127-145. https://doi.org/10.1108/02634500910928335