Entrepreneurial Marketing: Customer Shopping Value and Patronage Behavior

Abstract

Executive Summary Research confirming the relationships among emotional responses to sensate based retailing atmospheres and personal shopping value forms the basis for developing a conceptual model of shopping focused word of mouth communication for entrepreneurial ventures. The conceptual development retains those emotions-experiential shopping value linkages and extends these fundamental relationships by incorporating consumption specific self-confidence and patronage intentions as mediators of the effects of shopping experiences upon retailing focused word of mouth communication. An empirical study of the proposed relationships involved responses from a cross sectional survey of two hundred eighty one customers who completed a self administered questionnaire about shopping behaviors. The results indicate partial support for the hypothesized direct-emotions-shopping experiences-as well as the mediated-consumption specific self confidence and patronage intentions-relationships. A discussion focuses upon possible reasons for the results along with the managerial significance of the findings. Introduction Contemporary thought emphasizes the potential contribution that an understanding of consumer emotions may make to the design of retail environments for entrepreneurs. In many instances, the emphasis has been in the form of recommendations that entrepreneurs should focus upon color, scent, music and merchandising themes (e.g. Turley & Millman, 2000) to generate favorable emotional states. In other studies, recommendations have emerged from findings that suggest congenial and well versed employees should convey the idea that shopping is more than an exercise in purchasing (Carraher, Parnell, Carraher, Carraher, & Sullivan, 2006). Thus, employees should be thought of as significant contributors to emotional based themes, and the latter should be designed in accordance with the thinking that pleasurable in-store experiences could enable customers to transcend and/or compensate for any drudgery associated with a task focus (cf. Kozinets et al. 2002). Other suggestions for success emphasize that entrepreneurs should make it easy for customers to locate, inspect, and purchase needed items (Titus & Everett, 1995), thereby enhancing customer's satisfaction with the shopping experience. The expectation being that increased satisfaction could improve sales volume and the potential for future sales (Babin & Darden, 1996). Customers' responses, as well as the nature or pattern of those responses, to emotional based themes are not limited to those reported in the preceding studies. For example, retailing studies have investigated the direct and the indirect effects of environmentally anchored emotions: pleasure, arousal, and dominance (Mehrabian & Russell, 1974) upon shopping experiences and behaviors. If customers adopted a task or a pleasure orientation, an indirect effect occurred when arousal, conceptualized as an emotion operating through one's impression of the pleasantness of the environment, influenced one's behavior intentions (Kaltcheva & Weitz, 2006). In a somewhat different context, other findings suggested a more direct effect. The enjoyment associated with hedonically motivated (pleasure oriented) shopping resulted in customers bolstering their in-store enjoyment by interacting with other customers and store employees (Arnold & Reynolds, 2003). Pleasure and arousal have also been studied as emotional states that influence customers' thoughts of hedonic and utilitarian value (Wang, Baker, Wagner & Wakefield, 2007). Their results indicate that hedonic and utilitarian shopping values or experiences, conditioned by the emotions of pleasure and arousal, influence customers' willingness to purchase and their subsequent willingness to recommend the retail experience to another. However, other conceptualizations of shopping related behaviors emphasize that the effects of hedonic and utilitarian experiences or value upon word of mouth communication often are influenced (mediated) by consumption related self-confidence and patronage behavior (Paridon, 2006, 2008). …

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