A Study on Factors Influence on Consumers’ Leisure Shopping (With Special Reference to the Purchasing in Shopping Malls in Colombo District)

Shopping is widely regarded as a major leisure time activity and entertainment aspect of retail industry is increasingly being recognized as a key competitive tool in the present situation. Therefore retailers and shopping Centre developers are seeking ways to make shopping more of a leisure pursuit. While retailers are focusing more on entertainment, academic research is lagging in investigating the hedonic reasons people go shopping. Absence of knowledge in this background makes marketers unclear and difficult to satisfy expectations of the customers who are responsive to leisure shopping. A sample of 400 shopping mall customers in Sri Lanka was empirically investigated with the aim of identify the nature of leisure shopping behavior in shopping malls and to determine the factors influence consumers to go for leisure shopping in shopping malls. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data through mall intercept technique. The pilot study 49 shopping mall customers informed a high reliability level of the questionnaire in all the dimensions of the questionnaire. The Exploratory Factor Analysis identified that the consumer's leisure shopping was influenced by the seven different hedonic factors. These seven factors are especially remarkable theoretical implications which should prompt one to reconsider categories of shopping motives as indicated by Tauber (1972). Based on the literature these factors are named as Learning about new trends, Diversion, social Interaction, Gratification, Emotional Bonding, Mental Stimulants and Pleasure in bargaining. The study revealed that consumers go for shopping not only to purchase the products or services but also for fun. Hedonic Shopping also tended to be very social in nature and was often enhanced by the presence of friends and the trend is most marked among younger adults. And shopping is a major source of relaxation as well as a household chore associated with females in Sri Lankan shopping mall concept.