Jill S. Attaway

When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough go Shopping: A Fresh Look at Consumer Shopping Motivations

Understanding why people shop and buy is of paramount importance to retail operators, however much of the existing research in this area really concerns what consumers purchased and where they shopped; not why they exhibited a certain behavior. This research examines underlying consumer motivations in an attempt to provide a theoretical basis for explanation and future prediction of consumer/retailer interaction. Specifically, this research provides an investigation of the differences between consumers who are motivated to shop primarily for symbolic and/or experiential reasons and those whose shopping motivations are functional in nature. A set of hypotheses concerning the relationship between shopping motivations and behavior are formulated and tested and implications for retail strategists and future researchers are provided.

Exploring Data Quality and Measurement in Mixed Mode Data Collection

The research explores issues related to data quality and measurement in mixed mode data collection by examining the benefits posed by offering both web-based surveys and telephone surveys in business-to-business research contexts. The results of three unique business-to-business studies are analyzed to examine issues related to data quality. Discussion and implications are provided to guide researchers in their choice of data collection methods.

Exploring Cross-Cultural Differences in Ethical Predispositions and Behavior in a Selling Context

A cross-cultural study was implemented to compare future sales representatives from the US and France regarding their ethical predisposition as measured by idealism and relativism and identify whether cultural differences were present regarding evaluations of ethical behavior within a sales context. Six hypotheses were tested and results indicate that higher ethical standards are associated with higher levels of idealism and lower levels of relativism. No differences were observed between US and French on relativism but contrary to predictions, US individuals exhibited higher levels of idealism than their French counterparts. Individuals from the US also exhibited greater sensitivity to ethical contexts while French respondents were more likely to judge behaviors as more ethical. Implications for cross-national selection, training and development are offered as well as recommendations for future research.

Exploring Consumer Retail-Type Concentration in Choice Set Processes

This manuscript examines the decision process consumers undergo when selecting a retail outlet. Sore or outlet choice is assumed to be a complex decision process and this research utilizes a choice sets model to explore the retail-type composition at three choice stages: awareness, consideration, and action. At each consecutive stage, consumers narrow their range of choices and seek to limit the amount of effort expended and reduce the complexity inherent in the decision process. The results of an exploratory study indicate consumers do indeed concentrate or restrict the range of alternatives considered at each stage of the choice process. Each choice stage is dominated by specialty retailers and catalog alternatives. Additionally, as consumers move from the awareness set to action set, more consumers demonstrate increased concentration of a particular retailer type.

Expanding the Retail Marketplace: Understanding the Internet Shopper

Exploration of the characteristics and consumer behaviors of Internet shoppers represents an important starting point for advancing our knowledge of the proper place for these shoppers in current shopper classification schemes. The research agenda proposed here seeks to explore such issues, offering exploratory results regarding shoppers’ thoughts on Internet shopping.