Determining hedonistic mall shoppers: a segmentation approach

The main purpose of the study is to investigate hedonic shopping motivations in Lebanon, which is one of the Middle Eastern countries, and to cluster them based on those shopping motivations. The study also explores the characteristics of the customers in each segment. The data were collected from main shopping malls in Beirut in September 2017. Respondents were chosen by employing convenience sampling due to time and budget constraints in the study. Out of 550 people approached, only 450 surveys were collected. Factor analysis with varimax rotation was applied to hedonic shopping motivations. Based on factor analysis results, the hedonic shopping motivations were grouped under five headings: adventure and gratification shopping, idea shopping, value shopping, role shopping, and social shopping. Two-step cluster analyses is applied after factor analysis and identified four mall shopper segments, specifically, role, recreational, social and apathetic shoppers. Each segment was profiled in terms of hedonic shopping motives, mall attributes, shopping outcomes, visiting patterns, and demographics.