The phenomenon of receiving pleasure or enjoyment from shopping has since long been acknowledged, both within and outside of the academic arena (e.g., Stone, 1954, Bellenger et al., 1977 and Williams et al., 1985). This phenomenon has been studied within a wide range of academic disciplines and referred to using diverse terms such as leisure shopping ( Martin and Mason, 1987 and Howard, 2007), hedonic shopping ( Babin et al., 1994 and Arnold and Reynolds, 2003), and pleasurable shopping ( Lehtonen and Mäenpää, 1997 and Cox et al., 2005). Within the domain of marketing, and particularly within the stream of research concerned with retailing where the canon of literature on this form of shopping resides, researchers have typically used economic and psychological approaches to understand such activities (e.g., Bellenger et al., 1977, Bellenger and Korgaonkar, 1980, Williams et al., 1985 and Ohanian and Tashchian, 1992). While this literature has been useful, for instance in terms of identifying various kinds of motives that such shopping is likely to reflect, it has fallen short of more thorough explorations of how consumers experience and practice such shopping. In addition, research on this field has only seldom examined variations in consumers’ ways of experiencing and practising such activities. Instead, consumers engaged in shopping as a form of enjoyment have typically been referred to as one certain type of shoppers who visit stores and malls to behave in fairly predictable ways. Hence, the aim of this article is twofold; first it seeks to improve our understanding of consumers shopping activities as subjectively experienced by delving further into questions of how and why consumers derive enjoyment from shopping as a leisure activity. Secondly, it aims to improve our insights into variations in consumers’ ways of experiencing and practicing such shopping.
Whereas retailing literature has been dominated by economic and psychological approaches to understand shopping behaviours, the present study employs an alternative way of seeking knowledge of shopping as leisure.1 This article draws on consumer culture oriented research such as Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) ( Arnould and Thompson, 2005) to improve our understanding of the multitude of meanings that consumers shopping experiences may unfold. Informed by perspectives found in sociology or within cultural disciplines (e.g., Simmel, 1957, Douglas and Isherwood, 1979 and Bourdieu, 1984), researchers within this stream of research typically regard shopping a consumption activity which is experienced and practised in different ways by different consumers (cf. Thompson et al., 1994; Bardhi and Arnould, 2005). Nevertheless, researchers within CCT are concerned with consumption activities from a broad point of view and shopping as a leisure activity has only seldom been the focal point of analysis. Hence, inspired by a sociocultural 2 approach to shopping, this study intends to improve our insights into how leisure shopping is experienced and practised, as described by the subjects. This also involves an ambition to move beyond simplistic notions of shopper typologies and thus; explore consumers shopping practices as experienced and lived in their unique context (cf. Wenger, 1998, Schatzki, 2001 and Shove et al., 2007).
In this article I conceive of the form of shopping that consumers receive enjoyment from in a broad sense of understanding. This implies that rather than taking certain concepts and definitions as point of departure, I set out to explore shopping as a leisure pursuit focusing on the subjects’ view of what constitutes this activity. Nevertheless, this study focuses on the pleasurable sides of shopping, rather than on the dark aspects of such consumption (e.g., in terms of overspending and compulsive buying behaviours). In addition, while there are many arenas for shopping these days (e.g., internet, catalogues, home parties, etc.), this study focuses particularly on the form of leisure shopping that takes place in retail store settings.
The article is organized as follows: first the key literature that has been concerned with shopping as a form of enjoyment within the field of retailing is briefly reviewed. After this a sociocultural approach to shopping is presented as an alternative way of understanding such consumption. This is followed by methodology and a presentation of the results from the empirical study. Finally, conclusions are drawn and future research is suggested.
