#HEDONIC SHOPPING MOTIVES INCLUDE SERIES#

A little research has been conducted to explore this aspect of consumption. In high- involvement consumption situations, the level of hedonism is expected to be higher. This research points out that the level of hedonism varies across products or brands depends on the changing levels of involvement. Hopkinson & Pujari (1999) have explained how hedonic consumption takes place in a high-involvement situation, where an individual is deeply involved in experiencing a consumption event. In hedonic consumption, different types of emotional feelings, which are both physiological and psychological, play major roles. Hedonic consumption involves emotional arousal taking place while purchasing or consuming (Holbrook & Hirschman, 1982 b).

#HEDONIC SHOPPING MOTIVES INCLUDE SERIES#

According to this model, purchasing has been viewed as a problemsolving activity in which consumer moves through a series of logical steps. Holbrook & Hirschman (1982a) have stated that in traditional information processing buying model the buyer is a rational decision maker wanting to maximize utility by focusing on tangible benefits of the product. On the other hand, hedonic buying motives are related to emotional needs of individuals for enjoyable and interesting shopping experiences (Bhatnagar & 58Ģ Ghosh, 2004). Literature Review Utilitarian and Hedonic Shopping Values Utilitarian buying motives include convenience-seeking, variety seeking, searching for quality of merchandise, and reasonable price rate, etc. The objective of the present study is to investigate the impact of these individual shopping values on an individual s perceived benefits and risks in the online shopping context. Today, more than one-half of the airline reservations are made through the internet, and online sales reached $30 billion during the 2005 holiday session, up 30% from 2004 (Pew Internet, 2005 Nielsen & NetRatings, 2005). The internet has become a significant means for carrying out commercial transactions. Nowadays, more and more shoppers are purchasing online in order to save time and maximize their convenience instead of physically visiting a store (Dholakia et al., 2002). Today, one can find two basic formats of shopping: store format and non-store format. However, they have stated that the relative dominance of either of the dimensions varies across brands. Again, this research tradition emerged in the decade of 80s, as Zuckerman invented the scale to measure individual sensation seeking in An individual s overall attitude towards any brand has distinct hedonic and utilitarian dimensions (Batra & Ahtola, 1990). During the decades of 60s and 70s, research in emotional and irrational buying was ignored to a certain extent (Sheth et al., 1988 pp ).

This stream of research was strongly criticized by the scholars who advocated rational buying behavior models. This motivation research stream heavily relied on 'Freudian psychology' (Sigmund, 1953). The basic assumption underlying this research tradition is that consumers made product or brand choices for emotional reasons deeply rooted in their psychology. Ernest Dichter (1947) pioneered this research tradition, which is known as motivation research (Sheth et al., 1988 pp ). They focused on the emotional and irrational aspects of individual buying behavior. However, a group of researchers have analyzed shopping from a different perspective. The utilitarian perspective assumes the buyer as a logical problem solver. online shopping utilitarian shopping value hedonic shopping value perceived benefits in online shopping perceived risks in online shopping Introduction Traditional research in the field of consumer behavior have been started by drawing concepts from the field of cognitive psychology and the concepts of utilitarian shopping value, which came from the research conducted mainly in the field of micro-economics and classical decision theory (Holbrook and Hirschman, 1982 a). This study investigates how the individual buyer s perceived benefits and risks in e-shopping are influenced by his or her perceived utilitarian or hedonic shopping values. The e-shopping tendency is increasing rapidly among buyers across the world, which is the focus of this study. An individual also assumes some benefits and risks in any shopping context. Hedonic shopping value is derived from the perceived fun or playfulness of the shopping. Utilitarian shopping value relates to the functional aspects of the shopping context. 1 Impact of Utilitarian and Hedonic Shopping Values on Individual s Perceived Benefits and Risks in Online Shopping Abhigyan Sarkar Marketing Management at ICFAI University-Dehradun, India An individual s overall perceived shopping value has two dimensions utilitarian and hedonic.

Hedonic shopping motives include