engleski

Shopping enjoyment and its impact on word-of- mouth: the case of Croatia

Shopping enjoyment represents an important research concept within the consumer behavior and marketing communication field. It is more than a pure acquisition of goods, entailing the consumer’s reactions to the marketing environment and reflecting the consumer’s attitudes, preferences and the overall behavior. The purpose of this research is to explore the influence of demographic variables (age, gender, education) and personal factors (attitudes toward the advertising, the need for individuality/uniqueness, price sensitivity) on the shopping enjoyment, as well as the impact of the shopping enjoyment on the word of mouth communication. The research was conducted on the representative sample of thousand Croatian respondents. Data were analyzed with a variety of statistical techniques including the structural equation modeling method. The results show that demographic and personal factors influence shopping enjoyment. Gender has a stronger influence on shopping enjoyment than age, while the education is not significantly related to shopping enjoyment. Among the personal factors, the favorable attitudes toward the advertising have the strongest positive impact on the shopping enjoyment, followed by the price sensitivity and the need for individuality/uniqueness. Furthermore, the results reveal that the shopping enjoyment is positively related to the word of mouth communication. These research findings contribute to the scientific knowledge enrichment and offer some practical marketing implications. Namely, the marketing experts can better understand the consumer’s factors that impact the shopping enjoyment, which has a significant role for the consumers and thus for the marketing communication strategy creation. Comprehension of these factors enables the marketing professionals to adequately assess the necessary appeals and to create an effective and persuasive marketing communication. Finally, the research limitations and the future research suggestions are presented at the end of the paper.

shopping enjoyment, demographic variables, personal factors, marketing communication, structural equation modeling

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