infonet-economy

Shopping motivation is one of the key constructs widely employed in scholarly consumer research. An investigation of the current research findings reveals that different shopping motives evident in the literature tend to relate to different degrees of abstraction. The authors posit that shopping motivation can be regarded as a hierarchical construct. An analytical framework is derived in order to discuss the extant literature. Based upon the theoretical findings, it is proposed that consumer shopping motivation is comprised of three distinct hierarchical levels, namely fundamental, purpose-specific, and choice-specific shopping motivation. The utility of the proposed theory is discussed for further research efforts.