Erasmus University Rotterdam
Erasmus School of Economics
MSc Economics and Business
Specialization Marketing
Master Thesis
The effect of negative economic news on shopping
behavior, regarding hedonic and utilitarian purchases.
Author
Student number
Supervisor
Chrysoula Safra
356653
Nuno M. Almeida Camacho
Executive summary:
The current financial crisis needs to be carefully approached from marketers and retailers as it
appears to become more intense in the future due to several international malfunctions.
People’s choices are also determined through personal shopping goals and motives which are
derived from the value obtained from the purchases relatively to each customer’s perceptions.
Thus, purchase incidence can have twofold value according to individual attitudes. In most
cases, hedonic value is perceived as a reward purchase and utilitarian value as a “task to be
done”. Both values stem from psychological conditions of customers striving for satisfaction
of social motives and more precisely for information acquisition and recreation.
Contribution:
Motivated from this difficult situation, I will try to capture consumer behavior dynamics in the
framework of unwelcome news releases which appear to reform people’s expectation about
the future dramatically. Therefore I introduce two contrasted approaches that marketers should
take into consideration in order to effectively deal with pervasiveness and suspiciousness. By
studying the interactions between negative news and actual purchases the actual problem is
observed. This study can be proven as a signal light for retailers and marketers but also for
marketing in general as the new economy situation has brought a new self well-being and
shopping spending standards that cannot be disregarded. I hope that this research will be the
trigger for further studies that will deepen more in the minds of consumers. But, rather than
simply looking at the shopping paths of consumers, my thesis differs from previous work in
this area by explaining the reason about all the influences that are related with the final choice
of the specific shopping path.
Theoretical roots:
Throughout my study, I focus on two contrasted approaches of consumer behavior regarding
responses to negative economic news. The “responsible-conservative spending” argument
suggests that gloomy news reduce the probability of spending. The reason of such reduction is
that consumers avoid purchases for personal satisfaction. They either search for the most
advantageous offer which will cost them less money to satisfy their basic needs without
sacrificing quality or they cancel their purchases at all. The “retail therapy” argument suggests
that negative news increase the probability for hedonic shopping because people use shopping
in order to alleviate these unpleasant feelings. On their effort to escape from these incidents,
they purchase to compensate for disappointments or to rehabilitate these feelings.
Methodology and Data:
According to these two opposing theories, I formed my hypotheses about purchases in order to
examine the effects of gloomy news releases. Furthermore, I used as data the paths that were
collected via the wireless network connection existing in the airport. More precisely, the usage
of BIPS technology which was implemented allowed the tracking of customers’ shopping
paths via the GSM signal transmitted from their mobile phone. In order to examine the
diversity of choices of passengers among three different shopping decisions, I implemented
the multinomial logistic regression model in order to draw conclusions among the hedonic and
utilitarian preference of passengers’ purchases.
Results and conclusions:
In general, during the examined period of two weeks, 15-28 January of 2012, passengers
tended to avoid purchases, either hedonic or utilitarian. Moreover, passengers were not that
likely to make purchases while being under pressure as it is presented from the avoidance of
utilitarian purchases during morning hours which are perceived as “busy” hours. According to
the analysis’ results as well, utilitarian purchases have greater probability to happen through
constrained situations not only for goal oriented passengers but for browsers as well.
Passengers from financial unstable countries tend to present differential results as the negative
economic news announced for Portuguese economy the previous day of shopping activity
appear to increase the probabilities for hedonic purchases while Spanish people are less likely
to make utilitarian purchases in general, but significantly more likely to make an utilitarian
purchase in the day after negative economic news.
Finally, I can confirm through my analysis that people, throughout constrained financial
situations, tend to spend responsibly their money purchasing only utilitarian products and only
when it is needed. The role of retail therapy in this case is restricted. Negative economic
announcements can cause several implications to the psychology of consumers and this is
presented in this analysis through the restriction of shopping activity or even traveling that
caused the shopping restriction. This new restricted model of consumer that is drawn from this
analysis is also presented in the following table of main results of the analysis.
Table 1-Main results of the analysis
Probability of hedonic or utilitarian purchase
(responsible spending argument)
Probability of hedonic purchase
(retail therapy argument)
Managerial implications:
Based on the results of my analysis, the conservative spending argument dominates in
difficult, constrained financial times while retail therapy plays also its role but it is mostly
manipulated from financial uncertainty. This incident on itself raises a considerable challenge
for marketers and marketing in general as we need to listen to consumer’s psychology and
invest more in consumer behavior. Hedonic needs and luxury are set aside when uncertainty
for the future occurs and this is when the most difficult task for marketers begins, to make
consumer feel confident and shop. Through this more humanitarian approach, marketers can
convince people even during crises. However, in order to have more generalized results,
limitations of this study regarding the pressure of time (airport environment) and limited
observation period (two weeks), need to be overcome. Finally, as nowadays the average
consumer is very well informed about the market and the available products, he/she needs to
understand that he/she is treated with dignity in order to purchase after a deep market research.
Concluding, it is easily assumed that this situation requires an alternative way of approach
which needs to be well communicated through more creative consumer channels.
Acknowledgements:
I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Nuno M. Almeida Camacho for his
patience, persistence and guidance during the thesis procedure. I would like also to express
my gratitude to my friends and my thesis colleagues, who helped me a lot through sharing
relevant knowledge on the thesis topic. Especially, I would like to thank my friend Allina who
essentially helped me with her expert knowledge about econometrics. I would like also
especially to thank my thesis colleague Kevin with whom I exchanged several valuable and
encouraging comments throughout the thesis procedure. Also, my dear friend John was always
giving me an alternative point of view about my thesis topic, which was proved really helpful.
Finally I would like to especially thank my roommate and colleague in my master studies Fay
for her support and her comments regarding my work. Finally, I special thank my parents for
supporting me throughout all my studies at Erasmus University and the great understanding
they showed throughout my writing procedure.
Table of contents
Acknowledgements: ........................................................................................................................... 5
Chapter I: Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 8
Chapter II: Theory and Hypotheses............................................................................................... 12
The Psychology of Shopping: Consumers’ Purchase Value, Shopping Goals and Motives ...... 12
Purchase Value ................................................................................................................................. 12
Shopping Motives and Goals: ......................................................................................................... 14
Conservative spending argument .................................................................................................................. 16
Retail therapy argument ................................................................................................................................ 17
The effect of news on consumer behavior:..................................................................................... 19
Generation of Hypotheses: .............................................................................................................. 22
Chapter III: Methodology of Research .......................................................................................... 24
Shopping Path Analysis and Marketing Science ........................................................................... 25
Empirical Setting ............................................................................................................................. 27
Data collection .................................................................................................................................. 27
Measurement:................................................................................................................................... 31
Econometric Model .......................................................................................................................... 34
Descriptive statistics......................................................................................................................... 35
Chapter IV: Analysis and Results .................................................................................................. 39
Chapter V: Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 48
Main findings.................................................................................................................................... 48
Managerial implications .................................................................................................................. 49
Limitations and future research ..................................................................................................... 51
References ......................................................................................................................................... 53
Appendix A ....................................................................................................................................... 57
Appendix B ....................................................................................................................................... 64
Appendix C ....................................................................................................................................... 64
Master thesis
List of figures
Figure 1
Focus of thesis, addressing consumers’ purchases
Figure 2
Conceptual framework for empirical research structure
Figure 3
Density map
Figure 4
Number of visited stores
Figure 5
Shopping activity based on date
Figure 6
Shopping activity based on the time of observation
Figure 7
Purchases in D store
Figure 8
Travel stress curve
List of tables
Table 1- Main results of the analysis
Table 2- List of the most important literature
Table 3– Main negative economic news
Table 4 – Overview of implemented variables
Table 5 - Shopping behavior based on purchase incidence
Table 6 – Shopping behavior Model Fitting Information
Table 7-“Goodness of fit” information
Table 8- Likelihood ratio tests
Table 9- Purchase model equations
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Chapter I: Introduction
Macroeconomic cycles are a recurring phenomenon in modern economies (Juglar, 1900). The
Economy does not remain stable; its leading figures, income, unemployment and level of prices
(inflation) fluctuate and change over time passing through two main phases: growth and prosperity;
and recession. Currently, the global economy is facing a financial crisis appeared to become deeper
over the passing years leading to the severe recession level, affecting different countries
asymmetrically.
More accurately and in an attempt to explain this situation, I will demonstrate several factors that
contributed to the contamination of the economy leading to the complex and rigorous system of
today. The interconnection of economies and financial systems in the 80s and 90s, the increased
number of multinational firms and their subsidiaries, the powerful role of the transactional parties
and the liberalization of trade in services and capital flows have created global imbalances (IMF,
2009b). The whole situation would sooner or later cause problems at an international level. This can
lead the modern economy to experience one of the most intense and burning caused crises ever.
Thus, understanding consumer behavior under adverse macroeconomic conditions is essential for
retailers. The consumer sentiment associated with crises can change consumers’ willingness to
spend, an effect that may be stronger for hedonic than for utilitarian products as consumers in
today’s marketplace have shopping values shifted gradually from utilitarian towards hedonic (Babin
et al., 1994; Hartman et al., 2006). Despite this pervasiveness, little research has been done to
understand how crises affect consumers’ purchase decisions. This situation, while unfortunate for
the affected countries, creates a fruitful environment in which to study the effect of the economic
crisis on the psychology of the consumer.
The purpose of this study is to depict the different effects that the economic crisis has on consumer
behavior with respect to hedonic versus utilitarian purchases when bad economic news are released.
One stream of literature suggests that financial restrictions make the need for responsible spending
and saving more noticeable. This stream, which I refer to as the “conservative spending” argument,
suggests that gloomy news about the state of the economy reduce the tendency of customers to
spend money while shopping. The reason is that the consumer confidence index is negatively
influenced by consumers’ pessimism about the future economy of their country (Madsen
and McAleer 2000;Kucuk 2005; Filer and Fisher 2007).
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A second stream of literature, however, shows that shopping is often used to control or to ignore
numerous difficulties. I refer to this stream as the “retail therapy” argument, and it suggests that
dark news about the state of the economy would lead to higher incidence of hedonic purchases.
Such compensatory consumption behavior allows consumers to instrumentally using hedonic
shopping as a strategy to alleviate the bad mood that they experience due to unfavorable economic
news (Kang and Johnson, 2011).
In my paper, I will, therefore, study which of these two theoretical arguments - “retail therapy” or
“responsible-conservative spending” – is the best able to capture dynamics in shoppers’ behavior.
In order to determine the best explanation for shoppers’ behavior I analyze to what extent shoppers’
behavior is correlated with negative news released about the economy and their exposure to this
kind of news. The power of the mass media is already known, and it is clearly presented in the
studies of Van Raaj (1989) and Haller and Norpoth (1997). They examined the effect of economic
news in expectation formation, in individual and macro-economic level and the effect of exposure
to economic news in critical times like those of elections of 1980, 1984 and 1988 respectively. As
nowadays is also perceived a difficult time for economy and society in general, these findings can
reasonably adapt to the modern environment. The exposure to news is kind of inevitable today as
information through mass media and worldwide network connections is everywhere presented in
daily lives. In this respect of mass information, I will examine the extent to which exposure to bad
news releases will affect consumers’ expectations for future and their final purchase behavior.
However, exposure to bad news cannot itself completely defend consumers’ choices as people tend
to consider clear and different parameters in order to reach their final choice. Shopping motives,
shopping values, shopping lifestyles but also psychological attitudes and stances towards life are all
encompassed to hedonic and utilitarian value of product consumption. These factors enabled a
plethora of researchers (Maslow 1968; Hirschman and Holbrook, 1982; Bloch and Richins 1983;
Fisher and Arnold 1990; Babin, Darden and Griffin 1994; Bagozzi and Dholakia 1999; and Okada
2005) to approach consumer behavior, but also motivated me to look for thoughtful insights in the
relation of the psychological factor occurred through “bad times” with consumer behavior and
consumer decisions. In the context of my thesis, I will explain the final hedonic or utilitarian
purchases of consumers based on the personally and each time differently interpreted response to
unfavorable news occurrence.
Therefore, I will start my thesis by reviewing the related literature in order to present the two
opposing arguments of conservative spending and retail therapy through the effect of economic
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news, depending on the purchase (hedonic or utilitarian) of the desired product. Although, detailed
literature exists about conservative spending during crisis and the normative way that consumers
respond, there is no evidence indicating the influence in hedonic or utilitarian consumption and how
shoppers react in their attraction of these different types of the product when they are in constrain.
In order to approach this adjustment in the concept of retail therapy as well, I will firstly indicate
the main attributes of these two categories. Based on this literature review, I will further create my
research design. Also, there is little relationship in the existing studies, of the importance of
unwelcome news in economic crises and the final hedonic or utilitarian purchase. Another novelty
of my research is the way examining the consumer behavior through the actual observed paths of
consumers given the opportunity to examine the influences in real time. There are only a few
studies that involve analysis of shopping paths as data device and their intention was not so much
related to consumer behavior. Thus, this study can be prove as a signal light for retailers and
marketers but also for marketing in general as the new economic situation has brought a new self
well-being and new shopping spending standards that cannot be disregarded.
In order to maximize variation in the exposure of consumers to negative news about the economy,
my goal was to compare the behavior of shoppers from different European countries who are
differentially affected by economic news. However, in order to keep the complexity at an
appropriate level, I focus on a dataset collected at the shopping area of a midsized international
airport. Specifically, I review the shopping behavior of passengers-consumers of a medium-sized
airport in Southern Europe, the second busiest in the country aircraft operations and the second
busiest in passengers, according to traffic statistics, serving fifteen different countries (most of
which within Europe) on a standard basis and more than 4 million passengers per year. Thus, my
goal, in this paper is to highlight critical insights on how negative news about the economy – to
which shoppers of different countries are differently exposed - influences the behavior of the
observed passengers. It would be also interesting to see, probably in a future research in which ways
marketers can respond to these differences in terms of marketing communication and price-setting.
Concluding, I will test my hypotheses by analyzing how the probability of purchase in hedonic
versus utilitarian stores changes for shoppers from Portugal and Spain which receive negative
economic news compared with no purchase probability.
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bad economic
news releases
Focus
of my
thesis
spending
behavior
Fig.1: Focus of my thesis addressing consumers’ purchases
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type of
purchase
Master thesis
Chapter II: Theory and Hypotheses
In order to investigate how consumers’ negative mood during economic crises affects their
shopping habits, I examine how negative economic news affects their spending behavior and
occurrence of hedonic and utilitarian purchases.
The Psychology of Shopping: Consumers’ Purchase Value, Shopping Goals and Motives
Purchase Value
There is a strong distinction between hedonic and utilitarian products regarding the functions that
these products serve. Hedonic products can be classified as products that preserve primarily
aesthetic characteristics contributing to consumers’ sensations and emotional stimulation. Utilitarian
products, on the other hand, are mostly related to functional and practical consumers’ goal setting,
and they elaborate in operational procedures (Dhar and Wertenbroch, 2000). Representative
examples of hedonic products are perfumes and cosmetics while newspapers, tobacco or other basic
products represent the utilitarian category. Based on this distinction, product classification is into
hedonic and utilitarian.
However, the distinction between hedonic and utilitarian products has also been extended into the
identification of different consumption and shopping patterns, which can similarly be classified as
hedonic versus utilitarian. Purchases often can provide at the same time hedonic and utilitarian
consumption attributes depending on consumers shopping situation. In fact, hedonic and utilitarian
consumption is weighted depending on customers’ different perceptions (Okada 2005). For this
reason, shopping choices underlie on the values that each product encompasses for different
consumers and the motives that reflect each occurred shopping incidence. According to Levy
(1959) people make purchases not only for the product itself but also regarding the “meaning” of
these purchases to them as individuals and to their social environment. These purchases,
spontaneous or organized can alleviate feelings that can be perceived as shopping “rewards” from
the consumers (Babin, Darden and Griffin 1994) resulted either in hedonic or utilitarian value.
On the one hand, utilitarian value can be described as the outcome of shopping in a “work-task” or
“chore” environment (Hirschman and Holbrook, 1982) and can be clearly depicted from the
Christmas shopping situation when big shopping lists have to be successfully purchased. (Fisher
and Arnold 1990). Utilitarian shopping value can be also observed in shopping procedures of
situational involved customer produced by necessity, where the customer does not purchase for
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him/herself like in cases that mothers make the weekly groceries shopping (Bloch and Richins
1983). Consequently, utilitarian value is related to task completing reward and the potentially
occurred happiness can be associated with this achievement.
On the other hand, hedonic value is more personal, and it creates positive feelings that occur from
the purchases like joyful, fun, satisfaction and self esteem. As a contrastive example to “shopping
chore” of Christmas for some people, I present some people’s feeling during Christmas shopping
who state that they feel like “kids in a candy store” (Fisher and Arnold 1990). However, hedonic
value can be also derived from shopping without making purchases but so alleviating positive
feelings to the actors involved. (Markin, Lillys and Narayana 1976). Finally, hedonic value can also
be achieved via the accomplishment of a “deal” including the bargain idea which alleviates feelings
of excitement (Monroe and Chapman 1987). Therefore, hedonic value as reward indicator is
correlated with hedonic pleasure release for the consumers.
As consumers make purchases in order to fulfill social and experiential needs regardless economic
reasons, shopping choices can be related to the psychology of each customer and his/her personal
attributes. Based on this psychological aspect, consumer behavior can be a multisensory, fantasy or
emotional derivative of product usage experience (Hirschman and Holbrook 1982). Several
researchers (Singer 1966; Maslow 1968; Swanson 1978;) have focused primarily on the imaginary
aspect that hedonic consumption can create. A characteristic example of this fantasy alleviation is
the internal imagery containing insights that the “smell” of a perfume can generate. These
emotional images can be indicated either as historic imagery; the consumer, triggered by the smell
of the perfume, recalls past experiences; or fantasy imagery when the customer is immediately
producing a multisensory situation (Hirschman and Holbrook 1982).
Sometimes, consumers connect to hedonic consumption experiences in that manner that they are
“tied to imaginative constructions of reality” (Singer 1966) pretending that something different than
the existing reality is occurring (Swason 1978). These emotional expectations are the reason why
hedonic motives overtake utilitarian in the choice of products (Maslow 1968). Finally, the
subjective interpretation of such experiences concluding that hedonic consumption is an escapism
from difficult, emotional harmful situations which is almost entirely associated with restricted
financial situations. The involvement to these experiences differs among consumers, as there are
low experiential and high experiential consumers based on their preferred orientation to affective
shopping or action shopping. Through this thesis, I attempt to provide that the satisfaction of the
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psychological and social needs is of paramount importance for consumers, offsetting possible
restrictions occurring from environmental (economical or political) situations.
Shopping Motives and Goals:
In order to assess the observed purchases, the motives of purchasing should be also determined.
Shopping motives, according to first Tauber’s (1972) clarification, are mainly concentrated on
personal motives including role playing, diversion, learning about trends, physical activity, selfgratification and sensory stimulation; social motives including out-home social experiences,
communication with others having similar interests, peer group attraction, status and authority and
finally pleasure of bargaining.
Concentrating to personal motives, role playing motive can be indicated as the typical shopping
activity suiting only to some individual. (i.e. grocery shopping is related to the role of housewife).
Shopping can be also approached as an option of diversion from the daily routine offering
entertainment to the individuals involved. Moreover, there are people who are interested in being
informed for the latest trends in fashion or product innovations. Therefore, people are motivated to
achieve this informational goal. There are also people who choose shopping as a type of exercise, as
it can provide physical activity. Self gratification is also observed when people visit a shop in their
research of diversion or when he or she feels lonely or bored. Finally, every shopping activity is
associated with sensory stimulation as customers enjoy “handling” the merchandise.
Social motives are encompassing interpersonal relations among customers. More precisely, some
shopping trips are possibly resulted in friends’ appointments or accidental people meetings, giving
the enjoyment of social experiences outside the home. Sometimes, stores related to hobbies and
needed goods for that hobbies, are focal points for people with same interests to communicate, to
interact and to exchange opinions making shopping as a motive to acquaint people with relevant
interests. This can also lead to peer-group attraction as some stores’ patronage enables the desire to
be part of an association. Additionally, shopping can give to individuals the advantage of
commanding attention or respect contributing to their status/authority. Finally, some shoppers tend
to enjoy the bargaining as in this way “goods can be reduced” to a more reasonable price.
It is clearly stated that the buying of the product is far from being a sole motive and not at all
economic situations are regarded as motives , but in reality, shopping behavior is stemming out of
the main personality dimensions: agreeableness (compassion and caring for others); openness to
experience (tolerance of new ideas and new ways of doing things); conscientiousness (goal oriented
activities); extroversion/ introversion (preference or not for social interaction) and emotional
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stability/ neuroticism (the ability or not to face in an effective way negative incidents).(Tauber
1972; Oliver 1990; Mooradian 1996; ; Bagozzi and Dholakia 1999; Guido 2006).
Prior researchers have also identified two concrete goals that shoppers accomplish during their store
visits: information acquisition, whereby customers test several stores until they are confident they
have found a suitable price-quality match for their purchases and recreational motives, whereby
customers engage in purchasing of goods in order to achieve pleasure from the purchase process
itself.
It is unambiguous that economic situations can cause changes in consumer behavior, but the goal
for the consumer will always be to satisfy these needs. This goal setting is focused on the outcome
that the consumption goods offer to the customers (Baghozzi and Dholakia 1999). Consumers ask
themselves “questions” regarding the goals they want to achieve through the buying procedures.
These internal inquiries are related to their goal intentions which depict the social needs they need
to meet. These social needs translated into goals can have the type of “stereotype” as the customer
is a part of social unit (Baghozzi and Dholakia 1999), they can also be derived from biological,
moral or emotional forces (Le Doux 1996) , and finally they can arise from internal or external
stimuli. Last but not least, goal setting and further goal striving is interconnected with values and
lifestyles models of the consumers. This correlation is the reason why goal setting for hedonic or
utilitarian shopping is of considerable importance for marketers. According as well to the findings
of Moore and Homer (2000) study of the relationship among lifestyle and temperament, it is
assumed that there is an emerging profile of a consumer- favorable desire for food, perfume
industry and every industry that aims to stimulate desire and conclusively hedonic shopping.
As a conclusion, changes in the economy result in both short- and long-term effects on consumer
behavior. The recent economic downturn has created a “new normal” environment with dramatic
changes in consumer behavior. The main attribute of this new normal situation is the conservatism
as shoppers have cut back on hedonic spending and are now shopping for the best offering at the
best price (Schargrodsky and McKenzie 2005).
Shopping Behavior in Times of Austerity: Theoretical Predictions
In the following section, I will review two theories offering predictions on how consumers’
shopping habits can change as a response to their concerns about the economy of their country of
residence. These two theories offer contradicting predictions, in particular with respect to incidence
of hedonic purchases.
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Master thesis
Conservative spending argument
Empirical research based on financial crises and the way that people differentiate their shopping
behavior indicates conservative spending as the responsible way of spending or “managing” money.
Shopping is also focusing primarily on needed products and eliminating the purchases products
dedicated to personal gratification or pleasure. Basic attribute of conservative spending is the
“browsing behavior” defined as:
“The examination of a store’s merchandise for recreational or informational purposes
without a current intention to buy” (Bloch and Richins 1983, p.389)
In the context of conservative spending, the motives above presented drive all types of purchase,
reducing the likelihood of purchases in general, but perhaps with particular emphasis on hedonic
purchases. The informational aspect is strongly related to searching for the most advantageous offer
which combines affordable price and good quality and the recreational purpose is referred to the
pleasure that consumers obtain by creating their imaginative reality, their fantasy. In situations like
economic crises, stores should enhance this browsing occurrence and find the optimal way to
transfer browsing into shopping behavior (Bloch and Richins 1983) investing on sensations of the
consumers. Under this light, the general perception of the responsible spending behavior is that
people eliminate their shopping and focus on buying only products that they really need.
According to Schargrodsky and McKenzie (2005) study during a crisis period, people spend more
days shopping but the actual purchased quality is much less. This can be interpreted by the
statement that during financial restrictions people are seeking for the “lucky deal”, leading them to
spend more days seeking for the “most attractive offer”. Another explanation for this increased
shopping frequency is based on the results of the aforementioned study which indicate that as
income decreases the opportunity cost of time decreases as well leading to greater shopping
frequency. This situation is also correlated with the unemployment and the liquidity situation of the
infected economy. In fact, the consumers of this study appeared to have cut back on specialty food,
beauty and cleaning products by 4% allowing us to understand that they eliminate their hedonic
pleasures produced by a “gourmet” restaurant visit, by purchasing best quality cosmetics or
expensive cleaning products.
Another spillover that this complex financial environment creates is the influence of consumers’
confidence towards their own future spending budget and the future of the total economy. The result
of this incident is the decreased willingness to make purchases (S.U. Kucuk 2005; Juster and
Wachtel 1972). As a term, consumer’s confidence encompasses consumer’s ability and willingness
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to make purchases including psychological and economic moderating factors (Van Raaj 1986;
Carroll, Furher and Wilcox 1994) , and it is basically related with future expectations. In general,
when consumers feel optimistic about the economy future of the country where they are typically
activated, they are more vulnerable to impulsive purchases triggered by in-store promotions for
hedonic or utilitarian products (Kucuk 2005). Whereas, pessimistic consumers are less vulnerable to
promotions and “unplanned” purchases following the “conservative spending” shopping.
Additionally, according to a research of value oriented consumer behavior of urban middle class
consumers and how it is affected from economic crisis, it is shown that the quality of the offered
products is the key value for the success of shopping procedure (Speece and Nair 2000). Consumers
prior and post crisis are mainly interested in the quality. During or after the crisis, they may shop
more days than before seeking for the best price deal but they still focus on the quality of the
products they buy.
Retail therapy argument
In contrast with the responsible spending argument, there are scholars describing retail therapy as
an alternative response to crises situations. This argument suggests that the recreational aspect of
the purchase process becomes more prominent as a healing mechanism for the economic crises
negativity, which would tend to increase the incidence of purchases, especially the hedonic.
According to this stream of literature, during economically challenging times, in order to free
themselves from the difficulties and challenges of their daily lives, consumers may actually turn to
shopping as a form of therapy (Kang and Johnson, 2011). In order to be released from anxiety and
stress created by the gloomy economic and social situation, consumers may actually be more likely
to shop, especially hedonic products. This kind of therapy is the so called “retail therapy” which is
defined as a spectrum of consumption behaviors, including shopping and buying, that individuals
engage in to alleviate their negative moods (Kang and Johnson, 2011).
Researchers have investigated Retail Therapy from two different approaches, but both focusing on
consumer behavior difficult situations.
Compensatory consumption:
One stream of literature categorizes retail therapy into shopping behaviors stemmed by
compensatory consumption (Kang and Johnson, 2011; Woodruffe, 1997; Woodruffe and Burton
1998; and Yurchisin et al., 2008). More precisely, according to compensatory consumption aspect,
retail therapy is viewed as a type of compensatory resource. Based on this perception, consumers
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who feel disappointed tend to go for shopping in order to counterbalance the faced psychological
deficiencies which are possible to occur after financial restrictions which I strive to examine
through this thesis. These psychological deficiencies may have various aspects from unemployment
situations to bad economy news releases and as the results will define, they can have significant
influences to hedonic and utilitarian shopping. Addressing now, the compensatory aspect of retail
therapy, individuals contemplate to rehab for faced psychological experiences by attaching in
behaviors which are not related to their core problems directly. Individuals contemplate to rehab for
faced psychological experiences by attaching in behaviors which are not related to their core
problems directly (Gronmon 1988; Grunert 1993; Woodruffe 1997; and Woodruffe and Burton
1998) the previously described behavior is known as compensatory behavior. With respect to this,
compensatory behavior can be implemented in order to offset or to avoid undesired conditions of
personality or general lack of self esteem , but it can also help to explain behaviors of typical
consumers who are depressed or underprivileged (Woodruffe 1997).
Mood alleviating consumption:
Another stream of literature, approaches retail therapy as a mood-alleviating type of shopping
(Kacen 1998; Kacen and Friece 1999; and Luomala 2002), as a mood regulatory system indicating
that people who experience negative moods tend to go shopping to “rehabilitate” these feelings.
Consumers’ mood can be examined as a variable which intervenes to shopping behavior or as an
object of control (Luomala 1998). Alpert and Alpet’s (1990) define mood as a situational variable
as following:
“a fleeting, temporary feeling state, usually not intensive and not tied into specific behavior”
(p.110).
Finally, consumption to redeem experienced deficiencies in daily life is described as the
phenomenon of “mood-alleviate consumption” consisting of mood related and not exactly mood
related deficit.
For my thesis context I will focus on negative mood experiences occurring from negative economy
news that consumers have experienced before or at the same time of their shopping trip. Based on
this concept, retail therapy is treated as a singularly or set of consumption shopping behaviors based
on consumer’s willingness to manage or overcome his/her negative moods. There are three
dimensions of negative moods, the irritation, the stress and the dejection (Luomala 2002; Watson
and Clark 1992). Focusing to these negative feelings, irritation can be perceived as a mild form of
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anger encompassing annoyance, hostility and frustration caused by various little conflicts (i.e. a
messy room). The feeling of stress can be classified as a derivative of fear, it can also be referred as
anxiety, nervousness and worry caused by work pressure, relocation, adverse human relations and
uncertainty about the future. The last one is that mainly concerned through this thesis as the current
global financial crisis has created uncertainty not only about the individual future but also about the
future of the individual country economies. Finally, the feeling of dejection is associated with
depression, despair and sometimes misery including broken relationships, loneliness criticism and
disappointment stemmed as well of financial uncertainty.
In order to handle these negative moods, people turn to methods to alleviate them or to maintain
their good feelings. Following this perspective, Morris and Reilly (1987) and Morris (1989)
identified four different strategies, regarding the way that individuals regulate their feelings. People
manage their mood; adjust the significance of the problem; problem-directed action and affiliation.
In my thesis framework, mood management is the strategy that perfectly adopts the essence of
“retail therapy”, and it can be further classified to sub-strategies such as self-reward, use of alcohol,
distraction and expressive behavior (Morris 1989). As it can be easily assumed self reward and
distraction sub-strategies can be correlated as they are fitting in several shopping situations. On the
one hand, self reward “promotes” self gratifying and on the other hand, distraction strategy
preserves the right that people try to distract themselves from negative feelings. Shopping itself is
interference activity that most of the times gratify the purchasers.
Following the tendency of people to undertake activities that provide them pleasure, based on
Luomala’s (2002) study I can refer to the therapeutic potential of consumption and more definitely
to eight types of therapeutic power stemming from mood alleviating consumption activities such as
“distraction, self indulgence, stimulated elaboration, concrete outcomes of mood regulatory
activities, recharging, discharging retreat and activation” but those which are mostly related to
consumption are distraction, self-indulgence and activation for the aforementioned reasons.
The effect of news on consumer behavior:
Scholarly work on the impact of negative economic news on consumers’ opinions and behavior
dated back to Katona (1975), approaches this issue of news’ impact on consumer’s public opinion
and behavior. After a thorough examination of the paper of Van Raaij (1989) regarding the
economic news and how they affect the future expectations and the macro (economy) and micro
(individual) economic behavior, I became confident that more attention should be given to the news
releases through mass media. Mass media have already proved their power to impose and to distort
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consumer perceptions, opinions and behaviors, but this power is much more salient nowadays with
the presence of internet provided information with complete access to several resources of news
releases. More precisely, according to Van Raaij (1989), the press has the ability to force economic
or commercial failures by publishing reports of adverse development. The power of media is such
great that they are perceived as the fourth estate after legislative, judicial and executive. This is the
reason exactly why there is the possibility of selectivity in exposure and retention through mass
media.
Additionally, Andreassen (1987) indicates the way that people acquire knowledge. According to his
study, new information, through a process of elaboration and argumentation, is assimilated with
already existed information resulting most of the times in overestimation. People based on their
internal predisposition to expect the worse to happen tend to overreact in the observed direction
believing that the bad news will become worse rather than regressions towards the mean like that
the bad things or the bad news will improve. This is exactly where Katona (1975) comes to indicate
the importance of mass media in expectations’ compilation, configuring the type of perception
created in consumers’ minds. In this case, the negative economic news can have a negative effect on
consumers’ outcomes leaving no freedom to behave alternatively, a statement in complete
accordance with the conservative spending argument that I proposed.
In order to investigate the relation among the personal financial progress and the expectations about
market environment and how these two attributes determine the spending and saving decisions.
Katona (1975) created the Index of Consumer Sentiment (ICS) including data of income, predicts of
aggregate consumer spending, saving and borrowing which cannot be obtained by financial and
business cycle indicators. According to the scale analysis from Van Raaij and Gianotten (1990),
there are high correlations among present and future expectations about personal finances and
economy as a whole. A very representative example is given about the behavior of Dutch
consumers in the seventies and after the recession of 1980-1984, which is in detail described in the
appendix A. When these expectations are supported by psychological attributes like optimism, they
become determinant for consumer behavior.
As news releases nowadays occur intrudingly on people’s lives, expectations can moderate the
impact of these news and expectations apart from the psychological factor are formulated according
to people’s level of education (Haller and Norpoth, 1997). Following economic news used to be an
indicator of sophisticated people according to the findings of Haller and Norpoth study, but it also
depends on other circumstances like salient society or economy problems. Bad times make the
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economy a “pressing issue” to the general public and the number of people exposed to economic
information is increasing as they perceive economy from an oppressive vision. Although originally
introduced two decades ago, this idea perfectly adopts on today situation of economic recession.
Table 2- List of the most important literature
Authors
(year of publication)
Dhar and Wertenbroch,
2000
Okada
2005
Babin, Darden and Griffin
1994
Hirschman and Holbrook
1982;
Guido
2006
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Journal
Journal
Research
Main findings
of
Marketing Hedonic aspects are perceived as more
important in forfeiture (i.e. selling) than
acquisition (i.e. buying).
Journal
of
Marketing -Hedonism and utilitarianism are abstract
Research
attributes that define various items, in
relation with the specific attributes of each
product.
-Individual choice patterns are based on the
individual characterization of products as
hedonic or utilitarian.
-People tend to respond more favorably to
hedonic goods than to utilitarian alternatives,
but they also have more difficulties in
justifying the consumption of the hedonic
goods.
Journal
of
Consumer -Expressions of pure enjoyment, excitement,
Research
captivation, escapism, and spontaneity are
fundamental aspects of hedonic shopping
value.
-Utilitarian
shopping
value
includes
expressions of accomplishment and/or
disappointment over the ability (inability) to
complete the shopping task.
-Shopping value is derived from "the
complete shopping experience," not simply
by products shopped for and it is subjective,
characterized by consumers' interactions with
an environment.
Journal of Marketing
-Hedonic consumption is a multisensory
procedure compared to the traditional
approach of consumption.
-Four different areas are examined in terms
of comparisons with the traditional approach
including: mental constructs, product classes,
product usage and individual differences.
Innovative Marketing
-Utilitarian dimension of shopping motives is
related
to
emotion
stability
and
conscientiousness while hedonic dimension
Master thesis
Bagozzi and Dholakia
1999;
Kucuk
2005
Luomala
2002
refers
to
openness
to
experience,
agreeableness, and extroversion connected to,
respectively, the rational motives behind
cognitive processes, and the affective
motives regarding the sphere of feelings and
personal goals.
Journal of Marketing
-The role played by goals in consumer
behavior, as well as the processes of goal
setting and goal pursuit, is critical.
-The development of richer, more
representative, and more accurate models of
purchase for optimal communication stimuli
and store displays and training of salespeople
are needed.
Journal
of
International The influence of consumer confidence in the
Consumer marketing
future economy is easily observed in brand
loyal consumers’ shopping behaviors when a
catalog is used for promoted brands. When
consumer confidence in the future economy
is low, catalog usage for in-store promotions
might increase the likelihood of non-loyal
consumers to be influenced by in-store
promotions as well.
Psychology & Marketing
-The existence of qualitatively different
negative moods is emphasized and labeled as
irritation, stress, and dejection.
-Eight types of therapeutic power stemming
from different mood-alleviative consumption
activities are defined.
- Purchasing is linked to three types of
therapeutic powers: the ability to improve
mood by distraction, by being self-indulgent,
and by feeling activated (i.e. stimulation of
senses).
Generation of Hypotheses:
Having discussed key theories on customers’ motivations and goals, and having examined the effect
that, according to the two main theoretical arguments I am testing (conservative spending and retail
therapy), the release of negative economic news has on consumer spending decisions, I now
generate the hypotheses that I will test.
On the one hand, it is interesting to examine whether or not negative news releases are capable to
determine final consumers’ purchases in total, regardless the type of the product to be purchased
(utilitarian or hedonic). As it was previously investigated in the study of Schargrodsky & McKenzie
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(2005), people during crises periods, tend to spend more days shopping but the actual purchased
quality is much less. This can be explained by the fact that they search for the “lucky deal” and they
are more price conscious being “anxious” about their future available budget.
Moreover, the consumers’ state of mood and further behavioral acting is related to responsible
spending occurred by the feeling of insecurity about future due to financial instability of the
economy where they are involved. The general perception of this constrain is that shopping
mitigation occurs and the focus is on buying only the needed products. Since some people react
more cautiously (i.e. countries that already are affected from crises) to the obtaining of bad
economic news due to the general attitude of behaving into crisis, I hypothesize the following:
H1: Consumers from countries that receive negative news about their economy have a lower
probability of making either hedonic or utilitarian purchases (responsible spending
argument).
On the other hand and according to the retail therapy argument, consumers whose mood is
deteriorated due to negative economic news, will tend to increase their hedonic purchases. For
example, Langer (1983) argued that difficult economic conditions can increase consumers' needs
for products to serve as treats and emotional charges. Thus, the increase in hedonic purchases
represents an attempt by the consumer to use shopping as a strategy to compensate for his/her bad
mood.
Based on these findings, I hypothesize that:
H2: Consumers from countries that receive negative news about their country’s economy on
the day before their travel or on the same day of travelling, have a higher probability of
purchasing hedonic goods (retail therapy argument).
Figure 1, below, summarizes my theoretical framework and hypotheses.
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Fig.2: Conceptual framework for empirical research structure
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Chapter III: Methodology of Research
I will thoroughly describe the data that I access in order to examine consumer behavior after
negative feelings experiences and the methodology that I followed to structure the following results.
Before describing my own dataset, let me summarize existing research on shopping path analysis.
Shopping Path Analysis and Marketing Science
Most of the consumers’ behavior studies are based on the history data of consumers’ purchases.
However, this history data does not contain information about how customers move through the
store and how they result in their purchases. By tracing consumers’ movements within a store
researchers can obtain useful and thoughtful insights of “what” and “why” customers make
purchases and not simply noting the product purchases as it is mostly seen in marketing studies
(Yada 2011).
Although the investigation of shopping paths has recently received renewed interest due to new
technologies capable of seamlessly collecting such type of data, initial efforts to study shopping
path data started several decades ago. Researchers focused on spatial movements in shopping malls
emphasizing on the way in which customers organize a store in their minds which is determinant for
the movements they follow in the framework of a decision making procedure while they combine
different cultural, biological, physical and geographical aspects (Lynch & Rivkin 1959; Batty
2003). However, Farley and Ring (1966) were the first who build a stochastic model to study the
“zone” transitions probabilities for traffic within a store. In their paper, Farley and Ring (1966)
analyze physical measures of store layout and transaction volumes in different locations of the
store. They show that their model is capable of predicting area-to-area transition probabilities using
store layout measures as predictors.
Additionally, consumers’ perceptions of store space were also examined by Mackay and Olshavsky
(1975) and Park, Iyer et al. (1989) who analyzed the impact of store knowledge and time constrains
(observed by the investigation of consumers’ shopping paths) on unplanned buying and failure to
make planned purchases. Finally, Underhill (1999) examined as well the behavioral patterns of
tracking shoppers in retail stores but he constrains himself in making suggestions for consumers’
convenience within the store.
Most findings of shopping path analyses papers relate to typical patterns in consumer in-store
behavior, or in-store movements. For instance, the results of Katsutoshi Yada’s (2011) study, show
that consumers tend to follow complex paths during their shopping trips. These complicated routes
encompasses “secrets” that should be investigated and lead to better understanding of consumer
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behavior as they are related with shopping motives and different personalities of the consumers.
What is presented as key value through his study is the incident of customer passing and stopping in
a given section. So on the one hand, this incident of specific “stopping”, “browsing” or
“purchasing” can be associated and influenced by in-store factors like promotions or in-store
management and on the other hand from personal internal factors arise from consumers’ personality
like motivations and mood diversification. Through this innovative analysis, information about
customer purchasing behavior was given by applying existing character string parsing techniques
and assigning them to stream data describing customer movements. Visits to specific product
sections were investigated and what was found is that “High Volume” consumers, defined as the
consumers with the heaviest purchases in number of items, tended to follow a concrete route in their
way of purchases. But this observation alleviates the need to observe the motives of consumers for
this movement, the type of shopping, hedonic or utilitarian.
A much more extensive analysis on consumers’ shopping paths in the grocery retail format is also
provided by Larson, Bradlow and Fader (2005). These researchers observed that customers tend to
travel selected aisles, rarely in systematic up and down pattern but mostly following a dominant
travel pattern. This template provided in this study can also be applied with some cautions to any
store layout. In accordance with these findings are also the results of Sam Hui’s et al. (2009) study
indicating a key motive for consumer’s trip length is the travel deviation. More precisely, people
who deviate significantly from the optimal path (TSP) tend to purchase more (larger baskets) and
people who shop mainly products (e.g. fruits and vegetables), deli products (cheese/milk) and
prepackaged products tend to deviate less from their optimal path.
Additionally, Herb Sorensen’s (2010) study of consumers’ pattern of purchase contradicts the
complexity of followed patterns arguing that consumers’ “path to purchase is often observed to be
u-turn”. According to his explanatory study in two different types of retails, people presented this uturn passive type of shopping path and retailers were more passive than the shoppers by just
observing the consumers following the same pattern. What is needed according to Sorensen (2010)
is to lead consumers to what to buy based on this u-turn pattern. If this u-turn pattern is also
followed with respect to hedonic purchase then the intention for shoppers to induce into retail
therapies would be greater.
What is needed is a linkage between shopping paths and purchased behavior that can lead to a better
understanding of consumer motivations, focusing on consumers’ heterogeneity and shed light on
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goods’ complementary and substitutability in a more thoughtful way than investigation of shopping
basket can do.
Empirical Setting
The empirical setting of my thesis is the airport environment. In particular, I examined the effect of
negative economic news releases on shopping behavior in the way that this behavior is captured via
purchase incidents in an airport environment. Tracking devices are presented as a kind of revolution
of the way that researchers apply in order to examine thoroughly the shopping paths of the
consumers and to optimize several aspects of their stores like the space management or the store
decoration in order to increase their sales (Varpu Uotila and Skorgster P. 2007). More precisely, in
their study, the researchers are trying to indicate the benefits and the disadvantages of using
wireless local area networks (WLAN) as a collecting method of customer traffic as it enables to
analyze in the context with different geographical information systems and obtain more accurate
results. Furthermore, the collaborative study of Bradlow, Hui and research teams of Sorensen
(2003) provided the analysis of over 200.000 shopping paths in a supermarket area in detail. This
approach allowed the recent re-emergence of shopping paths’ analysis conducted by tracking
consumers’ trolleys or baskets attaching a small RFID tag at the bottom of trolleys/baskets.
Data collection
In my thesis, I use a similar kind of data but the paths are collected via the wireless network
connection existing in the airport. The approach used to obtain this shopping path data is a
technology called BIPS, whose patent belongs to a Portuguese start-up company. The company,
which won the SCTE/MIT Portugal Venture Competition in 2010, is now attracting large investors
from both sides of the Atlantic due to the advantages of its technology. Specifically, usage of BIPS
allows for unobtrusive tracking of customers’ shopping paths via the GSM signal transmitted from
their mobile phone. Consumers did not know they were being tracked, as the data collection was
conducted as part of a test executed by the company in partnership with the airport management
authorities1 and fully compliant with the regulation and norms of the Portuguese National Data
Protection Agency1 No individual-specific consumer data was collected, so the data is fully
anonymized. However, some information regarding the network operator of each consumer is
stored, in particular the country of origin of the mobile operator, enabling the comparison of
different behaviors according to a consumer’s country of residence.
1
http://www.cnpd.pt/
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Master thesis
The most important countries of travelers using the airport were captured and namely I refer to
them: Portugal, United Kingdom, France, Spain and Germany. This gave me the opportunity to
analyze in a multi-format way the directions followed by the different types of travelers in a
medium-sized airport in Southern Europe, after the check-in process. This analysis will provide
some thoughtful insights regarding the consumer behavior in tense situations like facing financial
problems. However, during the examined period of the two weeks, negative economic news was
basically announced for France, Portugal and Spain. For this reason, the focus of the analysis was
the observations concerning these countries, excluding observations regarding United Kingdom and
Germany.
In Appendix A, I describe and compare the two main technologies used to track shopping paths and
explain why usage of GSM technology tracking device is ideal for my research goals.
Airport Data
My data was collected in a medium-sized airport in Southern Europe, located approximately 15 Km
northwest of city centre. The used airport is the second busiest in the country and the second busiest
in passengers, based on traffic statistics. The Airport reached its six millionth passenger mark on the
30th December 2011 and it serves all the main European countries and also some American
destinations (e.g. Brazil and the U.S.), even though these are served through a different terminal
than the one captured in my data.
In order to have a better understanding of the examined airport environment, I will firstly introduce
the map of the shopping area after the security checking:
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1
2
Fig.3: Density map
As it can be seen from the density map of one of the examined days, passengers, after the security
process follow either escalator 1 or escalator 2 for their route to the gates for departure with a result
to meet firstly either shop D or shop A. However, the spatial superiority of store D is clearly
justified from the map as it is the one and single store with the most extensive available space. Even
so, I will try to justify the store selection base on the value of purchase that each traveler acquires
from these different types of stores.
Regarding the observed shops in the airport environment, the shop A is a retailer which provides
regional products like jams, honey, olive oil, regional drinks, ham, wines, biscuits, ham and other
regional products to the customers, it can be therefore perceived mostly as an utilitarian shop. The
shop B is a typical Fashion & Clothing store for male and female classified as utilitarian as it offers
a limited assortment of relatively basic clothes (e.g. shirts and ties for men, or scarf’s, belts and
shirts for women) and often offers products on sale and special promotions. Shop C is of highly
branded fashion and accessories. Status brands such as Guess, Hugo Boss, Gucci, Swatch, Diesel,
Emporio Armani but also consumer designed electronics like Sony, Apple, Casio are provided, so it
is a definitely a hedonic shop. Finally, shop D is providing on the one hand utilitarian gifts and
products like chocolates, tobacco and alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages and, on the other hand,
hedonic gifts such as cosmetics and perfumes. Fortunately, the hedonic and utilitarian products are
clearly arranged in two different regions of the store which were, for this reason, separately
monitored by the path-tracking technology.
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Negative News Releases about the Economy (15/01-28/1):
Additionally, I collected data on news about the financial situation for the same countries as in the
observed data (Portugal, United Kingdom, France, Spain and Germany). Most of these countries are
directly related with the 2011-2012 economic crises (affecting several European countries with
different intensities) for the same period of analysis (January 15th to 28th 2012). In the table below I
summarize the main negative economic news occurring in this period and which I will further
examine:
Table 3- Main Negative economic news
13th of January
-Standard and Poor’s (S&P) cut credit ratings of
Austria and France to AA.
16th of January
-Downgrade of French credibility.
17th of January
-Portuguese State announced losses of 40 billion
euro during 2011.
-French president and Spanish Prime Minister
support
the
proposed
taxes
on
financial
transactions.
th
20 of January
-Spain announced two more years of recession
23rd of January
-France wants to reform the banking sector
renegotiating the European fiscal Union project
and make a new agreement with Germany.
The aforementioned news releases were obtained from several and different sources in order to
capture the global dynamics of news and their influences. However, the emphasis was given on
European news and most precisely on the bad news that influenced French, Portuguese and Spanish
passengers. The list of the examined sources and all the negative economic news, are provided in
the appendix A.
The downgrade of France economy was the most important financial news during this examined
period. As these news can influence strongly the mood and the feelings of consumers I can
conclude through this data collection that the news’ releases regarding the instability of France and
in general the financial instability of euro-zone can induce negative feelings to consumers affecting
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in this way their final purchasing decision. This is the reason why the French nationality of
passengers was implemented as a reference category for my analysis.
Through this experiential observation of consumers’ paths and decisions, researchers and marketers
can get more insights and tangible benefits. Although traditional marketing observation has gave an
attractive set of strategies, implementation tools and methodologies to be followed. This
experiential approach indicates the new era of observation which enables managers to access the
released opportunities of customers’ experiences and capitalize on them (Schmitt 1999).
Measurement:
Dependent variable: Shopping behavior (Purchase Incidence)
Firstly, through the shopping behavior purchase MNL (multinomial logistic regression) model, I
measured the shopping behavior of the airport i passengers during the period of t (=13 days)
regarding their purchase decisions. In my analyses I focus on passengers who entered at least one of
the stores (i.e. I ignore those passengers who did not even enter a single store). The dependent
variable of shopping behavior (SHOPBEHAVit) could take the following possible expected
responses: utilitarian, hedonic and no purchase. The classification of shopping behavior was based
on the purchase incidences observed in the four airport stores (A, B, C and D). According to the
categorization of the stores as hedonic and utilitarian, the shopping behavior, in line with purchase
incidence, is characterized hedonic or utilitarian. Therefore, each passenger can be classified as
having made a hedonic purchase (which means that he/she visited a hedonic store and made a
purchase therein), a utilitarian purchase (he/she visited a utilitarian store and made a purchase
therein) or no purchase (the passenger entered a store but he/she did not make any purchase). In
order to be more precise, I have to confirm that throughout the whole dataset there was not observed
any passenger who made both utilitarian and hedonic purchases, making the classification into these
two categories easier and clearer.
However, the classification of D store (which has a region with ‘hedonic’ products such as
cosmetics and perfumes and a region with ‘utilitarian’ products such as snacks and tobacco) was
based on the variable of DWELLit in the two separate parts of the store. Taking into consideration
the constrained time for shopping for the passengers of the airport, this dwell time was treated as
following: I compared the dwell time in the two different parts of the store and I assumed that if a
passenger makes a purchase at store D, he/she is purchasing a product from the region of the store
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where he/she spent the most time compared to the other part. Finally, as the majority of the
passengers retained a mostly conservative attitude, the no purchase category captured those who
visited at least one of those stores but did not make any purchase.
Independent variables:
For my analysis, first I examined the time effect on shopping behavior of the n=39193 passengers
the same t period as follows: I classified every separate observation of the available secondary data
into three main categories of the day and coded these observations using the following dummy
variables:
MORNINGi = 1, for passengers visiting stores between
06am and 11.59am
AFTERNOONi = 1, for passengers visiting stores between 12pm and 6.59pm
NIGHTi = 1, for passengers visiting stores between
7pm and 11.59pm
Secondly, I measured the effect of bad economic news on the airport passengers, but in order to
capture the differential effects on the specific observed countries of residence I created four
different dummy variables as follows:

FRNEGNEWSit: taking the value 1 when (negative) news about France’s economy were
released in the same date of the shopping activity (and 0 otherwise).

FRNEGNEWSit-1: taking the value 1 when the (negative) news about France’s economy had
been released in the previous day of the shopping activity (0 otherwise).

SPNEGNEWSit: taking the value 1 when news released on the day of the shopping activity
were about Spain and 0 otherwise.

SPNEGNEWSit-1: taking the value 1 when news released on the previous day of the
shopping activity were about Spain and 0 otherwise.

PTNEGNEWSit: taking the value 1 when news released on the day of the shopping activity
were about Portugal and 0 otherwise.

PTNEGNEWSit-1: taking the value 1 when news released on the previous day of the
shopping activity were about Portugal and 0 otherwise.
Additionally, I measured the country of origin of the passengers based on the categorical variable
COUNTRYit which was taking the values of DE, FR, PT, SP and UK. I deleted the observations
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referring to German (DE) and British (UK) consumers and focused on the French, Portuguese and
Spanish as Southern Europe was, in the period of my data, much more likely to be involved in
negative economic news. I created the following dummy variables based on the countries with the
highest number of passengers in my data and which released the most negative news during the
examined period:

PTi: taking the value 1 when the passenger had a Portuguese mobile provider and 0
otherwise.

SPi: taking the value 1 when the passenger had a Spanish mobile provider and 0 otherwise.

I did not create a dummy for France as I treat France as the reference country in my analyses
(so all effects will tell me how much more or less likely are the Portuguese or Spanish
residents to make hedonic or utilitarian purchases).
Also, I captured the store visits of i passengers the same t period based on the NSTORESit variable
(which ranged from 1 to 4). More precisely, based on the aforementioned variable I created the
following dummy:

MULTIPLEit: taking the value 1 when the observed passenger visited multiple airport stores
and 0 otherwise. I will use this variable in an attempt to control customers’ shopping goals.
The assumption here is that a customer visiting multiple stores, when compared with a
customer visiting a single store, is more likely to be in a browsing model rather than in a
goal-directed trip (Bloch and Richins, 1983).
Finally, I included four interaction effects between the negative news released in country j=SP,PT
and the dummy indicating that the passenger is from country j=SP and PT, as the France was the
reference country. These countries were chosen for examination as they were the only countries
which released negative economic news during the examined period of time while observations
regarding the United Kingdom and Germany were excluded as there did not present negative
economic news.
Table 4-Overview of implemented variables:
Dependent variables
SHOPBEHAVit
Independent variables
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A categorical variable with 3 possible categories (utilitarian,
hedonic and no purchase), which were identified from the dummy
variables A,B,C,D PURCHASEit.
Master thesis
MORNING𝒊
AFTERNOON𝒊
NIGHT𝒊
FRNEGNEWSit
FRNEGNEWSit-1
SPNEGNEWSit
SPNEGNEWSit-1
PTNEGNEWSit
PTNEGNEWSit-1
PTit
SPit
MULTIPLEit
A dummy variable coded as 1 when passengers made purchases
within the time slot of 06am to 11.59am and 0 otherwise.
A dummy variable coded as 1 when passengers made purchases
within the time slot of 12pm to 6.59pm and 0 otherwise.
A dummy variable coded as 1 when passengers made purchases
within the time slot of 7pm to 11.59pm and 0 otherwise.
A dummy variable coded as 1 when bad economic news about
France is released on the day of shopping observation and 0
otherwise.
A dummy variable coded as 1 when bad economic news about
France is released on the day before the shopping activity
observation and 0 otherwise.
A dummy variable taking the value 1 when bad economic news
about Spain were released on the day of shopping activity and 0
otherwise.
A dummy variable coded as 1 when bad economic news about
Spain is released on the day before the shopping activity
observation and 0 otherwise.
A dummy variable taking the value 1 when negative economic
news about Portugal released on the day of shopping activity
were about Portugal and 0 otherwise.
A dummy variable coded as 1 when bad economic news about
Portugal is released on the day before the shopping activity
observation and 0 otherwise.
A dummy variable coded as 1 when the mobile provider of the
passenger is Portuguese and 0 otherwise.
A dummy variable coded as 1 when the mobile provider of the
passenger is Spanish and 0 otherwise.
A dummy variable taking the value 1 when the observed
passenger visited multiple stores and 0 otherwise
Econometric Model
In my study, in order to examine the diversity of choices of passengers in the airport environment I
implemented the multinomial logistic regression model which enables me to investigate choices far
from yes/no distinction as here passengers are expected to choose among three different purchase
decisions. This was an appropriate specification of the character of the dependent variable and the
number of choices that consumers were able to make.
Shopping behavior purchase model:
Recall that my DV is whether a passenger made a hedonic, utilitarian or no purchase. As a base
category, which helps to identify the 𝛽𝑙𝑗 {utilitarian and hedonic}, I used the category of no
purchase at all as it was the mostly observed as well.
Based on this, the model is derived as following:
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𝑃𝑟(𝑆𝐻𝑂𝑃𝐵𝐸𝐻𝐴𝑉𝑖𝑡) = j|Xj =
exp(𝑥𝑖 𝛽𝑗 )
𝑗=1
∑𝑙=1 exp(𝑥𝑖 𝛽𝑗 )
for 𝑗 = 𝐻𝐸, 𝑈𝑇, 𝑁𝑂,
,
(1)
Where 𝑋𝑖 is a 1 𝑥 (𝑘𝑥 + 1) matrix of explanatory variables (𝑘𝑥 =MORNINGi, AFTERNOONi,
MULTIPLEit, SPit, PTit, FRNEGNEWSit, FRNEGNEWSit-1, SPNEGNEWSit, SPNEGNEWSit-1,
PTNEGNEWSit, PTNEGNEWSit-1 and the interactions of country and negative news) including
the element 1 in order to model the intercept and 𝛽𝑗 is a (𝑘𝑥 + 1) dimensional parameter vector.
But as the choices can be explained by intercepts and by individual – specific variables the
multinomial logistic model is written as following:
𝑃𝑟(𝑆𝐻𝑂𝑃𝐵𝐸𝐻𝐴𝑉𝑖𝑡) = j|Xj =
exp( 𝛽0,𝑗 + 𝛽1,𝑗 𝑥𝑖 )
𝑗=1
,
1+ ∑𝑙=1 exp(𝛽0,𝑙 + 𝛽1,𝑙 𝑥𝑖 )
for 𝑗 = 𝐻𝐸, 𝑈𝑇, 𝑁𝑂,
(2)
Moreover, I examined the aforementioned described model excluding the variable that characterizes
the goal oriented passengers in order to capture dynamics about the browsing passengers of the
airport. I did not measure wide variation among the two models and the detailed results are
described in the analysis section.
A direct interpretation of the model parameters is not straightforward because the 𝑥𝑖 effect on the
choice is clearly a nonlinear function in the model parameters 𝛽𝑗 but in order to interpret the
parameters, the odds ratios may be considered, so the odd ratios for category 𝑗 versus category 𝑙 are
defined as:
Pr[ Y =j|X ]
exp ( β0,j +β1,j xi )
Ωj|l (𝑋𝑖 ) = Pr[ Yi =l|Xi ] = exp ( β +β x ),
i
i
0,l
1,l i
Pr[ Y =j|X ]
Ωj|J (𝑋𝑖 ) = Pr[ Yi =J|Xi ] = exp ( β0j + βlj xi )
i
i
for 𝑗 = 𝐻𝐸, 𝑈𝑇, 𝑁𝑂, (3)
for 𝑗 = 𝐻𝐸, 𝑈𝑇, 𝑁𝑂, (4)
Where 𝑦𝑖 isSHOPBEHAVit. The odds ratios show that a change in 𝑥𝑖 may imply that individuals are
more likely to choose one of the 𝑗 categories compared to category 𝑙 reference category but not
necessarily into same direction.
Descriptive statistics
The number of passengers and shopping paths observed in the airport environment was 45981.
Taking into consideration this great number of available observations, the paths observed during the
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hours that the shops were closed in the airport, from 23:00 to 5:00, were deleted as they could not
add any value to my analysis. The remained observations were counted at 39193.Moreover,
excluding the observations which did not report any store visit, what can be easily assumed from
the frequencies of the observations is that the majority of the passengers (76,5 %) despite visiting
the stores in the airport, they do not buy anything at all.
Table 5 - Shopping behavior based on purchase incidence:
Frequency
Percent
Valid Percent
Cumulative Percent
HE
4020
10,3
10,3
10,3
NO
29971
76,5
76,5
86,7
UT
5202
13,3
13,3
100,0
Total
39193
100,0
100,0
This finding is in relation with the great percentage, of more than the half of traveling population,
(56%) who do not visit any store in the airport and the people who visit just one store (37.3%)
without this indicating that they make purchases and finally a very restricted percentage of 6.7%
who visit more than 1 store up to 4.
Fig. 4: Number of visited stores
According to the H1, people from countries
which experience bad financial incidents and
these incidences are discussed by the media on
the day, or on the day before their shopping
(and traveling) activity visit less stores and
make fewer purchases. This incidence is
confirmed in my case as negative economic
news were released on the 16th,17th, 20th and
23rd of January and the observed shopping
activity the dates after the negative economic news was at the minimum observed level compared to
the average level. More precisely, on the 17th it was just at 5.8%, on the 18th it was 6.4%, on the 21st
at 6.7% and on the 24th at 6.2%. Based on the average shopping activity of the observed period
which was 7.14%, the aforementioned percentages are very low. This enables a first robust
assumption that passengers are influenced in their shopping behavior from the negative economic
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news released on the day before their shopping trip. However, this assumption will be more
extensively examined in the following analysis of the models.
Fig. 5: Shopping activity based on date
Another interesting aspect for indicating the shopping activity is the time of shopping incidences
which is scaled into the different parts of the day. Based on the frequencies of the descriptive
statistics it can be assumed that the majority of shopping activity is accumulated in the morning
(43.1 %) and afternoon (37.7%). The least shopping activity is observed in late hours at night
(19.2%).
Part of the day
43.1
37.7
19.2
afternoon
morning
night
Fig.6: Shopping activity based on the time of observation
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Finally the observed paths followed by the travelers are the key sources for this study. Based on the
observed paths, an extremely big percentage of passengers visited only the D store (20.9%) after
their security check. Of course this can be explained from the location of the D store in the airport
environment as it covers the greatest area among the rest examined stores. However, the store
location analysis is not in the context of this thesis. I will focus on the purchases occurred in the D
store compared the two parts of the store hedonic (perfumes and cosmetics) and utilitarian (tobaccos
and chocolates). Based on dwell observation, it can be seen that the purchases of the two parts are
almost on the same level. The passengers who visited the utilitarian part of the D store and made
utilitarian purchases are representing the 20.4% of the utilitarian department store visits and those
who visited hedonic department and actually made a hedonic purchase are the 20% of hedonic
visits. . Those percentages are almost identical representing the avoidance of purchases in total with
a very slight preference over utilitarian purchases.
Utilitarian department
of D Store
Hedonic department of
D Store
80.0
79.6
no utilitarian
purchase
20.4
20.0
utilitarian purchase
hedonic purchase
no hedonic
purchase
Fig. 7: Purchases in D store
Finally, according to the previously described statistics it is logical to expect a comparable
probability of hedonic and utilitarian purchases in the airport shopping area, taking into
consideration the limited observed purchases. However, the analysis that follows will present a
more concrete conclusion about the shopping behavior of passengers.
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Chapter IV: Analysis and Results
Outlier’s detection:
As the variables implemented in my analysis are metric-numeric variables, the Mahalanobis D2
distance is employed to detect multivariate outliers. The Mahalanobis distance (MD) is a measure
of the geometric distance between the point representing any one of the cases and the centroid
(multidimensional mean) of a distribution, given the covariance (multidimensional variance) of the
distribution. The leverage is
MD
1

and any case was investigated about the leverage exceeding
N 1 N
2p/n, where p is the number of variables and n is the number of cases. Finally, a case is a
multivariate outlier if the probability associated with its Mahalanobis D2 is 0.001 or less. In my
analysis 705 outliers were detected with D2 =0 < 0.001. Thus, after the completion of detecting
outliers there were still 38488 observations left to analyze.
Multinomial Regression
Multicollinearity detection:
In logistic regression solution, multicollinearity is observed by the existence of strong relationships
among the independent variables. This existence is detected by examining the Variance Inflation
Factor (VIF) that measures multicollinearity in the model. If one of the predictor variables can be
nearly perfectly predicted by one of the other predictors variables or if there is a linear combination
of the other predictor variables then the regression coefficients become unstable. Another problem
is that if predictors are well correlated with one another, then they have little unique relationship
with the outcome variable (since they are redundant with each other). By examining separately the
linear relationship of all the independent variables of the models I conclude that there is not
observed multicollinearity as none of the VIF values were greater than 3. More precisely apart from
two variables that were around 3 all the other scores were around 1.
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Measurement of Model Performance
It is important to be aware of the usefulness of MLR implemented model through classification
accuracy which compares the predicted purchase incidence (calculated by the MLR model) to the
known (actual) purchase. We can identify a MLR model as “Useful” if there is at least 25% more
improvement achievable over the by chance accuracy rate alone. “By Chance Accuracy” means that
if there is no relationship between the dependent variable and the independent variables, it is still
possible to achieve some percentage of correct purchase incidences. In my analysis, “By Chance
Accuracy Rate” is (0.103² + 0.765² + 0.133² = 0.613) 61.3% and 25% increase of this value equals
to 76.6%, and the cross validated accuracy rate is 76.6% as well. Hence, cross validated accuracy
rate is equal to the proportional by chance accuracy rate and it is possible to declare that the MLR
models are useful for the classification goal.
By Chance Accuracy Rate=(0.103² + 0.765² + 0.133² = 0.613) 61.3%
HE
10.3%
NO
76.5%
UT
13.3%
Classification Accuracy
Observed
HE
HE
NO
UT
Overall Percentage
0
0
0
,0%
Predicted
NO
UT
4020
29971
5202
100,0%
0
0
0
,0%
Percent
Correct
,0%
100,0%
,0%
76,6%
Shopping behavior purchase model
In Table 6, I provide information about the model fit. Using a likelihood ratio test, we can see that
the improvement in log-likelihood of my model compared with a model with intercepts only, is
highly significant. The probability associated with the chi-square on the likelihood of the described
incidents (1.019E3) is 0, less than the level of significance of 0.05. Hence, the null hypothesis that
there is no difference in shopping behavior when the aforementioned parameters are encountered is
rejected. The Model fitting information presents that the current model is exceeding the Null model.
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Table 6 – Shopping behavior Model Fitting Information:
Model
Intercept Only
Final
Model Fitting
Criteria
Likelihood Ratio Tests
-2 Log
Likelihood
1,497E3
1,019E3
Chi-Square
Sig.
478,673
,000
Moreover, as we can see in table 7, the p-values in this case are needed to be higher than the
statistical significance (0.001–0.05) in order to accept the null hypothesis that there is an adequate
“fit” between the model and the date. So, as p-values are considerably larger than 0.05 I can
conclude that this model adequately fits the data.
Table 7-“Goodness of fit” information:
Chi-Square
df
Sig.
Pearson
172,206
186
,758
Deviance
187,344
186
,459
As it is observed from the table 8 below, there is a statistically significant relationship between the
independent variables MORNINGit and MULTIPLEit and the dependent variable shopping
behavior based on the purchase incident (p= 0.016 < 0.05 and p= 0 < 0.05 respectively). Through
this likelihood ratio test, it is clear that these variables significantly contribute to the model. More
precisely, the contribution of MORNINGit variable likelihood (1,027) indicating a possible
purchase to happen during the morning is significant at a chi-square level 8,225. Also, the
contribution of MULTIPLEit store visits with likelihoods 1,458 is statistically significant at a chisquare test 439,254.
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Table 8- Likelihood ratio tests
MORNINGit
-2 Log Likelihood of
Reduced Model
1,027E03
Chi-Square
8,225
MULTIPLEit
1,458E03
439,254
Sig.
0,016
0
Group comparisons:
In my analysis the reference category is identified as the “not at all purchase” incidence, which is
the category that would be coded with zero values for all of the factor variables included in MNL
model and they are interpreted against this category.
The comparisons made in this analysis of shopping behavior purchase model are the two following:
1. the hedonic purchase incidence (HE) is compared to the not at all purchase incidence (NO).
2. The utilitarian purchase incidence (UT) is compared to the not at all purchase incidence
(NO).
The table 9 below summarizes the most significant results that derived from MNL analysis. The
original output is presented in the Appendix C.
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Table 9- Shopping Behavior Purchase Model: Parameter Estimates
Beta
Standard
Error
Wald
Significance
Exp(B)
Hedonic
Intercept
MULTIPLEit
PTNEGNEWSit-1
-1,374
0,288
22,74
0
0,877
0,051
295,54
0
0,19
0,094
4,08
0,044
2,404
1,21
0,889
Utilitarian
Intercept
MORNINGit
-2,256
-0,118
0,249
0,041
81,882
8,26
0
0,004
MULTIPLEit
-0,865
0,087
98,34
0
SPi
INT_SP_SPNEGNEWSt-1
-0,106
0,337
0,053
0,166
3,95
4,13
0,047
0,042
0,421
0,899
1,400
Note: Only significant results are shown. For the full output please refer to Appendix C.
Hedonic compared to not at all purchase:
The MNL estimate for hedonic purchase compared to not at all purchase when the predictor
variables in the model are zero is -1,374 at a significant level (p=0.000<0.05). In addition, when
people visit multiple stores (which can be seen as a proxy whether a consumer is browsing stores or
has a very specific goal in mind), the log odds of a hedonic purchase increase by 0,877
(p=0.00<0.05). The odds ratio for this variable is 2,404>1, indicating that the odds that a consumer
makes an hedonic purchase (relative to NO purchase) are 2.4 times higher when he/she is browsing
multiple stores than when she visits only one store. Also, the MNL estimate for PTNEGNEWSit-1
is 0,190 indicating that if a passenger had been exposed to negative news about the Portuguese
economy in the day before the observed shopping activity, then, ceteris paribus, the log odds of
making an hedonic purchase to not purchase at all are expected to significantly increase by 0,190
units (p=0.044<0.05). The odds ratio for this variable is 1,21>1, indicating that the probability of
hedonic purchases (relative to NO purchase) is higher in the day after negative news about the
Portuguese economy are broadcasted. Interestingly, this effect is neither stronger nor weaker for
Portuguese residents, so it seems to affect all customers in my data equally. This situation can be
explained by the fact that the negative news about the economy in Portugal affect everyone being
those days in Portugal (i.e. passengers are leaving, as the research is held in the departure hall, thus
they have probably been for at least some days in Portugal). Finally, this news may also affect the
mood of airport employees making them less likely to be persuasive in convincing passengers to
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make hedonic purchases. Employees feel the insecurity by being closer to the negative economic
news and this may also affect their communicational skills. Conclusively, retail therapy seems to
play a role in shopping behavior, but it is more triggered by the overall insecure mood.
Utilitarian compared to not at all purchase
The MNL estimation for utilitarian purchase compared to not at all purchase when the predictor
variables in the model are zero is -2,256 at a significant level (p=0.000<0.05). However, customers
making their purchases in the morning (i.e. MORNINGit = 1), were significantly less likely to make
utilitarian purchases (β=-0,118; p=0,004<0,05), indicating that passengers are not interested in
shopping in the morning for utilitarian products provided that all the other variables in the model
are constant (ceteris paribus). This means that, the log odds of preferring utilitarian to not at all
purchase any other time but not in the morning are expected to decrease by 0,118 units when we
compare morning with afternoon or evening customers. The odds ratio for this variable is 0,889<1,
indicating that – controlling for all the other factors included in my model - the odds of an utilitarian
purchase (relative to the NO purchase) are 12% lower for passengers shopping in the morning.
When we compare customers who visit multiple stores (browsers, i.e. those with MULTIPLEi=1)
with customers who visit only one store (goal-directed customers, i.e. those with MULTIPLEi=0),
we can see that browsers are also significantly less likely to make a utilitarian purchase. Keeping
everything else constant, the log odds of a utilitarian purchase decrease by 0,865 at a significant
level of (0.001<0.05). The odds ratio for this variable is 0,421<1, indicating that the probability
odds of an utilitarian purchase (relative to the NO purchase) by browsers are just 42% of the odds of
a similar purchase by goal-directed shoppers.
Finally, the MNL estimate of the effect of a passenger’s possessing a mobile phone from a Spanish
network (SPi=1) on the probability of an utilitarian purchase is -0,106 which means that, the log
odds of a Spanish customer (or at least a resident in Spain) preferring an utilitarian purchase (to not
making any purchase) are expected to be 0,106 lower than the log odds of an utilitarian purchase
from other customers (i.e. from French customers, my reference category, but also from Portuguese
as they do not significantly differ from the French), an effect that is significant (p=0,047<0,05). In
other words, Spaniards are less likely to make utilitarian purchases. In fact, the odds ratio is
0,899<1, indicating that the odds of a utilitarian purchase (relative to NO purchase) by Spanish
passengers are 10 percentage points below other passengers.
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Interestingly, when we analyze the effect of the interaction between Spanish (mobile network)
dummy and the dummy for negative economic news about Spain in the day before shopping, we see
a positive effect, which is counterintuitive. That is, Spanish residents exposed to recent negative
news about the economy of Spain, the log-odds of a utilitarian purchase are 0,337 higher than for
other customers. In other words, my results indicate that Spanish people are less likely to make
utilitarian purchases in general (β=-0,106; p<0.05) but significantly more likely to make an
utilitarian purchase in the day after negative economic news about their country have been
broadcasted (β=0,337; p<0.05), provided that all the other variables in the model are constant
(ceteris paribus). This means that, the log odds of an utilitarian purchase (compared to not at all
purchase) are 0,337 lower, which is a significant effect (p=0,042<0,05). The odds ratio for this
variable are 1,400>1, indicating that the odds of an utilitarian purchase (relative to the NO
purchase) are 1.4 times higher for Spanish passengers exposed to recent negative news about the
Spanish economy, when they are compared with all other customers.
Please note that none of these variables (the dummy for Spanish residents, SPi and the interactions
of this dummy with the negative economic news in the day and in the day before shopping,
INT_SP_SPNEGNEWSt and INT_SP_SPNEGNEWSt-1) was a significant predictor of the likelihood
of a hedonic purchase. This means that, somewhat counter intuitively, the conservative spending
argument seems to hold for hedonic purchases but not for utilitarian purchases. In contrast, the retail
therapy argument – which I could not find as hypothesized (an increase in the purchase incidence of
hedonic products) – seems to possibly hold but for utilitarian purchases. I explore these effects and
possible interpretations and implications of these in the conclusion and discussion section.
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Overview of hypotheses and findings
The following table gives an overview of the examined hypotheses and the corresponding main
findings.
H1: Consumers from countries that receive negative news about their economy have a
lower probability of making either hedonic or utilitarian purchases (responsible
spending argument).
This hypothesis is confirmed throughout the analysis. The focus of my analysis was
the passengers who experienced negative news on the 16th, 17th, 20th and 23rd of
January and how significantly they were influenced the next day of these releases. In
the comparison of utilitarian to not purchase in multinomial regression analysis the
preference to make at least a utilitarian purchase the day after the bad announcement,
was “suffering” from not purchase incidence. The odds of preferring utilitarian
purchase to not at all purchase confirm decreasing probabilities. These preferences are
expected to decrease even more, especially in morning hours shopping. Moreover,
passengers who have a browsing behavior appear less likely to make utilitarian
purchases compared to goal oriented passengers. Finally, this hypothesis is partially
supported from my results indicate that Spanish people are less likely to make
utilitarian purchases in general, but significantly more likely to make an utilitarian
purchase in the day after negative economic news about their country have been
broadcasted provided that all the other variables in the model are constant (ceteris
paribus). Considering also the reduced shopping activity of the days after the release of
the bad economic news, it is clear that people are influenced while holding all the other
factors to zero. Finally it is clear throughout the analysis that the majority of
passengers preferred not to make any purchase in general at the airport.
H2: Consumers from countries that receive negative news about their country’s
economy on the day before their travel or on the same day of travelling, have a higher
probability of purchasing hedonic goods (retail therapy argument).
Finding: This hypothesis is partly supported as the negative economic news announced
for Portuguese economy the previous day of shopping activity appear to increase the
probabilities for hedonic purchases. However, in general there is not significant
observation of influence from negative economic news in the comparison of hedonic to
not at all purchase incidence. There is a downturn of probabilities regarding hedonic
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preferences and based on this assumption of the analysis, the hypothesis cannot be
supported.
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Chapter V: Conclusion
Main findings
Through my master thesis I strived to examine the impact of negative economic news to consumers’
shopping behavior related to utilitarian, hedonic and NO purchase incidence. In general, during the
examined period of two weeks, 15-28 January of 2012, passengers tended to avoid purchases. This
attitude is in accordance with the conservative spending argument introduced in the theory sections
satisfying 1 out of my 2 hypothesis. Unfortunately, the argument of retail therapy in this occasional
shopping procedure is not completely satisfied. However, I will conclude the main results of this
analysis based on the conservative spending argument which is strongly supported
Although the great shopping activity, including all types of behavior of browsers and goal oriented
passengers, observed in morning hours, according to descriptive statistics from the analysis, it is
clear that passengers prefer to make utilitarian purchases other than morning hours. This can be
justified by the fact that this part of the day is characterized as “rush” hours where people travel due
to work obligations. So, they are not that likely to make purchases while being under pressure.
Moreover, it is observed that utilitarian purchases have greater probability to happen through
constrained situations as it is in the case of Spaniards. This can be explained due to the obligatory
role that utilitarian needs play to people even in crises periods like this that Spanish economy faces
throughout the examined period but also before the examined period, and which cannot be
disregarded. Therefore, in the general conservative attitude that most passengers have, utilitarian
purchases seem to be “needed”.
Additionally, passengers who are browsing multiple stores are less likely to buy hedonic goods than
those who visit a single store. However they are more likely to make utilitarian purchases. A
possible explanation for this is that browsers are not motivated from emotions that hedonic goods
create to their customers, but from recreational and informational reasons in order to investigate the
best deal for them, which essentially exists in utilitarian purchases.
Regarding the negative economic news released on the days before the shopping activity, the
analysis did not give very concrete results. Worthy to be mentioned, however, are the results
regarding the effect of negative economic news released on the day before the shopping activity
about the Portuguese economy. What can be said, based on the increased probability of hedonic
purchases is that there is a slight preference for this type of purchase from all customers who visited
Portugal or lived there. This can be explained through the superiority of feelings introduced already
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from the theory section that hedonic purchases release to the passengers-customers according to the
value that each customer gives to those purchases and the directness to this news that passengers
experienced.
Finally, regarding the shopping behavior of Spanish provider passengers, which presented
significant results in the comparison of utilitarian to no purchase incidence, I assume that retail
therapy is at least partially influencing these results. Those passengers are less likely to purchase
utilitarian products after negative news but not less likely to purchase hedonic products, as the
interaction among negative economic news and Spain as a country of residence is positive. This
enables me to assume some “weak” support for retail therapy in this case. This can create a wider
assumption for people coming from less financial stable countries such as Portugal compared to
Spain, justifying their hedonic avoidance through their financial uncertainty.
As a general conclusion, I can say that the majority of passengers were from Portuguese providers
which justify their great influence from the specific economic situation. I can also confirm through
my analysis that people, throughout constrained financial situations, tend to spend responsibly their
money purchasing only utilitarian products and only when it is needed. Responsible spending seems
a stronger theory to predict what happens to consumers in harsh economic times than retail therapy.
Bad economic announcements can cause several implications to the psychology of consumers and
this is presented in this analysis through the restriction of shopping activity or even traveling that
caused the shopping restriction. Hedonic needs and luxury are set aside when uncertainty for the
future occurs and this is when the most difficult task for marketers begins, to make consumer feel
confident and shop.
Managerial implications
As a contribution to marketing managers at this difficult time of economy and marketing science I
came up with the following suggestions.
First, marketing managers should be open-minded toward alternative communication strategies in
order to influence the suspicious consumer. As the uncertainty of nowadays makes peoplepassengers unwilling to purchase not only hedonic but also utilitarian products marketing managers
should find ways to make people forget their anxiety and seduce them to purchase.
It is assumed that after the check-in process passengers are released and that is the time when they
look around searching for their activities until their flight (Crawford and Melewar, 2003). So this is
the best time for the marketers to convince them to do their shopping. All these psychological
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transitions can lead them to impulse purchases which retailers should consider as their
opportunities. For this reason airport retailers should create such an environment that will release
people from their different unpleasant thoughts and induce them to purchases to make them feel
happier and released.
Fig. 9: Travel stress curve
How they can do this? By providing to their customers experience, associations that will be salient
to their memories and make them spread the word to their peers or even come back for another
purchase. As people nowadays feel violated from bad news and the gradual downgrade of all
economies, they do appreciate experience. Also, according to the study of Swinyard (1993),
consumer mood, involvement level and quality of the shopping experience have significant effects
on shopping intentions. Based on the results from a laboratory experiment, mood interacts with
involvement and shopping experience.
Second, taking into consideration the highly informed consumer nowadays with many interactions
through internet and social networks, I suggest that marketers of airport stores should be more
active in integrated communication through social media (Pruppers, 2011). More precisely, through
a small investigation in social groups on Face-book, only the store D had an updated page which
also needs improvement. Through this integrated program the greatest goal of marketers can be
achieved, to obtain the most effective and efficient communication of their products and the
experience that they offer to their customers.
Third, consumers prior and post crisis were mainly interested in the quality (McKenzie and
Schargrodsky, 2005). During or after the crisis, they may shop more days than before seeking for
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the best price deal but they were still focusing on the quality of the products they bought. As a
result, marketers should try to communicate this quality of their products and this can be easily
achieved and without cost through social media adding long-term impact on airport stores
credibility and honesty.
Last but not least, through my master thesis I strive to motivate and encourage marketing managers
to be creative and open-minded and to consider the real needs of consumers in nowadays difficult
economic environment. They should be creative to find ways not to banter consumers in order to
make purchases but to contribute to their psychological alleviation. As marketing is closely related
to consumer behavior, marketers should understand their difficult role of “interpreting” consumers.
Limitations and future research
To these conclusions some limitations need to be drawn. First, the sample is dedicated to airport
environment which differs radically to “normal” shopping conditions. Studies, indicate (Crawford
and Melewar, 2003; Omar 2008) that the consumer behavior in an airport is completely different
than that in normal shopping conditions. Travelers are anxious due to the limited available time
until their flight but at the same time enthusiastic and vulnerable during their presence in the airport.
There is also possibility to lose the sense of time. So, in an airport environment where people
cannot react like in normal conditions this decision should be really careful and retailers should not
sacrifice the quality of products for lower prices or because customers are not in the appropriate
condition to understand this.
Second, the observation period is restricted to two weeks of available data. This time of period is
not enough to make concrete assumptions regarding airport shopping. Moreover, these two weeks
are exactly after the holidays of Christmas indicating that the shopping activity is general low due to
holidays shopping that previously days occurred.
For future research there is a variety of interesting options. First, it would be nice to explore
utilitarian and hedonic purchase in a mall environment where the pressure of time is not so persisted
and people can shop without anxiety. Also, the period time for the observation needs to be kind of
neutral, so not close to holidays or sales. Another possible option for the time span of observation is
to compare two different periods, one normal and one with sales to explore the utilitarian purchase
and the hedonic purchase in constrained economic situations.
Second, a comparison of this secondary data or similar secondary data could be compared with
questionnaires. This procedure which will capture more psychological aspects of consumers like the
Chrysoula Safra -356653
Master thesis
intention to buy and the social image they want to demonstrate through their answers to what they
really do, how they really react.
Finally, there is a common thought that late flights are those with the lowest fares. That time and as
it is confirmed through our data the stores are closed. A further exploration thus could be the
demographics of passengers who travel with these flights in order to compare their income with
utilitarian orientation in purchase or their avoidance of purchase.
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Appendix A:
Index of Consumer Sentiment (ICS):
Dutch consumers used to be more optimistic about their financial condition in seventies compared
to the total economic situation while after the 1980-1984 recession, a contradictory pattern was
observed with the optimism about the economy as whole to be greater than the individual financial
situation. As a conclusion, people tend to reduce insecurity about future and so to spend but also to
save more when the optimism is diffused contributing partly to the argument of retail therapy.
However, what is the “heart” of economic behavior are expectations which not only guide the
selection and the interpretation of economic news but also figure the economic behavior of
individuals.
GSM technology
As it can be assumed, the GSM network is not a local network but a cellular network. The operator
does not provide any position information such as Base Transceiver Stations (BTSs). A possible
solution to this deficiency is based on unofficial BTSs lists which can be found on internet. The
medium rate for base transceivers (BTs) with GPS location information is about 90 % of all BTs in
European countries. After the signal transmitting the data go to nearby Base Stations (BSs)
scanning and saved to Locator Table in PDPT server DB. Data are processed from Locator Table
through the PDPT Core to Position Table. The processing techniques are based on selected wireless
network WIFI or BT network providing all visible APs nearby the user. From the list of these APs
the actual position is computed (Krejcar, Janckulik and Motalova, 2010).
The GSM network provides only one base station (BS) info in each search cycle with the highest
signal strength collected via iteration cycles. During 10 cycles (per 10 seconds), 4 BTS info on
average are obtained. The most important info from BTSs is the Signal Strength (SS) and the Time
Advance (TA). The signal strength is refreshed in every scan while time advance is provided during
any type of communication with the selected BTS (i.e. talk request, move to another area or
Location Area Code LAC). The list of these BTSs with info is processed as in previous case for WiFi and BT networks. The only change is in the usage of TA if it is accessible. Another possibility to
get the user location in outdoor space is in GPS. GPS provide a location by Longitude and Latitude
(X and Y). One and simple conversion is necessary in order to transform a GPS-coordinates into SJTSK and this is used in PDPT Framework (Krejcar, Janckulik and Motalova, 2010).
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RFID/WLAN technology:
Radio Frequency Identification is the technology which uses radio waves in order to collect and
evaluate data in the new era of information technology. Although it is a totally facilitating device, it
took half a century to appear to the market world due to its costly implementation. There are two
different types RFID technology, the active and the passive one. The active RFID depends on a
power source device which is connected to an integrated battery and for this reason it has limited
lifetime. The passive RFID does not require battery implementation or maintenance and they are
small enough in order to fit into practical adhesive label. Its construction contained an antenna to
capture the energy, a “semi-conductor” chip attached to the antenna to transfer the tags’ IDs and an
encapsulation for environmental protection. Moreover, there are two different approaches of
transferring power from reader to the tag: the magnetic induction and the electromagnetic (EM)
wave capture. It is obvious that the last approach becomes more efficient nowadays with
continuously increased applications. RFID technology is not only applied in transmitting energy
and reading signals but also in “sensing”, regarding the appropriate temperature of perishables, for
commercial reasons and private concerns. Finally, whereas the potential benefits of RFID
application are large, the costly implementation, the design restrictions and the resistance of its
acceptance hold beck its establishment (Roy Want, 2006).
GSM technology:
GSM technology is a Global System for Mobile Communications (Groupe Spécial Mobile), created
by the ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) for second generation technology
(2G) digital cellular networks. It was created in order to replace the first generation (1G) analog
cellular networks and it is originally described as a 2“digital, circuit switched network optimized
for full duplex voice telephony. The standard was expanded over time to include first circuit
switched data transport, then packet data transport via GPRS (General Packet Radio Services)”.
Packet data transmission speeds were later increased via Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution
(EDGE). A brief description of the way that GSM network operates is described in the appendix
section.
2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM
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Main attributes of RFID/GSM:
The main asset of this data is the accuracy that provides in accordance with the possibility for large
dataset with little or not at all workforce. However, RFID technology data can have some
drawbacks as well, as the setting up system for a company that does not have the system already
can be proved very expensive. Moreover, the setting up system can cause labor-intensity or even
technical disturbance before or during the data collection (Varpu Uotila & Skorgster P. 2007)
Finally, while the collected dataset can be very large, there are memory limitations regarding its
examination.
For this study, GSM was chosen as the data collecting method because it was easy to be obtained
through the WIFI system existing at an airport environment. Also as it is already stated, this kind of
data enables large dataset acquisition as that comes out the airport environment, with aim to track
customer with less than one meter accuracy and the great coverage of the system through the airport
stores.
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Appendix B:
News releases 15/01-28/1:
With starting point the 16th of January, the most important financial news’ release was the
downgrade of French credibility. However, Friday January 13th was a really fatal for more eurozone countries as Standard and Poor’s (S&P), after American markets closed for week, cut credit
ratings of Austria and France to AA. Three smaller European countries (Malta, Slovenia and
Slovakia) also suffered from a downgrade. Italy and Spain had also their ratings knocked down as
well by two notches (BBB+ and A respectively). Finally, Portugal’s and Cyprus’ debts were
considered as junk by S&P. This, “spiral” downward of 9 euro-zone countries created an overall
feeling of uncertainty among European economy.
On the 17th of January, the leader position of Germany economy is promoted, while Portuguese
news indicates that Portuguese State announced that had losses of 40 billion euro during the year
2011. Regarding, French and Spanish economy, French president and Spanish Prime Minister are
presented to support the proposed taxes on financial transactions. In contrast to the general
European situation, Denmark announced that the occurred downgrade will create 45000 new
vacancies for the country strengthening the competitiveness of national companies.
On 18th of January, Greece is one more time negotiating for the famous “haircut” on its national
debt. Representatives of the private creditors arrived discussing about exchange of debt securities
with maturities of 20-30 years. Moreover, European Commission has requested an infringement
procedure of Budapest, in order to modify the interdependence of Hungarian to the Central Bank
regarding the constitutional reforms. Croatian referendum as well, appeared extremely crucial for
European economy avoidance of collapse.
On the 19th of January, euro-zone crisis is on the center of global discussions. International
Monetary Fund chief asked European members to contribute to organizations coffers by paying
$500 billion while the World Bank has noted that the recession where Europe has got in can affect
the rest of the world. What is more, the Irish government faces a new threat to its advantageous
12.5% corporate tax as Germany and France force to the creation of a pan-European tax system.
On the 20th of January, Spain announced two more years of recession according to IMF forecasts
that Spanish Economy will contract by 1.2% in 2012 and 0.3% in 2013. Moreover, European
market brush aside Triple A loss as France and Spain are paying less regarding their national debt
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and the Paris Bourse gained 1.96 % supported by the banks and has raised more than 5% since the
S&P downgrade.
On the 21th January and 22nd of January, Croatia come to authorize by referendum the Treaty of
Accession to the European Union as the country is about to enter European Union in a crisis
environment. This decision is now followed by second thoughts and nationalist questions.
The following day, on the 23rd of January the Finish elections are on top of news’ releases.
However, the economic news of that day are about France and one of the elections’ candidates who
wants to reform the banking sector, renegotiate the European fiscal Union project and make a new
agreement with Germany. Finally, comparable to financial news is the announcement of Italian
government to liberalize certain employment sectors, promoting the youth employment.
On the 24th of January, European Union decided to cut back on Iranian oil and sanctions against the
Iranian Central Bank with the aim to force Tehran to freeze its nuclear Program. It is obvious that
this decision, like every particular decision of European Union in this time of crisis can lead to
crucial changes of financial situation in global markets. Moreover, Turkish government in Ankara
has warned the French government with economic retaliation because of French approval of
National Assembly bill outlawing denial of Armenian genocide by Ottoman Empire in 1915-16.
The most important release of that day was the announcement of International Labor Organization
that the global unemployment is estimated to reach the 209 million in 2013. The published report of
the organization puts the blame on the Leaders of Europe of plunging the world into recession by
imposing austerity measures balance public finance. This breakdown in growth and jobs leads to
political mobilization. Finally, IMF appears to call for change in Economic policy in Europe, as
IMF chief has criticized European budget mitigations and she is calling for more funds to be
available to European countries, a suggestion that Germany refuses.
On the 25th of January, euro-zone is again on the center of news as IMF has diminished its global
forecasts for 2012 from 4% to 3.3%, blaming again the expected recession caused by the Eurozone.
Also, Italian financial police declared that approximately 7500 people who declared zero income
must now pay nearly 21 billion euros in taxes, a situation that can cause on the one hand the public
anger but on the other hand can give the impression of “reforming” the financial system to better
confront the forthcoming difficulties.
The 26th of January news releases continue the Europe concern but now the World Bank indicates
that Europe should become more productive if it wants to remain “lifestyle superpower”. Moreover,
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regarding the Irish economy, it is announced that private investors have bought 3.5 billion of Irish
government bonds at rate of 5.2%. It is worth mentioned that the last Irish bond sale occurred in
September 2010 just before the European Union IMF bailout. What is more, top economists seem to
warn Europe about its closed borders. Interviewed by the Danish newspaper, the economists argue
that in order to cope with an aging population and global competition the European labor market
should be opened to skilled immigrants. This announcement created a hope for the future of Europe.
However, this information can be counter-argued with the increase of unemployment.
On the 27th of January, the issue of youth employment is enlightened again as France and Germany
are intending to present to the European Council on the 30 of January a recovery plan providing
vocational training and an employment agency for Europe. What is more, the Greek crisis is
presented as far from over. European commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs indicate
that greater safeguards.
Finally, the news released after the weekend of 28 to 29 of January on the 30th of January, continue
with the crucial persistence of economic crisis. More precisely, Germany’s president pushes Greece
to the barricades. At the European Summit of 30 January, Berlin seeks to place Athens under fiscal
tutelage of the European commission, a proposal which was not well received in Greece.
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List of journal resources:
LES ECHOS, PARIS
LA CROIX PARIS
LE MONDE, PARIS
LIBÉRATION, PARIS
DIE PRESSE, VIENNA
FRANKFURTER RUNDSCHAU, FRANKFURT
JORNAL DE NOTÍCIAS, PORTO
MILLIYET, ISTANBUL
LA VANGUARDIA, BARCELONA
LE TEMPS, GENEVA
BØRSEN, COPENHAGUE
CORRIERE DELLA SERA, MILAN
DAILY EXPRESS, LONDON
LA VANGUARDIA, BARCELONA
LA VOIX DU LUXEMBOURG, Luxembourg
SVENSKA DAGBLADET, STOCKHOLM
HANDELSBLATT, DÜSSELDORF
TO ETHNOS, ATHENS
THE IRISH TIMES, DUBLIN
TROUW, AMSTERDAM
PÚBLICO, MADRID
NÉPSZABADSÁG, BUDAPEST
POLITIKEN, COPENHAGEN
LA REPUBBLICA, ROME
DIE WELT, BERLIN
THE INDEPENDENT, LONDON
LA STAMPA, TURIN
ADEVĂRUL, BUCHAREST
VEČERNJI LIST, ZAGREB
FINANCIAL TIMES
DEUTSCHLAND, HAMBURG
NRC HANDELSBLAD, ROTTERDAM3
LAPIN KANSA, ROVANIEMI
Some examples of the news releases on European newspapers are presented below:
On the Financial Times of London,
“In the wake of the collective downgrading of 9
eurozone countries, including France, it’s become
clear that the EU’s policy of rescue funds coupled
with fiscal austerity has exhausted itself. It’s time for
Angela Merkel and her partners to find a credible
outcome, writes Wolfgang Münchau.”
3 http://www.presseurop.eu/en
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On the ABC of Madrid,
“Two more years of recession for Spain:
The IMF forecasts that the Spanish economy will contract by 1.7% in
2012 and 0.3% in 2013.”
On the Jornal de Noticias of Porto,
“Black market is worth 19 years of unemployment benefits:
According to estimates, the black economy cost the Portuguese state
€40 billion in 2011. A situation that could worsen with austerity and
tax hikes.”
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Appendix C:
Date frequencies:
Frequency
Valid
15-jan-2012
16-jαν-2012
17-jαν-2012
18-jαν-2012
19-jαν-2012
20-jαν-2012
21-jαν-2012
22-jαν-2012
23-jαν-2012
24-jαν-2012
25-jαν-2012
26-jαν-2012
27-jαν-2012
28-jαν-2012
Total
2822
2877
2275
2513
2216
3333
2612
3169
3569
2420
2939
2326
3425
2697
39193
Percent
Valid Percent
7,2
7,3
5,8
6,4
5,7
8,5
6,7
8,1
9,1
6,2
7,5
5,9
8,7
6,9
100,0
Country frequencies:
Valid
DE
ES
FR
PT
UK
Total
Frequency
Percent
2939
5819
3332
24083
3020
39193
7,5
14,8
8,5
61,4
7,7
100,0
Chrysoula Safra -356653
Valid
Percent
7,5
14,8
8,5
61,4
7,7
100,0
Cumulative
Percent
7,5
22,3
30,8
92,3
100,0
7,2
7,3
5,8
6,4
5,7
8,5
6,7
8,1
9,1
6,2
7,5
5,9
8,7
6,9
100,0
Cumulative
Percent
7,2
14,5
20,3
26,8
32,4
40,9
47,6
55,7
64,8
70,9
78,4
84,4
93,1
100,0
Master thesis
Part of the day frequencies:
Valid
afternoon
morning
night
Total
Frequency
Percent
14467
16618
7403
38488
37,6
43,2
19,2
100,0
Valid
Percent
37,6
43,2
19,2
100,0
Cumulative
Percent
37,6
80,8
100,0
Shopping behavior frequencies:
Valid
HE
NO
UT
Total
Frequency
Percent
4020
29971
5202
39193
10,3
76,5
13,3
100,0
Valid
Percent
10,3
76,5
13,3
100,0
Cumulative
Percent
10,3
86,7
100,0
Valid
Percent
57,0
38,0
5,0
100,0
Cumulative
Percent
57,0
95,0
100,0
Number of visited stores frequencies:
Valid
0
1
4
Total
Frequency
Percent
21930
14624
1934
38488
57,0
38,0
5,0
100,0
Chrysoula Safra -356653
Master thesis
Multinomial Regression analysis:
Shopping behavior purchase model
Case Processing Summary
N
SPNEGNEWSit
HE
NO
UT
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
4020
29971
5202
22254
16939
24436
14757
36554
2639
15110
24083
33374
5819
36918
2275
34041
5152
35860
Marginal
Percentage
10,3%
76,5%
13,3%
56,8%
43,2%
62,3%
37,7%
93,3%
6,7%
38,6%
61,4%
85,2%
14,8%
94,2%
5,8%
86,9%
13,1%
91,5%
SPNEGNEWSit-1
1
0
3333
36977
8,5%
94,3%
INT_SP_SPNEGNEWSt
1
,00
2216
38720
5,7%
98,8%
INT_SP_SPNEGNEWSt-1
1,00
,00
473
38855
1,2%
99,1%
INT_PT_PTNEGNEWSt
1,00
,00
338
37716
,9%
96,2%
1,00
1477
3,8%
Shopping behavior
MORNINGit
AFTERNOONit
BROWSINGi
PTi
SPi
PTNEGNEWSit
PTNEGNEWSit-1
Chrysoula Safra -356653
Master thesis
INT_PT_PTNEGNEWSt-1
,00
36065
92,0%
FRNEGNEWSit
1,00
0
3128
36316
8,0%
92,7%
FRNEGNEWSit-1
1
0
2877
36371
7,3%
92,8%
1
2822
39193
7,2%
100,0%
Valid
Missing
0
Total
39193
108a
Subpopulation
a. The dependent variable has only one value observed in 2 (1,9%)
subpopulations.
Model
Intercept
Only
Final
Pearson
Deviance
Model Fitting Information
Model Fitting
Likelihood Ratio Tests
Criteria
-2 Log
Chidf
Sig.
Likelihood
Square
1,497E3
1,019E3 478,673
Goodness-of-Fit
Chi-Square
Df
172,206
186
187,344
186
Pseudo R-Square
Cox and Snell
,012
Nagelkerke
,016
McFadden
,009
Chrysoula Safra -356653
Sig.
,758
,459
28
,000
Master thesis
Effect
Intercept
Likelihood Ratio Tests
Model Fitting
Likelihood Ratio Tests
Criteria
-2 Log
Chi-Square
df
Sig.
Likelihood of
Reduced Model
1,019E3
,000
0 .
MORNINGit
1,027E3
8,225
2
,016
AFTERNOONit
1,021E3
2,466
2
,291
BROWSINGi
1,458E3
439,254
2
,000
PTi
1,020E3
1,343
2
,511
SPi
1,023E3
4,221
2
,121
PTNEGNEWSit
1,019E3
,000
0 .
PTNEGNEWSit-1
1,019E3
,000
0 .
SPNEGNEWSit
1,020E3
1,057
2
,589
SPNEGNEWSit1
INT_SP_SPNEGNEWSt
1,020E3
1,019E3
1,184
,320
2
2
,553
,852
INT_SP_SPNEGNEWSt1
1,023E3
4,489
2
,106
INT_PT_PTNEGNEWSt
1,019E3
,207
2
,902
INT_PT_PTNEGNEWSt1
1,020E3
1,043
2
,594
FRNEGNEWSit
1,019E3
,000
FRNEGNEWSit-1
1,021E3
1,782
Chrysoula Safra -356653
0 .
2
,410
Master thesis
Shopping behavior
HE
Intercept
Parameter Estimates
Std.
Wald
df
Error
B
-1,374
,288
22,73
7
Sig.
1
Exp(B)
95% Confidence
Interval for Exp(B)
Lower
Upper
Bound
Bound
,000
[MORNINGit=0]
[MORNINGit=1]
,026
,046
,330
0b .
.
1
,566
1,027
0 .
.
.
,938
[AFTERNOONit=0]
[AFTERNOONit=1]
,060
,047 1,599
b
0 .
.
1
,206
1,062
0 .
.
.
,968
1
,376
[BROWSING=0]
-,877
[BROWSING=1]
[PTi=0]
[PTi=1]
[SPi=0]
[SPi=1]
[PTNEGNEWSit=0]
[PTNEGNEWSit=1]
[PTNEGNEWSit-1=0]
[PTNEGNEWSit-1=1]
[SPNEGNEWSit=0]
[SPNEGNEWSit=1]
[SPNEGNEWSit-1=0]
[SPNEGNEWSit-1=1]
[INT_SP_SPNEGNEWS
t=,00]
[INT_SP_SPNEGNEWS
t=1,00]
0b
,006
0b
-,014
0b
,129
0b
-,190
0b
-,037
0b
,020
0b
,004
[INT_SP_SPNEGNEWS
t1=,00]
[INT_SP_SPNEGNEWS
t1=1,00]
[INT_PT_PTNEGNEWS
t=,00]
[INT_PT_PTNEGNEWS
t=1,00]
,096
[INT_PT_PTNEGNEWS
t1=,00]
[INT_PT_PTNEGNEWS
Chrysoula Safra -356653
,051
.
295,5
48
.
,043
.
,020
.
,059
.
,054
.
,147
.
,776
.
,094
.
4,076
.
,066
.
,316
.
,082
.
.
,172
0b .
,216
0b .
,197
,187
.
.
,889
.
1,006
,816
.
.
.
.
.
1
1
1
0 .
1,406
.
1,680
.
,638
.
1,087
.
.
.
.
1,197
,721
,922
,502
.
.
.
1,097
,716
1,100
,663
.
.
.
,994
,869
1,004
,657
.
.
.
1,518
,847
1,020
,984
.
.
.
1,107
,687
,964
,808
.
.
.
1,095
,853
,827
,574
.
.
.
,460
,879
1,138
,044
.
.
.
1,165
,924
,986
,378
.
.
.
0 .
,451
,416
.
0 .
,190
,125
.
0 .
.
0b .
,084
,000
.
0b .
-,082
,059
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
1
,000
1,124
1,330
.
,852
.
1,388
.
Master thesis
t1=1,00]
[FRNEGNEWSit=0]
[FRNEGNEWSit=1]
[FRNEGNEWSit-1=0]
[FRNEGNEWSit-1=1]
UT
Intercept
0b .
0b .
.
.
0 .
0 .
,080
,068 1,364
b
0 .
.
-2,256
,249
81,88
2
.
.
.
.
1
,243
1,083
0 .
.
.
1
.
.
,947
.
,000
[MORNINGit=0]
[MORNINGit=1]
,118
,041 8,260
b
0 .
.
1
1,125
,004
0 .
.
.
1,038
[AFTERNOONit=0]
[AFTERNOONit=1]
,045
,042 1,193
b
0 .
.
1
,275
1,046
0 .
.
.
,965
[BROWSINGi=0]
,865
1
[BROWSINGi=1]
,087
0b .
98,34
0
.
,044
0b
,106
0b
-,171
0b
,025
0b
[SPNEGNEWSit=0]
[SPNEGNEWSit=1]
[SPNEGNEWSit-1=0]
[SPNEGNEWSit-1=1]
[INT_SP_SPNEGNEWS
t=,00]
-,054
,058
,867
0b .
.
-,072
,070 1,056
b
0 .
.
-,086
,153
,315
[INT_SP_SPNEGNEWS
t=1,00]
[INT_SP_SPNEGNEWS
t1=,00]
[INT_SP_SPNEGNEWS
t1=1,00]
[INT_PT_PTNEGNEWS
t=,00]
[INT_PT_PTNEGNEWS
t=1,00]
[INT_PT_PTNEGNEWS
t1=,00]
[INT_PT_PTNEGNEWS
t1=1,00]
Chrysoula Safra -356653
,038
.
1,348
.
,053
.
3,948
.
,133
.
1,657
.
,091
.
.
0b .
-,337
.
,166
0b .
,012
0b .
4,132
,172
.
.
.
.
.
1
1
1
0 .
,947
,945
,931
1,062
.
,812
,918
1,067
.
,681
.
1,238
.
,516
.
,988
.
,722
.
1,109
.
.
.
.
1,225
,845
1,012
,394
.
.
.
1,094
,857
,714
,042
.
.
.
1,234
,650
1,025
1
,352
0 .
.
1
,304
0 .
.
1
,575
.
.
.
1,126
1,001
,843
,787
.
.
.
2,817
,970
1,112
,198
.
.
.
1,135
2,002
1,045
,047
1,219
.
.
.
0 .
,726
.
,246
0 .
,005
,121
.
0 .
.
0b .
,103
,073
1
0
1
0
1
0
1
0
2,375
,000
0 .
[PTi=0]
[PTi=1]
[SPi=0]
[SPi=1]
[PTNEGNEWSit=0]
[PTNEGNEWSit=1]
[PTNEGNEWSit-1=0]
[PTNEGNEWS-1=1]
1,238
1,418
.
,874
.
1,406
.
Master thesis
0b .
[FRNEGNEWSit=0]
.
0 .
b
[FRNEGNEWSit=1]
[FRNEGNEWSit-1=0]
0 .
.
,046
,060
,587
b
[FRNEGNEWSit-1=1]
a. The reference category is: NO.
0
.
.
.
.
0 .
.
.
1
,443
1,047
.
0 .
b. This parameter is set to zero because it is redundant.
Observed
Classification
Predicted
HE
NO
UT
HE
NO
UT
Overall
Percentage
Chrysoula Safra -356653
0
0
0
,0%
4020
29971
5202
100,0%
0
0
0
,0%
Percent
Correct
,0%
100,0%
,0%
76,5%
.
.
.
,931
1,177
.