A Motivation Based Shopper Typology for Short Term Retail Events

The study focuses on the analysis of a short term retail event. Its success is similar to Black Friday, but differs in underlying consumer motivations. Using a mixed methodology, phenomenological interviews provided in-depth understanding of the participants’ lived experiences followed by an online survey with a sample size of 761 respondents. Exploratory factor analyses has been used to differentiate three distinctive groups with hierarchical cluster analysis. By adopting the ANOVA method, clusters and hypothesis were further analysed. This study is the first to employ quantitative study for a shopper taxonomy of such an event. Our results contribute valuable insights into retail shopping orientation and shopper taxonomic scheme literatures. The finding that a short term retail event’s shoppers form distinct groups of consumers indicates a new way of customers embracing retail events. Our research has identified three distinct shopper clusters based on the different weight of task and social orientations: Loyalists, Enthusiasts, Newbies. Each group applies different strategies to satisfy personal goals. The present shopper taxonomy offers new strategic ways to increase retail performance by targeting the most valuable customers.