Examining shopping enjoyment: personal factors, word of mouth and moderating effects of demographics

Shopping enjoyment represents an important research concept within the consumer behaviour and marketing communication field. The purpose of this research is to explore direct influences of personal factors (attitudes toward the advertising, the need for individuality/uniqueness, price sensitivity) on shopping enjoyment, its impact on the word of mouth communication (WOM) and the moderating effects of demographic variables (gender and education) on these relationships. The research was conducted on the representative sample of 1000 Croatian respondents. The variety of statistical techniques, including SEM, was employed for data analysis. The results show that personal factors positively influence shopping enjoyment, which is positively related to WOM communication. Furthermore, the results confirm the moderating effects of gender and education on the relationship between the shopping enjoyment and WOM. These research findings contribute to the scientific knowledge enrichment and offer some practical marketing implications. Namely, the marketing experts can better understand the consumer’s factors impacting shopping enjoyment, which can enable them to adequately assess the necessary appeals and to create an effective and persuasive marketing communication. At the end, the paper addresses the research limitations and offers some future research directions.