Personal vs. Social Shopping Motives: A Case of Hypermarkets

This study aims to understand local customers’ shopping motives toward retail formats specifically the hypermarkets. Among many retail formats, hypermarket is one of the fastest growing formats in Malaysia. Hypermarkets recently, have been seen as more attractive, offer more verity of products and services as before. It is therefore, important for the management to understand local customers’ shopping motives toward hypermarket as prior studies on shopping motives, however, focused solely on Western shopping motives. This study provides an exploratory examination of Malaysia hypermarket shoppers’ shopping motives. A total of 450 questionnaires were administered to female hypermarkets shoppers using store-intercept survey method. Factor analysis identified three shoppers for patronizing hypermarkets namely apathetic shoppers, recreational shoppers and economic shoppers. The groups significantly differ in their appraisals of what motivate them shopped at the hypermarkets. Managerial implications are discussed based on findings.