The effect of motivational orientation over arousal-shopping response relationship

•The paper's contribution is by identifying the theory that the motivational orientation moderator role might also exist in other non-researched associations, and by enlarging extant theory on the Mehrabian and Russell (1974) framework.•We provided evidence that arousal had an multiplicative effect with motivational state, which influences the shopping response.•We provided more evidence that arousal plays an interactive role in motivational state, which influences the shopping response.•It means that in the moderate arousal environment, consumers presented higher scores on shopping response variables, as expected.

This paper enlarges extant theory on environmental retail by providing evidence that motivational orientation moderates the relationship between arousal and response. Our conceptual model focuses on the phenomenon of motivational orientation as moderator on the relationship between arousal and shopping intention. We extend Kaltcheva and Weitz model, since their focus was on the association between arousal and pleasure. We measured shopping behavior, as consequence variable in the framework, in six different formats (e.g. satisfaction, loyalty, money $, minutes, products). We did four studies in a 2×3 design with motivational orientation (hedonic vs. utilitarian) and arousal (high vs. moderate vs. low levels). After the procedures, the questionnaire listed the scales. The four studies did provide enough evidence that motivational orientation moderates the relationships proposed by Mehrabian and Russell's theoretical framework and those ones proposed by our model.