Shopping-Related Attitudes: A Factor and Cluster Analysis of Northern California Shoppers

This paper presents an analysis of general shopping and travel-related attitudes collected from a custom-designed Internet-based survey conducted in the spring of 2006, of randomly selected residents of two communities in Northern California. These and other data collected in the survey will eventually lead to models of shopping mode (channel) choice, intention, and frequency among other analyses. In this early examination of the data (N = 966), exploratory factor analysis is performed to identify the conceptual constructs underlying a group of forty-two general shopping-related attitudinal statements, with which respondents agreed or disagreed on a five-point Likert-type scale. From the nineteen potential constructs identified in the design stage, thirteen dimensions emerged empirically: shopping and store enjoyment, price and time consciousness, impulse buying, materialism, trust, caution, trendsetting, and opinions with respect to credit card usage, technology, exercise, and the environment. Cluster analysis is then conducted to identify seven market segments having different attitudinal profiles: store shopaholics (15%), bichannel shopaholics (14%), time-starved worriers (16%), nonmaterialistic greens (16%), unwired antishoppers (14%), practical and leisure-oriented (13%), and technoconservatives (11%). These segments differ significantly, in logical ways, on a number of sociodemographic and other characteristics, including shopping channel choices. Thus, more detailed investigations of choice behavior using these market segments should prove fruitful.