Hedonic Shopping Motivations and Compulsive Buying in Developed and Emerging Markets

This paper investigates the relationship between hedonic shopping motivations and compulsive buying in developed and emerging countries using a study with 520 female shopping mall visitors in four countries representing two developed (Netherlands and Germany) and two emerging (Turkey and Russia) markets. Our results indicate that hedonic shopping motivations are related to compulsive buying. However, different hedonic motivations contribute to the development of compulsive buying in emerging and developed countries. In developed markets gratification seeking, idea shopping, and role play were the key hedonic motivations contributing to compulsive buying. In emerging markets, however, neither gratification seeking nor idea shopping were related to compulsive buying. Instead, in such countries the main motivation is found to be adventure seeking. Moreover, interestingly, role play has a negative effect on compulsive buying, which is the opposite of what we found in developed countries.