Understanding the Shopping Experience and Its Implications for Malls as Marketing Media: Attracting and Retaining Customers through Fashion, Service, and Improved Food Options

A satisfying shopping experience is critical to a mall's ability to draw crowds and to its effectiveness as a marketing medium. The authors devised a scale to measure mall-shopping experience. They conducted interviews to collect consumers' accounts of experiences in malls, then developed an initial list of scale items. The final scale, based on the data collected from a random consumer sample, includes 22 items with eight dimensions: escapism, browsing, socialization, activity, shopping for fashion products, uniqueness, service, and aesthetics. The authors established reliability and validity of the scale and found support for the effects of shopping experience on mall patronage.