THE IMPACT OF SITUATIONAL FACTORS ON PURCHASING OUTCOMES IN THE CROATIAN HYPERMARKET RETAILER

This paper applies Belk’s taxonomy (1975) to examine the impact of situational factors on shoppers’ purchasing outcomes in the Croatian hypermarket setting. It explores how store environment, social surroundings, temporal perspective, shopping task and antecedent situational dimensions infl uence the amount of money spent and number of items purchased. The model itself was tested with data collected from a consumer survey, carried out in the Croatian hypermarket setting. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, including one-way analysis of variance. Research results indicate that social surroundings, high perceived density and large-scale shopping were factors that signifi cantly contribute to higher level of purchasing outcomes. The longer a shopper stays inside the store, the more she or he spent. Shopping outcomes were shown to be the highest on Saturday and for shoppers who patronized one or two stores as compared to other days and other shopper types respectively. Contrary to expectations, no statistically signifi cant difference in purchasing outcomes was found across shopper types grouped by store atmospheric responses, travel time to store and time of the day shopping. By using this model, retailers may better predict the consumer response to situational factors, and thus can design a store strategy that will encourage particular pattern of shoppers’ behaviour.