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Much to their general annoyance, I frequently find myself using my friends, family, acquaintances and colleagues as sounding boards for impartial and unbiased opinions on our retail industry.
Some of them travel throughout the region and so they visit, shop and spend time at various malls, whilst others have more social shopping habits. However, they all purchase and consequently have valid opinions about their experiences.
Being surrounded by industry retail staff and clients most of the time, I see this other, more social group of people as a useful way to garner useful insights from a more 'normal' perspective. I like to think of it as my own, albeit collective man-on-the-street opinion, and if we look at it from a more professional standpoint, it offers me the ability to stage some small informal focus group discussions.
Recently, I tried to harvest some opinion about mall visits; and the motives behind them, with the basic conversation guidelines being something akin to why, when and where. Visit motives are an inherently tricky area of consumer behaviour, as it often involves our subconscious, which drives our motive over and above the reason that we really think took us to the mall. The subconscious habits of consumer social behaviour are a complex topic, however, and so it proved with my friends.
Common factor
Interestingly, although there are some very different categories within this group (age, work sector, income etc), they were unanimous in their thinking behind their shopping habits, and consequently their opinions about their motives - all of them, apparently were very much driven by convenience.
Some of them travel extensively, and as a result there was a percentage that particularly liked the retail spaces that are now so prominent throughout the regions' airports. They said the airports provide them with options to buy everything they need to maintain their sanity while travelling, and thus they were convenience-driven as they were normally time-constrained by flight timings.
Others stated that they frequently visit the mall that is closest to where they work, as it offers a simple solution not only for lunch and/or dinner options, but also more recently for leisure options such as using the gym; so once again they were very much of the opinion that they were convenience-driven shoppers. Lastly, others said that as mall visits were always associated with getting in the car, they would always try and avoid any potential traffic so they would go to whichever mall was the easiest to get to and therefore by proxy, were also convenience shoppers.
I had to disagree. To me, there seemed to be an underlying trend that was being ignored, which is that all of them were being dictated by their lifestyle choices and not through convenience. In my opinion therefore, although this group was attempting to use convenience as a visit motive, the fact is that convenience is actually a by-product of why they were at the mall, and not the real reason behind their desire. Ultimately then, it seems that as shoppers we are often motivated not by what we think, but by underlying lifestyle constraints that act as motivational guidance to our purchasing patterns.
- The writer is Head of GRMC Retail Services, Dubai.
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