The shopping experience of female fashion leaders

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore how the shopping mall environment impacts on hedonic and utilitarian shopping experiences, and approach behaviour of fashion leaders and followers.Design/methodology/approachFashion shoppers' response and behaviour has been modelled in an invariant multigroup latent structural path analysis. Paths were initially constrained and then released as required. More than 300 usable questionnaires were acquired from a mall intercept in a regional urban middleclass shopping centre. Participants were probed on their attitude about fashion, perception of the shopping mall, present mood, shopping value and approach behaviour toward the mall.FindingsThe mall environment directly influences fashion leaders' hedonic shopping experience and approach behaviour. Fashion followers' hedonic shopping experience may be mood driven, while that of fashion leaders' is triggered by higher involvement cognitive processing.Research limitations/implicationsThis study was carried out in one fashion‐oriented urban mall in Montreal, and should be replicated to other locations and markets. A larger sample would allow the inclusion of additional constructs.Practical implicationsMall owners and developers might appeal to fashion leaders through offering services that will speed up their shopping trip, using high‐tech methods to convey fashion information and by branding the mall. Fashion followers and laggards are likely to respond to experience‐oriented strategies that make their shopping trip more pleasurable.Originality/valueAlthough fashion consumer groups have been studied from various perspectives, no research was found that investigates the integrated shopping experience of fashion shoppers in a shopping mall setting. This study fills the void.