Determinants of Shopping Experience for Mall Shoppers: Empirical Investigation in an Emerging City of Raipur (India)

Shopping malls have become key players in the Indian retailspace. Even in upcoming Indian towns, malls have beenmushrooming. Raipur, the capital city of the Indian stateof Chhattisgarh has witnessed the growth over the last fewyears. However, this unplanned growth of malls in citiesis expected to lead to oversupply of mall space in the nearfuture, making things difficult for mall developers. The studyis an attempt to identify appropriate strategies for malldevelopers to iron out such kinks. This paper presents ‘shoppingexperience’ as a tool to compete, succeed and exploreits composition in terms of its constituent factors. The paperuses Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) on a non-probabilitysample of 350 respondents. It condenses a set of twentytwomall variables into five factors that directly influencethe shopping experience. These factors included ambience,infrastructure, marketing focus, convenience and safety andsecurity. In terms of significance, shoppers assigned differentweightage to each of these factors. The study shed light oninteresting insights regarding the expectations of mall shoppersin the city of Raipur. The results though interesting, maybe extended to different social, economic and geographic contexts to check the universality. While strategizing, malldevelopers must assign proportionate effort on the factorsbased on the respective contribution to shopping experience. In light of intensifying competition in Raipur, the study issignificant for future prospects of malls. In the absence of ascientific and objective basis, the developers run risk of makingwrong investment and management decisions. This paperis a useful addition to the body of knowledge on managementof shopping malls in India and is unique in terms of its focuson mall shoppers in the smaller Indian cities like Raipur.