Cognitive fit, retail shopper confusion, and shopping value: Empirical investigation

Shopper confusion represents a mental state often occurring in shopping situations. While extant research focuses on product-related consumer confusion, the current investigation examines store environmental retail shopper confusion. Combining research streams on store environment, environmental psychology, and categorization theory, the authors build a conceptual retail shopper confusion framework. An analysis of expert interviews and open-ended questionnaires distributed to grocery shoppers reveals a classification of retail shopper confusion causes into ambient, design, and social factors, as characterized by the environmental properties variety, novelty, complexity, and conflict. A mediation analysis by means of structural equation modeling confirms the mediating role of retail shopper confusion between cognitive fit with an environment and shopping value. Retail shopper confusion thus explains why shoppers experience low hedonic and utilitarian shopping values in certain shopping situations.