Erasmus University RotterdamErasmus School of EconomicsMSc Economics and BusinessSpecialization Marketing

Master Thesis

The effect of negative economic news on shopping behavior, regarding hedonic and utilitarian purchases.

Author Chrysoula SafraStudent number 356653Supervisor Nuno M. Almeida Camacho

Executive summary:

The current financial crisis needs to be carefully approached from marketers and retailers as it

appears to become more intense in the future due to several international malfunctions.

People’s choices are also determined through personal shopping goals and motives which are

derived from the value obtained from the purchases relatively to each customer’s perceptions.

Thus, purchase incidence can have twofold value according to individual attitudes. In most

cases, hedonic value is perceived as a reward purchase and utilitarian value as a “task to be

done”. Both values stem from psychological conditions of customers striving for satisfaction

of social motives and more precisely for information acquisition and recreation.

Contribution:

Motivated from this difficult situation, I will try to capture consumer behavior dynamics in the

framework of unwelcome news releases which appear to reform people’s expectation about

the future dramatically. Therefore I introduce two contrasted approaches that marketers should

take into consideration in order to effectively deal with pervasiveness and suspiciousness. By

studying the interactions between negative news and actual purchases the actual problem is

observed. This study can be proven as a signal light for retailers and marketers but also for

marketing in general as the new economy situation has brought a new self well-being and

shopping spending standards that cannot be disregarded. I hope that this research will be the

trigger for further studies that will deepen more in the minds of consumers. But, rather than

simply looking at the shopping paths of consumers, my thesis differs from previous work in

this area by explaining the reason about all the influences that are related with the final choice

of the specific shopping path.

Theoretical roots:

Throughout my study, I focus on two contrasted approaches of consumer behavior regarding

responses to negative economic news. The “responsible-conservative spending” argument

suggests that gloomy news reduce the probability of spending. The reason of such reduction is

that consumers avoid purchases for personal satisfaction. They either search for the most

advantageous offer which will cost them less money to satisfy their basic needs without

sacrificing quality or they cancel their purchases at all. The “retail therapy” argument suggests

that negative news increase the probability for hedonic shopping because people use shopping

in order to alleviate these unpleasant feelings. On their effort to escape from these incidents,

they purchase to compensate for disappointments or to rehabilitate these feelings.

Methodology and Data:

According to these two opposing theories, I formed my hypotheses about purchases in order to

examine the effects of gloomy news releases. Furthermore, I used as data the paths that were

collected via the wireless network connection existing in the airport. More precisely, the usage

of BIPS technology which was implemented allowed the tracking of customers’ shopping

paths via the GSM signal transmitted from their mobile phone. In order to examine the

diversity of choices of passengers among three different shopping decisions, I implemented

the multinomial logistic regression model in order to draw conclusions among the hedonic and

utilitarian preference of passengers’ purchases.

Results and conclusions:

In general, during the examined period of two weeks, 15-28 January of 2012, passengers

tended to avoid purchases, either hedonic or utilitarian. Moreover, passengers were not that

likely to make purchases while being under pressure as it is presented from the avoidance of

utilitarian purchases during morning hours which are perceived as “busy” hours. According to

the analysis’ results as well, utilitarian purchases have greater probability to happen through

constrained situations not only for goal oriented passengers but for browsers as well.

Passengers from financial unstable countries tend to present differential results as the negative

economic news announced for Portuguese economy the previous day of shopping activity

appear to increase the probabilities for hedonic purchases while Spanish people are less likely

to make utilitarian purchases in general, but significantly more likely to make an utilitarian

purchase in the day after negative economic news.

Finally, I can confirm through my analysis that people, throughout constrained financial

situations, tend to spend responsibly their money purchasing only utilitarian products and only

when it is needed. The role of retail therapy in this case is restricted. Negative economic

announcements can cause several implications to the psychology of consumers and this is

presented in this analysis through the restriction of shopping activity or even traveling that

caused the shopping restriction. This new restricted model of consumer that is drawn from this

analysis is also presented in the following table of main results of the analysis.

Table 1-Main results of the analysis

Probability of hedonic or utilitarian purchase

(responsible spending argument)

Probability of hedonic purchase

(retail therapy argument)

Managerial implications:

Based on the results of my analysis, the conservative spending argument dominates in

difficult, constrained financial times while retail therapy plays also its role but it is mostly

manipulated from financial uncertainty. This incident on itself raises a considerable challenge

for marketers and marketing in general as we need to listen to consumer’s psychology and

invest more in consumer behavior. Hedonic needs and luxury are set aside when uncertainty

for the future occurs and this is when the most difficult task for marketers begins, to make

consumer feel confident and shop. Through this more humanitarian approach, marketers can

convince people even during crises. However, in order to have more generalized results,

limitations of this study regarding the pressure of time (airport environment) and limited

observation period (two weeks), need to be overcome. Finally, as nowadays the average

consumer is very well informed about the market and the available products, he/she needs to

understand that he/she is treated with dignity in order to purchase after a deep market research.

Concluding, it is easily assumed that this situation requires an alternative way of approach

which needs to be well communicated through more creative consumer channels.

Acknowledgements:

I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Nuno M. Almeida Camacho for his

patience, persistence and guidance during the thesis procedure. I would like also to express

my gratitude to my friends and my thesis colleagues, who helped me a lot through sharing

relevant knowledge on the thesis topic. Especially, I would like to thank my friend Allina who

essentially helped me with her expert knowledge about econometrics. I would like also

especially to thank my thesis colleague Kevin with whom I exchanged several valuable and

encouraging comments throughout the thesis procedure. Also, my dear friend John was always

giving me an alternative point of view about my thesis topic, which was proved really helpful.

Finally I would like to especially thank my roommate and colleague in my master studies Fay

for her support and her comments regarding my work. Finally, I special thank my parents for

supporting me throughout all my studies at Erasmus University and the great understanding

they showed throughout my writing procedure.

Table of contentsAcknowledgements:............................................................................................................................5

Chapter I: Introduction......................................................................................................................8

Chapter II: Theory and Hypotheses................................................................................................12

The Psychology of Shopping: Consumers’ Purchase Value, Shopping Goals and Motives.......12

Purchase Value..................................................................................................................................12

Shopping Motives and Goals:...........................................................................................................14Conservative spending argument....................................................................................................................16

Retail therapy argument..................................................................................................................................17

The effect of news on consumer behavior:......................................................................................19

Generation of Hypotheses:...............................................................................................................22

Chapter III: Methodology of Research...........................................................................................24

Shopping Path Analysis and Marketing Science............................................................................24

Empirical Setting...............................................................................................................................26

Data collection...................................................................................................................................26

Measurement:....................................................................................................................................30

Econometric Model...........................................................................................................................33

Descriptive statistics..........................................................................................................................35

Chapter IV: Analysis and Results....................................................................................................39

Chapter V: Conclusion.....................................................................................................................48

Main findings.....................................................................................................................................48

Managerial implications...................................................................................................................49

Limitations and future research......................................................................................................51

References..........................................................................................................................................53

Appendix A........................................................................................................................................57

Appendix B.........................................................................................................................................64

Appendix C........................................................................................................................................64

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List of figures

Figure 1 Focus of thesis, addressing consumers’ purchases

Figure 2 Conceptual framework for empirical research structure

Figure 3 Density map

Figure 4 Number of visited stores

Figure 5 Shopping activity based on date

Figure 6 Shopping activity based on the time of observation

Figure 7 Purchases in D store

Figure 8 Travel stress curve

List of tables

Table 1- Main results of the analysis

Table 2- List of the most important literature

Table 3– Main negative economic news

Table 4 – Overview of implemented variables

Table 5 - Shopping behavior based on purchase incidence

Table 6 – Shopping behavior Model Fitting Information

Table 7-“Goodness of fit” information

Table 8- Likelihood ratio tests

Table 9- Purchase model equations

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Chapter I: IntroductionMacroeconomic cycles are a recurring phenomenon in modern economies (Juglar, 1900). The

Economy does not remain stable; its leading figures, income, unemployment and level of prices

(inflation) fluctuate and change over time passing through two main phases: growth and prosperity;

and recession. Currently, the global economy is facing a financial crisis appeared to become deeper

over the passing years leading to the severe recession level, affecting different countries

asymmetrically.

More accurately and in an attempt to explain this situation, I will demonstrate several factors that

contributed to the contamination of the economy leading to the complex and rigorous system of

today. The interconnection of economies and financial systems in the 80s and 90s, the increased

number of multinational firms and their subsidiaries, the powerful role of the transactional parties

and the liberalization of trade in services and capital flows have created global imbalances (IMF,

2009b). The whole situation would sooner or later cause problems at an international level. This can

lead the modern economy to experience one of the most intense and burning caused crises ever.

Thus, understanding consumer behavior under adverse macroeconomic conditions is essential for

retailers. The consumer sentiment associated with crises can change consumers’ willingness to

spend, an effect that may be stronger for hedonic than for utilitarian products as consumers in

today’s marketplace have shopping values shifted gradually from utilitarian towards hedonic (Babin

et al., 1994; Hartman et al., 2006). Despite this pervasiveness, little research has been done to

understand how crises affect consumers’ purchase decisions. This situation, while unfortunate for

the affected countries, creates a fruitful environment in which to study the effect of the economic

crisis on the psychology of the consumer.

The purpose of this study is to depict the different effects that the economic crisis has on consumer

behavior with respect to hedonic versus utilitarian purchases when bad economic news are released.

One stream of literature suggests that financial restrictions make the need for responsible spending

and saving more noticeable. This stream, which I refer to as the “conservative spending” argument,

suggests that gloomy news about the state of the economy reduce the tendency of customers to

spend money while shopping. The reason is that the consumer confidence index is negatively

influenced by consumers’ pessimism about the future economy of their country (Madsen

and McAleer 2000;Kucuk 2005; Filer and Fisher 2007).

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A second stream of literature, however, shows that shopping is often used to control or to ignore

numerous difficulties. I refer to this stream as the “retail therapy” argument, and it suggests that

dark news about the state of the economy would lead to higher incidence of hedonic purchases.

Such compensatory consumption behavior allows consumers to instrumentally using hedonic

shopping as a strategy to alleviate the bad mood that they experience due to unfavorable economic

news (Kang and Johnson, 2011).

In my paper, I will, therefore, study which of these two theoretical arguments - “retail therapy” or

“responsible-conservative spending” – is the best able to capture dynamics in shoppers’ behavior.

In order to determine the best explanation for shoppers’ behavior I analyze to what extent shoppers’

behavior is correlated with negative news released about the economy and their exposure to this

kind of news. The power of the mass media is already known, and it is clearly presented in the

studies of Van Raaj (1989) and Haller and Norpoth (1997). They examined the effect of economic

news in expectation formation, in individual and macro-economic level and the effect of exposure

to economic news in critical times like those of elections of 1980, 1984 and 1988 respectively. As

nowadays is also perceived a difficult time for economy and society in general, these findings can

reasonably adapt to the modern environment. The exposure to news is kind of inevitable today as

information through mass media and worldwide network connections is everywhere presented in

daily lives. In this respect of mass information, I will examine the extent to which exposure to bad

news releases will affect consumers’ expectations for future and their final purchase behavior.

However, exposure to bad news cannot itself completely defend consumers’ choices as people tend

to consider clear and different parameters in order to reach their final choice. Shopping motives,

shopping values, shopping lifestyles but also psychological attitudes and stances towards life are all

encompassed to hedonic and utilitarian value of product consumption. These factors enabled a

plethora of researchers (Maslow 1968; Hirschman and Holbrook, 1982; Bloch and Richins 1983;

Fisher and Arnold 1990; Babin, Darden and Griffin 1994; Bagozzi and Dholakia 1999; and Okada

2005) to approach consumer behavior, but also motivated me to look for thoughtful insights in the

relation of the psychological factor occurred through “bad times” with consumer behavior and

consumer decisions. In the context of my thesis, I will explain the final hedonic or utilitarian

purchases of consumers based on the personally and each time differently interpreted response to

unfavorable news occurrence.

Therefore, I will start my thesis by reviewing the related literature in order to present the two

opposing arguments of conservative spending and retail therapy through the effect of economic

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news, depending on the purchase (hedonic or utilitarian) of the desired product. Although, detailed

literature exists about conservative spending during crisis and the normative way that consumers

respond, there is no evidence indicating the influence in hedonic or utilitarian consumption and how

shoppers react in their attraction of these different types of the product when they are in constrain.

In order to approach this adjustment in the concept of retail therapy as well, I will firstly indicate

the main attributes of these two categories. Based on this literature review, I will further create my

research design. Also, there is little relationship in the existing studies, of the importance of

unwelcome news in economic crises and the final hedonic or utilitarian purchase. Another novelty

of my research is the way examining the consumer behavior through the actual observed paths of

consumers given the opportunity to examine the influences in real time. There are only a few

studies that involve analysis of shopping paths as data device and their intention was not so much

related to consumer behavior. Thus, this study can be prove as a signal light for retailers and

marketers but also for marketing in general as the new economic situation has brought a new self

well-being and new shopping spending standards that cannot be disregarded.

In order to maximize variation in the exposure of consumers to negative news about the economy,

my goal was to compare the behavior of shoppers from different European countries who are

differentially affected by economic news. However, in order to keep the complexity at an

appropriate level, I focus on a dataset collected at the shopping area of a midsized international

airport. Specifically, I review the shopping behavior of passengers-consumers of a medium-sized

airport in Southern Europe, the second busiest in the country aircraft operations and the second

busiest in passengers, according to traffic statistics, serving fifteen different countries (most of

which within Europe) on a standard basis and more than 4 million passengers per year. Thus, my

goal, in this paper is to highlight critical insights on how negative news about the economy – to

which shoppers of different countries are differently exposed - influences the behavior of the

observed passengers. It would be also interesting to see, probably in a future research in which ways

marketers can respond to these differences in terms of marketing communication and price-setting.

Concluding, I will test my hypotheses by analyzing how the probability of purchase in hedonic

versus utilitarian stores changes for shoppers from Portugal and Spain which receive negative

economic news compared with no purchase probability.

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Fig.1: Focus of my thesis addressing consumers’ purchases

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bad economic news releases

type of purchase

spending behavior

Focus of my thesis

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Chapter II: Theory and Hypotheses

In order to investigate how consumers’ negative mood during economic crises affects their

shopping habits, I examine how negative economic news affects their spending behavior and

occurrence of hedonic and utilitarian purchases.

The Psychology of Shopping: Consumers’ Purchase Value, Shopping Goals and Motives

Purchase ValueThere is a strong distinction between hedonic and utilitarian products regarding the functions that

these products serve. Hedonic products can be classified as products that preserve primarily

aesthetic characteristics contributing to consumers’ sensations and emotional stimulation. Utilitarian

products, on the other hand, are mostly related to functional and practical consumers’ goal setting,

and they elaborate in operational procedures (Dhar and Wertenbroch, 2000). Representative

examples of hedonic products are perfumes and cosmetics while newspapers, tobacco or other basic

products represent the utilitarian category. Based on this distinction, product classification is into

hedonic and utilitarian.

However, the distinction between hedonic and utilitarian products has also been extended into the

identification of different consumption and shopping patterns, which can similarly be classified as

hedonic versus utilitarian. Purchases often can provide at the same time hedonic and utilitarian

consumption attributes depending on consumers shopping situation. In fact, hedonic and utilitarian

consumption is weighted depending on customers’ different perceptions (Okada 2005). For this

reason, shopping choices underlie on the values that each product encompasses for different

consumers and the motives that reflect each occurred shopping incidence. According to Levy

(1959) people make purchases not only for the product itself but also regarding the “meaning” of

these purchases to them as individuals and to their social environment. These purchases,

spontaneous or organized can alleviate feelings that can be perceived as shopping “rewards” from

the consumers (Babin, Darden and Griffin 1994) resulted either in hedonic or utilitarian value.

On the one hand, utilitarian value can be described as the outcome of shopping in a “work-task” or

“chore” environment (Hirschman and Holbrook, 1982) and can be clearly depicted from the

Christmas shopping situation when big shopping lists have to be successfully purchased. (Fisher

and Arnold 1990). Utilitarian shopping value can be also observed in shopping procedures of

situational involved customer produced by necessity, where the customer does not purchase for

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him/herself like in cases that mothers make the weekly groceries shopping (Bloch and Richins

1983). Consequently, utilitarian value is related to task completing reward and the potentially

occurred happiness can be associated with this achievement.

On the other hand, hedonic value is more personal, and it creates positive feelings that occur from

the purchases like joyful, fun, satisfaction and self esteem. As a contrastive example to “shopping

chore” of Christmas for some people, I present some people’s feeling during Christmas shopping

who state that they feel like “kids in a candy store” (Fisher and Arnold 1990). However, hedonic

value can be also derived from shopping without making purchases but so alleviating positive

feelings to the actors involved. (Markin, Lillys and Narayana 1976). Finally, hedonic value can also

be achieved via the accomplishment of a “deal” including the bargain idea which alleviates feelings

of excitement (Monroe and Chapman 1987). Therefore, hedonic value as reward indicator is

correlated with hedonic pleasure release for the consumers.

As consumers make purchases in order to fulfill social and experiential needs regardless economic

reasons, shopping choices can be related to the psychology of each customer and his/her personal

attributes. Based on this psychological aspect, consumer behavior can be a multisensory, fantasy or

emotional derivative of product usage experience (Hirschman and Holbrook 1982). Several

researchers (Singer 1966; Maslow 1968; Swanson 1978;) have focused primarily on the imaginary

aspect that hedonic consumption can create. A characteristic example of this fantasy alleviation is

the internal imagery containing insights that the “smell” of a perfume can generate. These

emotional images can be indicated either as historic imagery; the consumer, triggered by the smell

of the perfume, recalls past experiences; or fantasy imagery when the customer is immediately

producing a multisensory situation (Hirschman and Holbrook 1982).

Sometimes, consumers connect to hedonic consumption experiences in that manner that they are

“tied to imaginative constructions of reality” (Singer 1966) pretending that something different than

the existing reality is occurring (Swason 1978). These emotional expectations are the reason why

hedonic motives overtake utilitarian in the choice of products (Maslow 1968). Finally, the

subjective interpretation of such experiences concluding that hedonic consumption is an escapism

from difficult, emotional harmful situations which is almost entirely associated with restricted

financial situations. The involvement to these experiences differs among consumers, as there are

low experiential and high experiential consumers based on their preferred orientation to affective

shopping or action shopping. Through this thesis, I attempt to provide that the satisfaction of the

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psychological and social needs is of paramount importance for consumers, offsetting possible

restrictions occurring from environmental (economical or political) situations.

Shopping Motives and Goals:In order to assess the observed purchases, the motives of purchasing should be also determined.

Shopping motives, according to first Tauber’s (1972) clarification, are mainly concentrated on

personal motives including role playing, diversion, learning about trends, physical activity, self-

gratification and sensory stimulation; social motives including out-home social experiences,

communication with others having similar interests, peer group attraction, status and authority and

finally pleasure of bargaining.

Concentrating to personal motives, role playing motive can be indicated as the typical shopping

activity suiting only to some individual. (i.e. grocery shopping is related to the role of housewife).

Shopping can be also approached as an option of diversion from the daily routine offering

entertainment to the individuals involved. Moreover, there are people who are interested in being

informed for the latest trends in fashion or product innovations. Therefore, people are motivated to

achieve this informational goal. There are also people who choose shopping as a type of exercise, as

it can provide physical activity. Self gratification is also observed when people visit a shop in their

research of diversion or when he or she feels lonely or bored. Finally, every shopping activity is

associated with sensory stimulation as customers enjoy “handling” the merchandise.

Social motives are encompassing interpersonal relations among customers. More precisely, some

shopping trips are possibly resulted in friends’ appointments or accidental people meetings, giving

the enjoyment of social experiences outside the home. Sometimes, stores related to hobbies and

needed goods for that hobbies, are focal points for people with same interests to communicate, to

interact and to exchange opinions making shopping as a motive to acquaint people with relevant

interests. This can also lead to peer-group attraction as some stores’ patronage enables the desire to

be part of an association. Additionally, shopping can give to individuals the advantage of

commanding attention or respect contributing to their status/authority. Finally, some shoppers tend

to enjoy the bargaining as in this way “goods can be reduced” to a more reasonable price.

It is clearly stated that the buying of the product is far from being a sole motive and not at all

economic situations are regarded as motives , but in reality, shopping behavior is stemming out of

the main personality dimensions: agreeableness (compassion and caring for others); openness to

experience (tolerance of new ideas and new ways of doing things); conscientiousness (goal oriented

activities); extroversion/ introversion (preference or not for social interaction) and emotional

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stability/ neuroticism (the ability or not to face in an effective way negative incidents).(Tauber

1972; Oliver 1990; Mooradian 1996; ; Bagozzi and Dholakia 1999; Guido 2006).

Prior researchers have also identified two concrete goals that shoppers accomplish during their store

visits: information acquisition, whereby customers test several stores until they are confident they

have found a suitable price-quality match for their purchases and recreational motives, whereby

customers engage in purchasing of goods in order to achieve pleasure from the purchase process

itself.

It is unambiguous that economic situations can cause changes in consumer behavior, but the goal

for the consumer will always be to satisfy these needs. This goal setting is focused on the outcome

that the consumption goods offer to the customers (Baghozzi and Dholakia 1999). Consumers ask

themselves “questions” regarding the goals they want to achieve through the buying procedures.

These internal inquiries are related to their goal intentions which depict the social needs they need

to meet. These social needs translated into goals can have the type of “stereotype” as the customer

is a part of social unit (Baghozzi and Dholakia 1999), they can also be derived from biological,

moral or emotional forces (Le Doux 1996) , and finally they can arise from internal or external

stimuli. Last but not least, goal setting and further goal striving is interconnected with values and

lifestyles models of the consumers. This correlation is the reason why goal setting for hedonic or

utilitarian shopping is of considerable importance for marketers. According as well to the findings

of Moore and Homer (2000) study of the relationship among lifestyle and temperament, it is

assumed that there is an emerging profile of a consumer- favorable desire for food, perfume

industry and every industry that aims to stimulate desire and conclusively hedonic shopping.

As a conclusion, changes in the economy result in both short- and long-term effects on consumer

behavior. The recent economic downturn has created a “new normal” environment with dramatic

changes in consumer behavior. The main attribute of this new normal situation is the conservatism

as shoppers have cut back on hedonic spending and are now shopping for the best offering at the

best price (Schargrodsky and McKenzie 2005).

Shopping Behavior in Times of Austerity: Theoretical Predictions

In the following section, I will review two theories offering predictions on how consumers’

shopping habits can change as a response to their concerns about the economy of their country of

residence. These two theories offer contradicting predictions, in particular with respect to incidence

of hedonic purchases.

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Conservative spending argumentEmpirical research based on financial crises and the way that people differentiate their shopping

behavior indicates conservative spending as the responsible way of spending or “managing” money.

Shopping is also focusing primarily on needed products and eliminating the purchases products

dedicated to personal gratification or pleasure. Basic attribute of conservative spending is the

“browsing behavior” defined as:

“The examination of a store’s merchandise for recreational or informational purposes

without a current intention to buy” (Bloch and Richins 1983, p.389)

In the context of conservative spending, the motives above presented drive all types of purchase,

reducing the likelihood of purchases in general, but perhaps with particular emphasis on hedonic

purchases. The informational aspect is strongly related to searching for the most advantageous offer

which combines affordable price and good quality and the recreational purpose is referred to the

pleasure that consumers obtain by creating their imaginative reality, their fantasy. In situations like

economic crises, stores should enhance this browsing occurrence and find the optimal way to

transfer browsing into shopping behavior (Bloch and Richins 1983) investing on sensations of the

consumers. Under this light, the general perception of the responsible spending behavior is that

people eliminate their shopping and focus on buying only products that they really need.

According to Schargrodsky and McKenzie (2005) study during a crisis period, people spend more

days shopping but the actual purchased quality is much less. This can be interpreted by the

statement that during financial restrictions people are seeking for the “lucky deal”, leading them to

spend more days seeking for the “most attractive offer”. Another explanation for this increased

shopping frequency is based on the results of the aforementioned study which indicate that as

income decreases the opportunity cost of time decreases as well leading to greater shopping

frequency. This situation is also correlated with the unemployment and the liquidity situation of the

infected economy. In fact, the consumers of this study appeared to have cut back on specialty food,

beauty and cleaning products by 4% allowing us to understand that they eliminate their hedonic

pleasures produced by a “gourmet” restaurant visit, by purchasing best quality cosmetics or

expensive cleaning products.

Another spillover that this complex financial environment creates is the influence of consumers’

confidence towards their own future spending budget and the future of the total economy. The result

of this incident is the decreased willingness to make purchases (S.U. Kucuk 2005; Juster and

Wachtel 1972). As a term, consumer’s confidence encompasses consumer’s ability and willingness

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to make purchases including psychological and economic moderating factors (Van Raaj 1986;

Carroll, Furher and Wilcox 1994) , and it is basically related with future expectations. In general,

when consumers feel optimistic about the economy future of the country where they are typically

activated, they are more vulnerable to impulsive purchases triggered by in-store promotions for

hedonic or utilitarian products (Kucuk 2005). Whereas, pessimistic consumers are less vulnerable to

promotions and “unplanned” purchases following the “conservative spending” shopping.

Additionally, according to a research of value oriented consumer behavior of urban middle class

consumers and how it is affected from economic crisis, it is shown that the quality of the offered

products is the key value for the success of shopping procedure (Speece and Nair 2000). Consumers

prior and post crisis are mainly interested in the quality. During or after the crisis, they may shop

more days than before seeking for the best price deal but they still focus on the quality of the

products they buy.

Retail therapy argumentIn contrast with the responsible spending argument, there are scholars describing retail therapy as

an alternative response to crises situations. This argument suggests that the recreational aspect of

the purchase process becomes more prominent as a healing mechanism for the economic crises

negativity, which would tend to increase the incidence of purchases, especially the hedonic.

According to this stream of literature, during economically challenging times, in order to free

themselves from the difficulties and challenges of their daily lives, consumers may actually turn to

shopping as a form of therapy (Kang and Johnson, 2011). In order to be released from anxiety and

stress created by the gloomy economic and social situation, consumers may actually be more likely

to shop, especially hedonic products. This kind of therapy is the so called “retail therapy” which is

defined as a spectrum of consumption behaviors, including shopping and buying, that individuals

engage in to alleviate their negative moods (Kang and Johnson, 2011).

Researchers have investigated Retail Therapy from two different approaches, but both focusing on

consumer behavior difficult situations.

Compensatory consumption:

One stream of literature categorizes retail therapy into shopping behaviors stemmed by

compensatory consumption (Kang and Johnson, 2011; Woodruffe, 1997; Woodruffe and Burton

1998; and Yurchisin et al., 2008). More precisely, according to compensatory consumption aspect,

retail therapy is viewed as a type of compensatory resource. Based on this perception, consumers

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who feel disappointed tend to go for shopping in order to counterbalance the faced psychological

deficiencies which are possible to occur after financial restrictions which I strive to examine

through this thesis. These psychological deficiencies may have various aspects from unemployment

situations to bad economy news releases and as the results will define, they can have significant

influences to hedonic and utilitarian shopping. Addressing now, the compensatory aspect of retail

therapy, individuals contemplate to rehab for faced psychological experiences by attaching in

behaviors which are not related to their core problems directly. Individuals contemplate to rehab for

faced psychological experiences by attaching in behaviors which are not related to their core

problems directly (Gronmon 1988; Grunert 1993; Woodruffe 1997; and Woodruffe and Burton

1998) the previously described behavior is known as compensatory behavior. With respect to this,

compensatory behavior can be implemented in order to offset or to avoid undesired conditions of

personality or general lack of self esteem , but it can also help to explain behaviors of typical

consumers who are depressed or underprivileged (Woodruffe 1997).

Mood alleviating consumption:

Another stream of literature, approaches retail therapy as a mood-alleviating type of shopping

(Kacen 1998; Kacen and Friece 1999; and Luomala 2002), as a mood regulatory system indicating

that people who experience negative moods tend to go shopping to “rehabilitate” these feelings.

Consumers’ mood can be examined as a variable which intervenes to shopping behavior or as an

object of control (Luomala 1998). Alpert and Alpet’s (1990) define mood as a situational variable

as following:

“a fleeting, temporary feeling state, usually not intensive and not tied into specific behavior”

(p.110).

Finally, consumption to redeem experienced deficiencies in daily life is described as the

phenomenon of “mood-alleviate consumption” consisting of mood related and not exactly mood

related deficit.

For my thesis context I will focus on negative mood experiences occurring from negative economy

news that consumers have experienced before or at the same time of their shopping trip. Based on

this concept, retail therapy is treated as a singularly or set of consumption shopping behaviors based

on consumer’s willingness to manage or overcome his/her negative moods. There are three

dimensions of negative moods, the irritation, the stress and the dejection (Luomala 2002; Watson

and Clark 1992). Focusing to these negative feelings, irritation can be perceived as a mild form of

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anger encompassing annoyance, hostility and frustration caused by various little conflicts (i.e. a

messy room). The feeling of stress can be classified as a derivative of fear, it can also be referred as

anxiety, nervousness and worry caused by work pressure, relocation, adverse human relations and

uncertainty about the future. The last one is that mainly concerned through this thesis as the current

global financial crisis has created uncertainty not only about the individual future but also about the

future of the individual country economies. Finally, the feeling of dejection is associated with

depression, despair and sometimes misery including broken relationships, loneliness criticism and

disappointment stemmed as well of financial uncertainty.

In order to handle these negative moods, people turn to methods to alleviate them or to maintain

their good feelings. Following this perspective, Morris and Reilly (1987) and Morris (1989)

identified four different strategies, regarding the way that individuals regulate their feelings. People

manage their mood; adjust the significance of the problem; problem-directed action and affiliation.

In my thesis framework, mood management is the strategy that perfectly adopts the essence of

“retail therapy”, and it can be further classified to sub-strategies such as self-reward, use of alcohol,

distraction and expressive behavior (Morris 1989). As it can be easily assumed self reward and

distraction sub-strategies can be correlated as they are fitting in several shopping situations. On the

one hand, self reward “promotes” self gratifying and on the other hand, distraction strategy

preserves the right that people try to distract themselves from negative feelings. Shopping itself is

interference activity that most of the times gratify the purchasers.

Following the tendency of people to undertake activities that provide them pleasure, based on

Luomala’s (2002) study I can refer to the therapeutic potential of consumption and more definitely

to eight types of therapeutic power stemming from mood alleviating consumption activities such as

“distraction, self indulgence, stimulated elaboration, concrete outcomes of mood regulatory

activities, recharging, discharging retreat and activation” but those which are mostly related to

consumption are distraction, self-indulgence and activation for the aforementioned reasons.

The effect of news on consumer behavior:Scholarly work on the impact of negative economic news on consumers’ opinions and behavior

dated back to Katona (1975), approaches this issue of news’ impact on consumer’s public opinion

and behavior. After a thorough examination of the paper of Van Raaij (1989) regarding the

economic news and how they affect the future expectations and the macro (economy) and micro

(individual) economic behavior, I became confident that more attention should be given to the news

releases through mass media. Mass media have already proved their power to impose and to distort

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consumer perceptions, opinions and behaviors, but this power is much more salient nowadays with

the presence of internet provided information with complete access to several resources of news

releases. More precisely, according to Van Raaij (1989), the press has the ability to force economic

or commercial failures by publishing reports of adverse development. The power of media is such

great that they are perceived as the fourth estate after legislative, judicial and executive. This is the

reason exactly why there is the possibility of selectivity in exposure and retention through mass

media.

Additionally, Andreassen (1987) indicates the way that people acquire knowledge. According to his

study, new information, through a process of elaboration and argumentation, is assimilated with

already existed information resulting most of the times in overestimation. People based on their

internal predisposition to expect the worse to happen tend to overreact in the observed direction

believing that the bad news will become worse rather than regressions towards the mean like that

the bad things or the bad news will improve. This is exactly where Katona (1975) comes to indicate

the importance of mass media in expectations’ compilation, configuring the type of perception

created in consumers’ minds. In this case, the negative economic news can have a negative effect on

consumers’ outcomes leaving no freedom to behave alternatively, a statement in complete

accordance with the conservative spending argument that I proposed.

In order to investigate the relation among the personal financial progress and the expectations about

market environment and how these two attributes determine the spending and saving decisions.

Katona (1975) created the Index of Consumer Sentiment (ICS) including data of income, predicts of

aggregate consumer spending, saving and borrowing which cannot be obtained by financial and

business cycle indicators. According to the scale analysis from Van Raaij and Gianotten (1990),

there are high correlations among present and future expectations about personal finances and

economy as a whole. A very representative example is given about the behavior of Dutch

consumers in the seventies and after the recession of 1980-1984, which is in detail described in the

appendix A. When these expectations are supported by psychological attributes like optimism, they

become determinant for consumer behavior.

As news releases nowadays occur intrudingly on people’s lives, expectations can moderate the

impact of these news and expectations apart from the psychological factor are formulated according

to people’s level of education (Haller and Norpoth, 1997). Following economic news used to be an

indicator of sophisticated people according to the findings of Haller and Norpoth study, but it also

depends on other circumstances like salient society or economy problems. Bad times make the

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economy a “pressing issue” to the general public and the number of people exposed to economic

information is increasing as they perceive economy from an oppressive vision. Although originally

introduced two decades ago, this idea perfectly adopts on today situation of economic recession.

Table 2- List of the most important literature

Authors (year of publication)

Journal Main findings

Dhar and Wertenbroch, 2000

Journal of Marketing Research

Hedonic aspects are perceived as more important in forfeiture (i.e. selling) than acquisition (i.e. buying).

Okada 2005

Journal of Marketing Research

-Hedonism and utilitarianism are abstract attributes that define various items, in relation with the specific attributes of each product. -Individual choice patterns are based on the individual characterization of products as hedonic or utilitarian. -People tend to respond more favorably to hedonic goods than to utilitarian alternatives, but they also have more difficulties in justifying the consumption of the hedonic goods.

Babin, Darden and Griffin 1994

Journal of Consumer Research

-Expressions of pure enjoyment, excitement, captivation, escapism, and spontaneity are fundamental aspects of hedonic shopping value. -Utilitarian shopping value includes expressions of accomplishment and/or disappointment over the ability (inability) to complete the shopping task. -Shopping value is derived from "the complete shopping experience," not simply by products shopped for and it is subjective, characterized by consumers' interactions with an environment.

Hirschman and Holbrook 1982;

Journal of Marketing -Hedonic consumption is a multisensory procedure compared to the traditional approach of consumption. -Four different areas are examined in terms of comparisons with the traditional approach including: mental constructs, product classes, product usage and individual differences.

Guido 2006

Innovative Marketing -Utilitarian dimension of shopping motives is related to emotion stability and conscientiousness while hedonic dimension

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refers to openness to experience, agreeableness, and extroversion connected to, respectively, the rational motives behind cognitive processes, and the affective motives regarding the sphere of feelings and personal goals.

Bagozzi and Dholakia 1999;

Journal of Marketing -The role played by goals in consumer behavior, as well as the processes of goal setting and goal pursuit, is critical.-The development of richer, more representative, and more accurate models of purchase for optimal communication stimuli and store displays and training of salespeople are needed.

Kucuk 2005

Journal of International Consumer marketing

The influence of consumer confidence in the future economy is easily observed in brand loyal consumers’ shopping behaviors when a catalog is used for promoted brands. When consumer confidence in the future economy is low, catalog usage for in-store promotions might increase the likelihood of non-loyal consumers to be influenced by in-store promotions as well.

Luomala 2002

Psychology & Marketing -The existence of qualitatively different negative moods is emphasized and labeled as irritation, stress, and dejection. -Eight types of therapeutic power stemming from different mood-alleviative consumption activities are defined. - Purchasing is linked to three types of therapeutic powers: the ability to improve mood by distraction, by being self-indulgent, and by feeling activated (i.e. stimulation of senses).

Generation of Hypotheses:Having discussed key theories on customers’ motivations and goals, and having examined the effect

that, according to the two main theoretical arguments I am testing (conservative spending and retail

therapy), the release of negative economic news has on consumer spending decisions, I now

generate the hypotheses that I will test.

On the one hand, it is interesting to examine whether or not negative news releases are capable to

determine final consumers’ purchases in total, regardless the type of the product to be purchased

(utilitarian or hedonic). As it was previously investigated in the study of Schargrodsky & McKenzie

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(2005), people during crises periods, tend to spend more days shopping but the actual purchased

quality is much less. This can be explained by the fact that they search for the “lucky deal” and they

are more price conscious being “anxious” about their future available budget.

Moreover, the consumers’ state of mood and further behavioral acting is related to responsible

spending occurred by the feeling of insecurity about future due to financial instability of the

economy where they are involved. The general perception of this constrain is that shopping

mitigation occurs and the focus is on buying only the needed products. Since some people react

more cautiously (i.e. countries that already are affected from crises) to the obtaining of bad

economic news due to the general attitude of behaving into crisis, I hypothesize the following:

H1: Consumers from countries that receive negative news about their economy have a lower

probability of making either hedonic or utilitarian purchases (responsible spending

argument).

On the other hand and according to the retail therapy argument, consumers whose mood is

deteriorated due to negative economic news, will tend to increase their hedonic purchases. For

example, Langer (1983) argued that difficult economic conditions can increase consumers' needs

for products to serve as treats and emotional charges. Thus, the increase in hedonic purchases

represents an attempt by the consumer to use shopping as a strategy to compensate for his/her bad

mood.

Based on these findings, I hypothesize that:

H2: Consumers from countries that receive negative news about their country’s economy on

the day before their travel or on the same day of travelling, have a higher probability of

purchasing hedonic goods (retail therapy argument).

Figure 1, below, summarizes my theoretical framework and hypotheses.

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Fig.2: Conceptual framework for empirical research structure

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Chapter III: Methodology of ResearchI will thoroughly describe the data that I access in order to examine consumer behavior after

negative feelings experiences and the methodology that I followed to structure the following results.

Before describing my own dataset, let me summarize existing research on shopping path analysis.

Shopping Path Analysis and Marketing ScienceMost of the consumers’ behavior studies are based on the history data of consumers’ purchases.

However, this history data does not contain information about how customers move through the

store and how they result in their purchases. By tracing consumers’ movements within a store

researchers can obtain useful and thoughtful insights of “what” and “why” customers make

purchases and not simply noting the product purchases as it is mostly seen in marketing studies

(Yada 2011).

Although the investigation of shopping paths has recently received renewed interest due to new

technologies capable of seamlessly collecting such type of data, initial efforts to study shopping

path data started several decades ago. Researchers focused on spatial movements in shopping malls

emphasizing on the way in which customers organize a store in their minds which is determinant for

the movements they follow in the framework of a decision making procedure while they combine

different cultural, biological, physical and geographical aspects (Lynch & Rivkin 1959; Batty

2003). However, Farley and Ring (1966) were the first who build a stochastic model to study the

“zone” transitions probabilities for traffic within a store. In their paper, Farley and Ring (1966)

analyze physical measures of store layout and transaction volumes in different locations of the

store. They show that their model is capable of predicting area-to-area transition probabilities using

store layout measures as predictors.

Additionally, consumers’ perceptions of store space were also examined by Mackay and Olshavsky

(1975) and Park, Iyer et al. (1989) who analyzed the impact of store knowledge and time constrains

(observed by the investigation of consumers’ shopping paths) on unplanned buying and failure to

make planned purchases. Finally, Underhill (1999) examined as well the behavioral patterns of

tracking shoppers in retail stores but he constrains himself in making suggestions for consumers’

convenience within the store.

Most findings of shopping path analyses papers relate to typical patterns in consumer in-store

behavior, or in-store movements. For instance, the results of Katsutoshi Yada’s (2011) study, show

that consumers tend to follow complex paths during their shopping trips. These complicated routes

encompasses “secrets” that should be investigated and lead to better understanding of consumer

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behavior as they are related with shopping motives and different personalities of the consumers.

What is presented as key value through his study is the incident of customer passing and stopping in

a given section. So on the one hand, this incident of specific “stopping”, “browsing” or

“purchasing” can be associated and influenced by in-store factors like promotions or in-store

management and on the other hand from personal internal factors arise from consumers’ personality

like motivations and mood diversification. Through this innovative analysis, information about

customer purchasing behavior was given by applying existing character string parsing techniques

and assigning them to stream data describing customer movements. Visits to specific product

sections were investigated and what was found is that “High Volume” consumers, defined as the

consumers with the heaviest purchases in number of items, tended to follow a concrete route in their

way of purchases. But this observation alleviates the need to observe the motives of consumers for

this movement, the type of shopping, hedonic or utilitarian.

A much more extensive analysis on consumers’ shopping paths in the grocery retail format is also

provided by Larson, Bradlow and Fader (2005). These researchers observed that customers tend to

travel selected aisles, rarely in systematic up and down pattern but mostly following a dominant

travel pattern. This template provided in this study can also be applied with some cautions to any

store layout. In accordance with these findings are also the results of Sam Hui’s et al. (2009) study

indicating a key motive for consumer’s trip length is the travel deviation. More precisely, people

who deviate significantly from the optimal path (TSP) tend to purchase more (larger baskets) and

people who shop mainly products (e.g. fruits and vegetables), deli products (cheese/milk) and

prepackaged products tend to deviate less from their optimal path.

Additionally, Herb Sorensen’s (2010) study of consumers’ pattern of purchase contradicts the

complexity of followed patterns arguing that consumers’ “path to purchase is often observed to be

u-turn”. According to his explanatory study in two different types of retails, people presented this u-

turn passive type of shopping path and retailers were more passive than the shoppers by just

observing the consumers following the same pattern. What is needed according to Sorensen (2010)

is to lead consumers to what to buy based on this u-turn pattern. If this u-turn pattern is also

followed with respect to hedonic purchase then the intention for shoppers to induce into retail

therapies would be greater.

What is needed is a linkage between shopping paths and purchased behavior that can lead to a better

understanding of consumer motivations, focusing on consumers’ heterogeneity and shed light on

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goods’ complementary and substitutability in a more thoughtful way than investigation of shopping

basket can do.

Empirical SettingThe empirical setting of my thesis is the airport environment. In particular, I examined the effect of

negative economic news releases on shopping behavior in the way that this behavior is captured via

purchase incidents in an airport environment. Tracking devices are presented as a kind of revolution

of the way that researchers apply in order to examine thoroughly the shopping paths of the

consumers and to optimize several aspects of their stores like the space management or the store

decoration in order to increase their sales (Varpu Uotila and Skorgster P. 2007). More precisely, in

their study, the researchers are trying to indicate the benefits and the disadvantages of using

wireless local area networks (WLAN) as a collecting method of customer traffic as it enables to

analyze in the context with different geographical information systems and obtain more accurate

results. Furthermore, the collaborative study of Bradlow, Hui and research teams of Sorensen

(2003) provided the analysis of over 200.000 shopping paths in a supermarket area in detail. This

approach allowed the recent re-emergence of shopping paths’ analysis conducted by tracking

consumers’ trolleys or baskets attaching a small RFID tag at the bottom of trolleys/baskets.

Data collectionIn my thesis, I use a similar kind of data but the paths are collected via the wireless network

connection existing in the airport. The approach used to obtain this shopping path data is a

technology called BIPS, whose patent belongs to a Portuguese start-up company. The company,

which won the SCTE/MIT Portugal Venture Competition in 2010, is now attracting large investors

from both sides of the Atlantic due to the advantages of its technology. Specifically, usage of BIPS

allows for unobtrusive tracking of customers’ shopping paths via the GSM signal transmitted from

their mobile phone. Consumers did not know they were being tracked, as the data collection was

conducted as part of a test executed by the company in partnership with the airport management

authorities1 and fully compliant with the regulation and norms of the Portuguese National Data

Protection Agency1 No individual-specific consumer data was collected, so the data is fully

anonymized. However, some information regarding the network operator of each consumer is

stored, in particular the country of origin of the mobile operator, enabling the comparison of

different behaviors according to a consumer’s country of residence.

1http://www.cnpd.pt/

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The most important countries of travelers using the airport were captured and namely I refer to

them: Portugal, United Kingdom, France, Spain and Germany. This gave me the opportunity to

analyze in a multi-format way the directions followed by the different types of travelers in a

medium-sized airport in Southern Europe, after the check-in process. This analysis will provide

some thoughtful insights regarding the consumer behavior in tense situations like facing financial

problems. However, during the examined period of the two weeks, negative economic news was

basically announced for France, Portugal and Spain. For this reason, the focus of the analysis was

the observations concerning these countries, excluding observations regarding United Kingdom and

Germany.

In Appendix A, I describe and compare the two main technologies used to track shopping paths and

explain why usage of GSM technology tracking device is ideal for my research goals.

Airport Data

My data was collected in a medium-sized airport in Southern Europe, located approximately 15 Km

northwest of city centre. The used airport is the second busiest in the country and the second busiest

in passengers, based on traffic statistics. The Airport reached its six millionth passenger mark on the

30th December 2011 and it serves all the main European countries and also some American

destinations (e.g. Brazil and the U.S.), even though these are served through a different terminal

than the one captured in my data.

In order to have a better understanding of the examined airport environment, I will firstly introduce

the map of the shopping area after the security checking:

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Fig.3: Density map

As it can be seen from the density map of one of the examined days, passengers, after the security

process follow either escalator 1 or escalator 2 for their route to the gates for departure with a result

to meet firstly either shop D or shop A. However, the spatial superiority of store D is clearly

justified from the map as it is the one and single store with the most extensive available space. Even

so, I will try to justify the store selection base on the value of purchase that each traveler acquires

from these different types of stores.

Regarding the observed shops in the airport environment, the shop A is a retailer which provides

regional products like jams, honey, olive oil, regional drinks, ham, wines, biscuits, ham and other

regional products to the customers, it can be therefore perceived mostly as an utilitarian shop. The

shop B is a typical Fashion & Clothing store for male and female classified as utilitarian as it offers

a limited assortment of relatively basic clothes (e.g. shirts and ties for men, or scarf’s, belts and

shirts for women) and often offers products on sale and special promotions. Shop C is of highly

branded fashion and accessories. Status brands such as Guess, Hugo Boss, Gucci, Swatch, Diesel,

Emporio Armani but also consumer designed electronics like Sony, Apple, Casio are provided, so it

is a definitely a hedonic shop. Finally, shop D is providing on the one hand utilitarian gifts and

products like chocolates, tobacco and alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages and, on the other hand,

hedonic gifts such as cosmetics and perfumes. Fortunately, the hedonic and utilitarian products are

clearly arranged in two different regions of the store which were, for this reason, separately

monitored by the path-tracking technology.

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Negative News Releases about the Economy (15/01-28/1):

Additionally, I collected data on news about the financial situation for the same countries as in the

observed data (Portugal, United Kingdom, France, Spain and Germany). Most of these countries are

directly related with the 2011-2012 economic crises (affecting several European countries with

different intensities) for the same period of analysis (January 15 th to 28th 2012). In the table below I

summarize the main negative economic news occurring in this period and which I will further

examine:

Table 3- Main Negative economic news

13th of January -Standard and Poor’s (S&P) cut credit ratings of

Austria and France to AA.

16th of January -Downgrade of French credibility.

17th of January -Portuguese State announced losses of 40 billion

euro during 2011.

-French president and Spanish Prime Minister

support the proposed taxes on financial

transactions.

20th of January -Spain announced two more years of recession

23rd of January -France wants to reform the banking sector

renegotiating the European fiscal Union project

and make a new agreement with Germany.

The aforementioned news releases were obtained from several and different sources in order to

capture the global dynamics of news and their influences. However, the emphasis was given on

European news and most precisely on the bad news that influenced French, Portuguese and Spanish

passengers. The list of the examined sources and all the negative economic news, are provided in

the appendix A.

The downgrade of France economy was the most important financial news during this examined

period. As these news can influence strongly the mood and the feelings of consumers I can

conclude through this data collection that the news’ releases regarding the instability of France and

in general the financial instability of euro-zone can induce negative feelings to consumers affecting

in this way their final purchasing decision. This is the reason why the French nationality of

passengers was implemented as a reference category for my analysis.

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Through this experiential observation of consumers’ paths and decisions, researchers and marketers

can get more insights and tangible benefits. Although traditional marketing observation has gave an

attractive set of strategies, implementation tools and methodologies to be followed. This

experiential approach indicates the new era of observation which enables managers to access the

released opportunities of customers’ experiences and capitalize on them (Schmitt 1999).

Measurement:

Dependent variable: Shopping behavior (Purchase Incidence)

Firstly, through the shopping behavior purchase MNL (multinomial logistic regression) model, I

measured the shopping behavior of the airport i passengers during the period of t (=13 days)

regarding their purchase decisions. In my analyses I focus on passengers who entered at least one of

the stores (i.e. I ignore those passengers who did not even enter a single store). The dependent

variable of shopping behavior (SHOPBEHAVit) could take the following possible expected

responses: utilitarian, hedonic and no purchase. The classification of shopping behavior was based

on the purchase incidences observed in the four airport stores (A, B, C and D). According to the

categorization of the stores as hedonic and utilitarian, the shopping behavior, in line with purchase

incidence, is characterized hedonic or utilitarian. Therefore, each passenger can be classified as

having made a hedonic purchase (which means that he/she visited a hedonic store and made a

purchase therein), a utilitarian purchase (he/she visited a utilitarian store and made a purchase

therein) or no purchase (the passenger entered a store but he/she did not make any purchase). In

order to be more precise, I have to confirm that throughout the whole dataset there was not observed

any passenger who made both utilitarian and hedonic purchases, making the classification into these

two categories easier and clearer.

However, the classification of D store (which has a region with ‘hedonic’ products such as

cosmetics and perfumes and a region with ‘utilitarian’ products such as snacks and tobacco) was

based on the variable of DWELLit in the two separate parts of the store. Taking into consideration

the constrained time for shopping for the passengers of the airport, this dwell time was treated as

following: I compared the dwell time in the two different parts of the store and I assumed that if a

passenger makes a purchase at store D, he/she is purchasing a product from the region of the store

where he/she spent the most time compared to the other part. Finally, as the majority of the

passengers retained a mostly conservative attitude, the no purchase category captured those who

visited at least one of those stores but did not make any purchase.

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Independent variables:

For my analysis, first I examined the time effect on shopping behavior of the n=39193 passengers

the same t period as follows: I classified every separate observation of the available secondary data

into three main categories of the day and coded these observations using the following dummy

variables:

MORNINGi = 1, for passengers visiting stores between 06am and 11.59am

AFTERNOONi = 1, for passengers visiting stores between 12pm and 6.59pm

NIGHTi = 1, for passengers visiting stores between 7pm and 11.59pm

Secondly, I measured the effect of bad economic news on the airport passengers, but in order to

capture the differential effects on the specific observed countries of residence I created four

different dummy variables as follows:

FRNEGNEWSit: taking the value 1 when (negative) news about France’s economy were

released in the same date of the shopping activity (and 0 otherwise).

FRNEGNEWSit-1: taking the value 1 when the (negative) news about France’s economy had

been released in the previous day of the shopping activity (0 otherwise).

SPNEGNEWSit: taking the value 1 when news released on the day of the shopping activity

were about Spain and 0 otherwise.

SPNEGNEWSit-1: taking the value 1 when news released on the previous day of the

shopping activity were about Spain and 0 otherwise.

PTNEGNEWSit: taking the value 1 when news released on the day of the shopping activity

were about Portugal and 0 otherwise.

PTNEGNEWSit-1: taking the value 1 when news released on the previous day of the

shopping activity were about Portugal and 0 otherwise.

Additionally, I measured the country of origin of the passengers based on the categorical variable

COUNTRYit which was taking the values of DE, FR, PT, SP and UK. I deleted the observations

referring to German (DE) and British (UK) consumers and focused on the French, Portuguese and

Spanish as Southern Europe was, in the period of my data, much more likely to be involved in

negative economic news. I created the following dummy variables based on the countries with the

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highest number of passengers in my data and which released the most negative news during the

examined period:

PTi: taking the value 1 when the passenger had a Portuguese mobile provider and 0

otherwise.

SPi: taking the value 1 when the passenger had a Spanish mobile provider and 0 otherwise.

I did not create a dummy for France as I treat France as the reference country in my analyses

(so all effects will tell me how much more or less likely are the Portuguese or Spanish

residents to make hedonic or utilitarian purchases).

Also, I captured the store visits of i passengers the same t period based on the NSTORESit variable

(which ranged from 1 to 4). More precisely, based on the aforementioned variable I created the

following dummy:

MULTIPLEit: taking the value 1 when the observed passenger visited multiple airport stores

and 0 otherwise. I will use this variable in an attempt to control customers’ shopping goals.

The assumption here is that a customer visiting multiple stores, when compared with a

customer visiting a single store, is more likely to be in a browsing model rather than in a

goal-directed trip (Bloch and Richins, 1983).

Finally, I included four interaction effects between the negative news released in country j=SP,PT

and the dummy indicating that the passenger is from country j=SP and PT, as the France was the

reference country. These countries were chosen for examination as they were the only countries

which released negative economic news during the examined period of time while observations

regarding the United Kingdom and Germany were excluded as there did not present negative

economic news.

Table 4-Overview of implemented variables:

Dependent variables

SHOPBEHAVit A categorical variable with 3 possible categories (utilitarian, hedonic and no purchase), which were identified from the dummy variables A,B,C,D PURCHASEit.

Independent variablesMORNINGi A dummy variable coded as 1 when passengers made purchases

within the time slot of 06am to 11.59am and 0 otherwise.AFTERNOONi A dummy variable coded as 1 when passengers made purchases

within the time slot of 12pm to 6.59pm and 0 otherwise.

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NIGHTi A dummy variable coded as 1 when passengers made purchases within the time slot of 7pm to 11.59pm and 0 otherwise.

FRNEGNEWSit A dummy variable coded as 1 when bad economic news about France is released on the day of shopping observation and 0 otherwise.

FRNEGNEWSit-1 A dummy variable coded as 1 when bad economic news about France is released on the day before the shopping activity observation and 0 otherwise.

SPNEGNEWSit A dummy variable taking the value 1 when bad economic news about Spain were released on the day of shopping activity and 0 otherwise.

SPNEGNEWSit-1 A dummy variable coded as 1 when bad economic news about Spain is released on the day before the shopping activity observation and 0 otherwise.

PTNEGNEWSit A dummy variable taking the value 1 when negative economic news about Portugal released on the day of shopping activity were about Portugal and 0 otherwise.

PTNEGNEWSit-1 A dummy variable coded as 1 when bad economic news about Portugal is released on the day before the shopping activity observation and 0 otherwise.

PTit A dummy variable coded as 1 when the mobile provider of the passenger is Portuguese and 0 otherwise.

SPit A dummy variable coded as 1 when the mobile provider of the passenger is Spanish and 0 otherwise.

MULTIPLEit A dummy variable taking the value 1 when the observed passenger visited multiple stores and 0 otherwise

Econometric Model

In my study, in order to examine the diversity of choices of passengers in the airport environment I

implemented the multinomial logistic regression model which enables me to investigate choices far

from yes/no distinction as here passengers are expected to choose among three different purchase

decisions. This was an appropriate specification of the character of the dependent variable and the

number of choices that consumers were able to make.

Shopping behavior purchase model:

Recall that my DV is whether a passenger made a hedonic, utilitarian or no purchase. As a base

category, which helps to identify the β lj{utilitarian and hedonic}, I used the category of no purchase

at all as it was the mostly observed as well.

Based on this, the model is derived as following:

Pr ( SHOPBEHAVit )= j∨X j=exp(xi β j)

∑l=1

j=1

exp (xi β j), for j=HE,UT , NO, (1)

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Where Xi is a 1 x (k x+1) matrix of explanatory variables (k x=MORNINGi, AFTERNOONi,

MULTIPLEit, SPit, PTit, FRNEGNEWSit, FRNEGNEWSit-1, SPNEGNEWSit, SPNEGNEWSit-1,

PTNEGNEWSit, PTNEGNEWSit-1 and the interactions of country and negative news) including

the element 1 in order to model the intercept and βj is a (k x+1) dimensional parameter vector. But

as the choices can be explained by intercepts and by individual – specific variables the multinomial

logistic model is written as following:

Pr ( SHOPBEHAVit )= j∨X j=exp(β0 , j+β1, j x i)

1+∑l=1

j=1

exp (β0 ,l+β1 ,l x i), for j=HE,UT , NO, (2)

Moreover, I examined the aforementioned described model excluding the variable that characterizes

the goal oriented passengers in order to capture dynamics about the browsing passengers of the

airport. I did not measure wide variation among the two models and the detailed results are

described in the analysis section.

A direct interpretation of the model parameters is not straightforward because the x i effect on the

choice is clearly a nonlinear function in the model parameters βj but in order to interpret the

parameters, the odds ratios may be considered, so the odd ratios for category j versus category l are

defined as:

Ω j∨l ( X i )=Pr [Y i= j|X i ¿¿

Pr [Y i=l|X i ¿¿=exp

( β0 , j¿+β1 , j xi)exp(β0 ,l¿+β1 ,l x i)¿

¿, for

j=HE,UT , NO, (3)

Ω j∨J ( X i )=Pr [Y i= j|X i¿¿

Pr [Y i=J|X i¿¿=exp(¿ β0 j+β lj x i)¿ for

j=HE,UT , NO, (4)

Where y i isSHOPBEHAVit. The odds ratios show that a change in x i may imply that individuals are

more likely to choose one of the j categories compared to category l reference category but not

necessarily into same direction.

Descriptive statistics

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The number of passengers and shopping paths observed in the airport environment was 45981.

Taking into consideration this great number of available observations, the paths observed during the

hours that the shops were closed in the airport, from 23:00 to 5:00, were deleted as they could not

add any value to my analysis. The remained observations were counted at 39193.Moreover,

excluding the observations which did not report any store visit, what can be easily assumed from

the frequencies of the observations is that the majority of the passengers (76,5 %) despite visiting

the stores in the airport, they do not buy anything at all.

Table 5 - Shopping behavior based on purchase incidence:

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

HE 4020 10,3 10,3 10,3

NO 29971 76,5 76,5 86,7

UT 5202 13,3 13,3 100,0

Total 39193 100,0 100,0

This finding is in relation with the great percentage, of more than the half of traveling population,

(56%) who do not visit any store in the airport and the people who visit just one store (37.3%)

without this indicating that they make purchases and finally a very restricted percentage of 6.7%

who visit more than 1 store up to 4.

According to the H1, people from countries which experience bad

financial incidents and these incidences are

discussed by the media on the day, or on the

day before their shopping (and traveling)

activity visit less stores and make fewer

purchases. This incidence is confirmed in

my case as negative economic news were

released on the 16th,17th, 20th and 23rd of

January and the observed shopping activity

the dates after the negative economic news

was at the minimum observed level compared to

the average level. More precisely, on the 17th it was just at 5.8%, on the 18th it was 6.4%, on the 21st

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Fig. 4: Number of visited stores

Master thesis

at 6.7% and on the 24th at 6.2%. Based on the average shopping activity of the observed period

which was 7.14%, the aforementioned percentages are very low. This enables a first robust

assumption that passengers are influenced in their shopping behavior from the negative economic

news released on the day before their shopping trip. However, this assumption will be more

extensively examined in the following analysis of the models.

Fig. 5: Shopping activity based on date

Another interesting aspect for indicating the shopping activity is the time of shopping incidences

which is scaled into the different parts of the day. Based on the frequencies of the descriptive

statistics it can be assumed that the majority of shopping activity is accumulated in the morning

(43.1 %) and afternoon (37.7%). The least shopping activity is observed in late hours at night

(19.2%).

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afternoon morning night

37.7

43.1

19.2

Part of the day

Fig.6: Shopping activity based on the time of observation

Finally the observed paths followed by the travelers are the key sources for this study. Based on the

observed paths, an extremely big percentage of passengers visited only the D store (20.9%) after

their security check. Of course this can be explained from the location of the D store in the airport

environment as it covers the greatest area among the rest examined stores. However, the store

location analysis is not in the context of this thesis. I will focus on the purchases occurred in the D

store compared the two parts of the store hedonic (perfumes and cosmetics) and utilitarian (tobaccos

and chocolates). Based on dwell observation, it can be seen that the purchases of the two parts are

almost on the same level. The passengers who visited the utilitarian part of the D store and made

utilitarian purchases are representing the 20.4% of the utilitarian department store visits and those

who visited hedonic department and actually made a hedonic purchase are the 20% of hedonic

visits. . Those percentages are almost identical representing the avoidance of purchases in total with

a very slight preference over utilitarian purchases.

no utilitarian

purchaseutilitarian purchase

79.6

20.4

Utilitarian department of D Store

hedonic purchase no hedonic purchase

20.0

80.0

Hedonic department of D Store

Fig. 7: Purchases in D store

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Finally, according to the previously described statistics it is logical to expect a comparable

probability of hedonic and utilitarian purchases in the airport shopping area, taking into

consideration the limited observed purchases. However, the analysis that follows will present a

more concrete conclusion about the shopping behavior of passengers.

Chapter IV: Analysis and Results

Outlier’s detection:

As the variables implemented in my analysis are metric-numeric variables, the Mahalanobis D2

distance is employed to detect multivariate outliers. The Mahalanobis distance (MD) is a measure

of the geometric distance between the point representing any one of the cases and the centroid

(multidimensional mean) of a distribution, given the covariance (multidimensional variance) of the

distribution. The leverage is

MDN −1

+ 1N

and any case was investigated about the leverage exceeding

2p/n, where p is the number of variables and n is the number of cases. Finally, a case is a

multivariate outlier if the probability associated with its Mahalanobis D2 is 0.001 or less. In my

analysis 705 outliers were detected with D2 =0 < 0.001. Thus, after the completion of detecting

outliers there were still 38488 observations left to analyze.

Multinomial Regression

Multicollinearity detection:

In logistic regression solution, multicollinearity is observed by the existence of strong relationships

among the independent variables. This existence is detected by examining the Variance Inflation

Factor (VIF) that measures multicollinearity in the model. If one of the predictor variables can be

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nearly perfectly predicted by one of the other predictors variables or if there is a linear combination

of the other predictor variables then the regression coefficients become unstable. Another problem

is that if predictors are well correlated with one another, then they have little unique relationship

with the outcome variable (since they are redundant with each other). By examining separately the

linear relationship of all the independent variables of the models I conclude that there is not

observed multicollinearity as none of the VIF values were greater than 3. More precisely apart from

two variables that were around 3 all the other scores were around 1.

Measurement of Model Performance

It is important to be aware of the usefulness of MLR implemented model through classification

accuracy which compares the predicted purchase incidence (calculated by the MLR model) to the

known (actual) purchase. We can identify a MLR model as “Useful” if there is at least 25% more

improvement achievable over the by chance accuracy rate alone. “By Chance Accuracy” means that

if there is no relationship between the dependent variable and the independent variables, it is still

possible to achieve some percentage of correct purchase incidences. In my analysis, “By Chance

Accuracy Rate” is (0.103² + 0.765² + 0.133² = 0.613) 61.3% and 25% increase of this value equals

to 76.6%, and the cross validated accuracy rate is 76.6% as well. Hence, cross validated accuracy

rate is equal to the proportional by chance accuracy rate and it is possible to declare that the MLR

models are useful for the classification goal.

By Chance Accuracy Rate=(0.103² + 0.765² + 0.133² = 0.613) 61.3%HE 10.3%NO 76.5%UT 13.3%

Classification AccuracyObserved Predicted

HE NO UT Percent Correct

HE 0 4020 0 ,0%NO 0 29971 0 100,0%UT 0 5202 0 ,0%

Overall Percentage ,0% 100,0% ,0% 76,6%

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Shopping behavior purchase model

In Table 6, I provide information about the model fit. Using a likelihood ratio test, we can see that

the improvement in log-likelihood of my model compared with a model with intercepts only, is

highly significant. The probability associated with the chi-square on the likelihood of the described

incidents (1.019E3) is 0, less than the level of significance of 0.05. Hence, the null hypothesis that

there is no difference in shopping behavior when the aforementioned parameters are encountered is

rejected. The Model fitting information presents that the current model is exceeding the Null model.

Table 6 – Shopping behavior Model Fitting Information:

Model Model Fitting Criteria

Likelihood Ratio Tests

-2 Log Likelihood

Chi-Square Sig.

Intercept Only 1,497E3Final 1,019E3 478,673 ,000

Moreover, as we can see in table 7, the p-values in this case are needed to be higher than the

statistical significance (0.001–0.05) in order to accept the null hypothesis that there is an adequate

“fit” between the model and the date. So, as p-values are considerably larger than 0.05 I can

conclude that this model adequately fits the data.

Table 7-“Goodness of fit” information:

Chi-Square df Sig.Pearson 172,206 186 ,758

Deviance 187,344 186 ,459

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As it is observed from the table 8 below, there is a statistically significant relationship between the

independent variables MORNINGit and MULTIPLEit and the dependent variable shopping

behavior based on the purchase incident (p= 0.016 < 0.05 and p= 0 < 0.05 respectively). Through

this likelihood ratio test, it is clear that these variables significantly contribute to the model. More

precisely, the contribution of MORNINGit variable likelihood (1,027) indicating a possible

purchase to happen during the morning is significant at a chi-square level 8,225. Also, the

contribution of MULTIPLEit store visits with likelihoods 1,458 is statistically significant at a chi-

square test 439,254.

Table 8- Likelihood ratio tests

-2 Log Likelihood of Reduced Model Chi-Square Sig.

MORNINGit 1,027E03 8,225 0,016

MULTIPLEit 1,458E03 439,254 0

Group comparisons:

In my analysis the reference category is identified as the “not at all purchase” incidence, which is

the category that would be coded with zero values for all of the factor variables included in MNL

model and they are interpreted against this category.

The comparisons made in this analysis of shopping behavior purchase model are the two following:

1. the hedonic purchase incidence (HE) is compared to the not at all purchase incidence (NO).

2. The utilitarian purchase incidence (UT) is compared to the not at all purchase incidence

(NO).

The table 9 below summarizes the most significant results that derived from MNL analysis. The

original output is presented in the Appendix C.

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Table 9- Shopping Behavior Purchase Model: Parameter Estimates

 Beta Standard

Error Wald Significance Exp(B)

Hedonic

Intercept -1,374 0,288 22,74 0 MULTIPLEit 0,877 0,051 295,54 0 2,404

PTNEGNEWSit-1 0,19 -0,094 4,08 0,044 1,21Utilitarian

Intercept -2,256 0,249 81,882 0MORNINGit -0,118 0,041 8,26 0,004 0,889MULTIPLEit -0,865 0,087 98,34 0 0,421SPi -0,106 0,053 3,95 0,047 0,899INT_SP_SPNEGNEWSt-1 0,337 0,166 4,13 0,042 1,400

Note: Only significant results are shown. For the full output please refer to Appendix C.

Hedonic compared to not at all purchase:

The MNL estimate for hedonic purchase compared to not at all purchase when the predictor

variables in the model are zero is -1,374 at a significant level (p=0.000<0.05). In addition, when

people visit multiple stores (which can be seen as a proxy whether a consumer is browsing stores or

has a very specific goal in mind), the log odds of a hedonic purchase increase by 0,877

(p=0.00<0.05). The odds ratio for this variable is 2,404>1, indicating that the odds that a consumer

makes an hedonic purchase (relative to NO purchase) are 2.4 times higher when he/she is browsing

multiple stores than when she visits only one store. Also, the MNL estimate for PTNEGNEWS it-1

is 0,190 indicating that if a passenger had been exposed to negative news about the Portuguese

economy in the day before the observed shopping activity, then, ceteris paribus, the log odds of

making an hedonic purchase to not purchase at all are expected to significantly increase by 0,190

units (p=0.044<0.05). The odds ratio for this variable is 1,21>1, indicating that the probability of

hedonic purchases (relative to NO purchase) is higher in the day after negative news about the

Portuguese economy are broadcasted. Interestingly, this effect is neither stronger nor weaker for

Portuguese residents, so it seems to affect all customers in my data equally. This situation can be

explained by the fact that the negative news about the economy in Portugal affect everyone being

those days in Portugal (i.e. passengers are leaving, as the research is held in the departure hall, thus

they have probably been for at least some days in Portugal). Finally, this news may also affect the

mood of airport employees making them less likely to be persuasive in convincing passengers to

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make hedonic purchases. Employees feel the insecurity by being closer to the negative economic

news and this may also affect their communicational skills. Conclusively, retail therapy seems to

play a role in shopping behavior, but it is more triggered by the overall insecure mood.

Utilitarian compared to not at all purchase

The MNL estimation for utilitarian purchase compared to not at all purchase when the predictor

variables in the model are zero is -2,256 at a significant level (p=0.000<0.05). However, customers

making their purchases in the morning (i.e. MORNINGit = 1), were significantly less likely to make

utilitarian purchases (β=-0,118; p=0,004<0,05), indicating that passengers are not interested in

shopping in the morning for utilitarian products provided that all the other variables in the model

are constant (ceteris paribus). This means that, the log odds of preferring utilitarian to not at all

purchase any other time but not in the morning are expected to decrease by 0,118 units when we

compare morning with afternoon or evening customers. The odds ratio for this variable is 0,889<1,

indicating that – controlling for all the other factors included in my model - the odds of an utilitarian

purchase (relative to the NO purchase) are 12% lower for passengers shopping in the morning.

When we compare customers who visit multiple stores (browsers, i.e. those with MULTIPLEi=1)

with customers who visit only one store (goal-directed customers, i.e. those with MULTIPLEi=0),

we can see that browsers are also significantly less likely to make a utilitarian purchase. Keeping

everything else constant, the log odds of a utilitarian purchase decrease by 0,865 at a significant

level of (0.001<0.05). The odds ratio for this variable is 0,421<1, indicating that the probability

odds of an utilitarian purchase (relative to the NO purchase) by browsers are just 42% of the odds of

a similar purchase by goal-directed shoppers.

Finally, the MNL estimate of the effect of a passenger’s possessing a mobile phone from a Spanish

network (SPi=1) on the probability of an utilitarian purchase is -0,106 which means that, the log

odds of a Spanish customer (or at least a resident in Spain) preferring an utilitarian purchase (to not

making any purchase) are expected to be 0,106 lower than the log odds of an utilitarian purchase

from other customers (i.e. from French customers, my reference category, but also from Portuguese

as they do not significantly differ from the French), an effect that is significant (p=0,047<0,05). In

other words, Spaniards are less likely to make utilitarian purchases. In fact, the odds ratio is

0,899<1, indicating that the odds of a utilitarian purchase (relative to NO purchase) by Spanish

passengers are 10 percentage points below other passengers.

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Interestingly, when we analyze the effect of the interaction between Spanish (mobile network)

dummy and the dummy for negative economic news about Spain in the day before shopping, we see

a positive effect, which is counterintuitive. That is, Spanish residents exposed to recent negative

news about the economy of Spain, the log-odds of a utilitarian purchase are 0,337 higher than for

other customers. In other words, my results indicate that Spanish people are less likely to make

utilitarian purchases in general (β=-0,106; p<0.05) but significantly more likely to make an

utilitarian purchase in the day after negative economic news about their country have been

broadcasted (β=0,337; p<0.05), provided that all the other variables in the model are constant

(ceteris paribus). This means that, the log odds of an utilitarian purchase (compared to not at all

purchase) are 0,337 lower, which is a significant effect (p=0,042<0,05). The odds ratio for this

variable are 1,400>1, indicating that the odds of an utilitarian purchase (relative to the NO

purchase) are 1.4 times higher for Spanish passengers exposed to recent negative news about the

Spanish economy, when they are compared with all other customers.

Please note that none of these variables (the dummy for Spanish residents, SPi and the interactions

of this dummy with the negative economic news in the day and in the day before shopping,

INT_SP_SPNEGNEWSt and INT_SP_SPNEGNEWSt-1) was a significant predictor of the likelihood

of a hedonic purchase. This means that, somewhat counter intuitively, the conservative spending

argument seems to hold for hedonic purchases but not for utilitarian purchases. In contrast, the retail

therapy argument – which I could not find as hypothesized (an increase in the purchase incidence of

hedonic products) – seems to possibly hold but for utilitarian purchases. I explore these effects and

possible interpretations and implications of these in the conclusion and discussion section.

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Overview of hypotheses and findings

The following table gives an overview of the examined hypotheses and the corresponding main

findings.

H1: Consumers from countries that receive negative news about their economy have a

lower probability of making either hedonic or utilitarian purchases (responsible

spending argument).

This hypothesis is confirmed throughout the analysis. The focus of my analysis was

the passengers who experienced negative news on the 16th, 17th, 20th and 23rd of

January and how significantly they were influenced the next day of these releases. In

the comparison of utilitarian to not purchase in multinomial regression analysis the

preference to make at least a utilitarian purchase the day after the bad announcement,

was “suffering” from not purchase incidence. The odds of preferring utilitarian

purchase to not at all purchase confirm decreasing probabilities. These preferences are

expected to decrease even more, especially in morning hours shopping. Moreover,

passengers who have a browsing behavior appear less likely to make utilitarian

purchases compared to goal oriented passengers. Finally, this hypothesis is partially

supported from my results indicate that Spanish people are less likely to make

utilitarian purchases in general, but significantly more likely to make an utilitarian

purchase in the day after negative economic news about their country have been

broadcasted provided that all the other variables in the model are constant (ceteris

paribus). Considering also the reduced shopping activity of the days after the release of

the bad economic news, it is clear that people are influenced while holding all the other

factors to zero. Finally it is clear throughout the analysis that the majority of

passengers preferred not to make any purchase in general at the airport.

H2: Consumers from countries that receive negative news about their country’s

economy on the day before their travel or on the same day of travelling, have a higher

probability of purchasing hedonic goods (retail therapy argument).

Finding: This hypothesis is partly supported as the negative economic news announced

for Portuguese economy the previous day of shopping activity appear to increase the

probabilities for hedonic purchases. However, in general there is not significant

observation of influence from negative economic news in the comparison of hedonic to

not at all purchase incidence. There is a downturn of probabilities regarding hedonic

preferences and based on this assumption of the analysis, the hypothesis cannot be

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supported.

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Chapter V: Conclusion

Main findingsThrough my master thesis I strived to examine the impact of negative economic news to consumers’

shopping behavior related to utilitarian, hedonic and NO purchase incidence. In general, during the

examined period of two weeks, 15-28 January of 2012, passengers tended to avoid purchases. This

attitude is in accordance with the conservative spending argument introduced in the theory sections

satisfying 1 out of my 2 hypothesis. Unfortunately, the argument of retail therapy in this occasional

shopping procedure is not completely satisfied. However, I will conclude the main results of this

analysis based on the conservative spending argument which is strongly supported

Although the great shopping activity, including all types of behavior of browsers and goal oriented

passengers, observed in morning hours, according to descriptive statistics from the analysis, it is

clear that passengers prefer to make utilitarian purchases other than morning hours. This can be

justified by the fact that this part of the day is characterized as “rush” hours where people travel due

to work obligations. So, they are not that likely to make purchases while being under pressure.

Moreover, it is observed that utilitarian purchases have greater probability to happen through

constrained situations as it is in the case of Spaniards. This can be explained due to the obligatory

role that utilitarian needs play to people even in crises periods like this that Spanish economy faces

throughout the examined period but also before the examined period, and which cannot be

disregarded. Therefore, in the general conservative attitude that most passengers have, utilitarian

purchases seem to be “needed”.

Additionally, passengers who are browsing multiple stores are less likely to buy hedonic goods than

those who visit a single store. However they are more likely to make utilitarian purchases. A

possible explanation for this is that browsers are not motivated from emotions that hedonic goods

create to their customers, but from recreational and informational reasons in order to investigate the

best deal for them, which essentially exists in utilitarian purchases.

Regarding the negative economic news released on the days before the shopping activity, the

analysis did not give very concrete results. Worthy to be mentioned, however, are the results

regarding the effect of negative economic news released on the day before the shopping activity

about the Portuguese economy. What can be said, based on the increased probability of hedonic

purchases is that there is a slight preference for this type of purchase from all customers who visited

Portugal or lived there. This can be explained through the superiority of feelings introduced already

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from the theory section that hedonic purchases release to the passengers-customers according to the

value that each customer gives to those purchases and the directness to this news that passengers

experienced.

Finally, regarding the shopping behavior of Spanish provider passengers, which presented

significant results in the comparison of utilitarian to no purchase incidence, I assume that retail

therapy is at least partially influencing these results. Those passengers are less likely to purchase

utilitarian products after negative news but not less likely to purchase hedonic products, as the

interaction among negative economic news and Spain as a country of residence is positive. This

enables me to assume some “weak” support for retail therapy in this case. This can create a wider

assumption for people coming from less financial stable countries such as Portugal compared to

Spain, justifying their hedonic avoidance through their financial uncertainty.

As a general conclusion, I can say that the majority of passengers were from Portuguese providers

which justify their great influence from the specific economic situation. I can also confirm through

my analysis that people, throughout constrained financial situations, tend to spend responsibly their

money purchasing only utilitarian products and only when it is needed. Responsible spending seems

a stronger theory to predict what happens to consumers in harsh economic times than retail therapy.

Bad economic announcements can cause several implications to the psychology of consumers and

this is presented in this analysis through the restriction of shopping activity or even traveling that

caused the shopping restriction. Hedonic needs and luxury are set aside when uncertainty for the

future occurs and this is when the most difficult task for marketers begins, to make consumer feel

confident and shop.

Managerial implicationsAs a contribution to marketing managers at this difficult time of economy and marketing science I

came up with the following suggestions.

First, marketing managers should be open-minded toward alternative communication strategies in

order to influence the suspicious consumer. As the uncertainty of nowadays makes people-

passengers unwilling to purchase not only hedonic but also utilitarian products marketing managers

should find ways to make people forget their anxiety and seduce them to purchase.

It is assumed that after the check-in process passengers are released and that is the time when they

look around searching for their activities until their flight (Crawford and Melewar, 2003). So this is

the best time for the marketers to convince them to do their shopping. All these psychological

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transitions can lead them to impulse purchases which retailers should consider as their

opportunities. For this reason airport retailers should create such an environment that will release

people from their different unpleasant thoughts and induce them to purchases to make them feel

happier and released.

Fig. 9: Travel stress curve

How they can do this? By providing to their customers experience, associations that will be salient

to their memories and make them spread the word to their peers or even come back for another

purchase. As people nowadays feel violated from bad news and the gradual downgrade of all

economies, they do appreciate experience. Also, according to the study of Swinyard (1993),

consumer mood, involvement level and quality of the shopping experience have significant effects

on shopping intentions. Based on the results from a laboratory experiment, mood interacts with

involvement and shopping experience.

Second, taking into consideration the highly informed consumer nowadays with many interactions

through internet and social networks, I suggest that marketers of airport stores should be more

active in integrated communication through social media (Pruppers, 2011). More precisely, through

a small investigation in social groups on Face-book, only the store D had an updated page which

also needs improvement. Through this integrated program the greatest goal of marketers can be

achieved, to obtain the most effective and efficient communication of their products and the

experience that they offer to their customers.

Third, consumers prior and post crisis were mainly interested in the quality (McKenzie and

Schargrodsky, 2005). During or after the crisis, they may shop more days than before seeking for

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the best price deal but they were still focusing on the quality of the products they bought. As a

result, marketers should try to communicate this quality of their products and this can be easily

achieved and without cost through social media adding long-term impact on airport stores

credibility and honesty.

Last but not least, through my master thesis I strive to motivate and encourage marketing managers

to be creative and open-minded and to consider the real needs of consumers in nowadays difficult

economic environment. They should be creative to find ways not to banter consumers in order to

make purchases but to contribute to their psychological alleviation. As marketing is closely related

to consumer behavior, marketers should understand their difficult role of “interpreting” consumers.

Limitations and future researchTo these conclusions some limitations need to be drawn. First, the sample is dedicated to airport

environment which differs radically to “normal” shopping conditions. Studies, indicate (Crawford

and Melewar, 2003; Omar 2008) that the consumer behavior in an airport is completely different

than that in normal shopping conditions. Travelers are anxious due to the limited available time

until their flight but at the same time enthusiastic and vulnerable during their presence in the airport.

There is also possibility to lose the sense of time. So, in an airport environment where people

cannot react like in normal conditions this decision should be really careful and retailers should not

sacrifice the quality of products for lower prices or because customers are not in the appropriate

condition to understand this.

Second, the observation period is restricted to two weeks of available data. This time of period is

not enough to make concrete assumptions regarding airport shopping. Moreover, these two weeks

are exactly after the holidays of Christmas indicating that the shopping activity is general low due to

holidays shopping that previously days occurred.

For future research there is a variety of interesting options. First, it would be nice to explore

utilitarian and hedonic purchase in a mall environment where the pressure of time is not so persisted

and people can shop without anxiety. Also, the period time for the observation needs to be kind of

neutral, so not close to holidays or sales. Another possible option for the time span of observation is

to compare two different periods, one normal and one with sales to explore the utilitarian purchase

and the hedonic purchase in constrained economic situations.

Second, a comparison of this secondary data or similar secondary data could be compared with

questionnaires. This procedure which will capture more psychological aspects of consumers like the

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intention to buy and the social image they want to demonstrate through their answers to what they

really do, how they really react.

Finally, there is a common thought that late flights are those with the lowest fares. That time and as

it is confirmed through our data the stores are closed. A further exploration thus could be the

demographics of passengers who travel with these flights in order to compare their income with

utilitarian orientation in purchase or their avoidance of purchase.

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Appendix A:

Index of Consumer Sentiment (ICS):

Dutch consumers used to be more optimistic about their financial condition in seventies compared

to the total economic situation while after the 1980-1984 recession, a contradictory pattern was

observed with the optimism about the economy as whole to be greater than the individual financial

situation. As a conclusion, people tend to reduce insecurity about future and so to spend but also to

save more when the optimism is diffused contributing partly to the argument of retail therapy.

However, what is the “heart” of economic behavior are expectations which not only guide the

selection and the interpretation of economic news but also figure the economic behavior of

individuals.

GSM technology

As it can be assumed, the GSM network is not a local network but a cellular network. The operator

does not provide any position information such as Base Transceiver Stations (BTSs). A possible

solution to this deficiency is based on unofficial BTSs lists which can be found on internet. The

medium rate for base transceivers (BTs) with GPS location information is about 90 % of all BTs in

European countries. After the signal transmitting the data go to nearby Base Stations (BSs)

scanning and saved to Locator Table in PDPT server DB. Data are processed from Locator Table

through the PDPT Core to Position Table. The processing techniques are based on selected wireless

network WIFI or BT network providing all visible APs nearby the user. From the list of these APs

the actual position is computed (Krejcar, Janckulik and Motalova, 2010).

The GSM network provides only one base station (BS) info in each search cycle with the highest

signal strength collected via iteration cycles. During 10 cycles (per 10 seconds), 4 BTS info on

average are obtained. The most important info from BTSs is the Signal Strength (SS) and the Time

Advance (TA). The signal strength is refreshed in every scan while time advance is provided during

any type of communication with the selected BTS (i.e. talk request, move to another area or

Location Area Code LAC). The list of these BTSs with info is processed as in previous case for Wi-

Fi and BT networks. The only change is in the usage of TA if it is accessible. Another possibility to

get the user location in outdoor space is in GPS. GPS provide a location by Longitude and Latitude

(X and Y). One and simple conversion is necessary in order to transform a GPS-coordinates into S-

JTSK and this is used in PDPT Framework (Krejcar, Janckulik and Motalova, 2010).

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RFID/WLAN technology:

Radio Frequency Identification is the technology which uses radio waves in order to collect and

evaluate data in the new era of information technology. Although it is a totally facilitating device, it

took half a century to appear to the market world due to its costly implementation. There are two

different types RFID technology, the active and the passive one. The active RFID depends on a

power source device which is connected to an integrated battery and for this reason it has limited

lifetime. The passive RFID does not require battery implementation or maintenance and they are

small enough in order to fit into practical adhesive label. Its construction contained an antenna to

capture the energy, a “semi-conductor” chip attached to the antenna to transfer the tags’ IDs and an

encapsulation for environmental protection. Moreover, there are two different approaches of

transferring power from reader to the tag: the magnetic induction and the electromagnetic (EM)

wave capture. It is obvious that the last approach becomes more efficient nowadays with

continuously increased applications. RFID technology is not only applied in transmitting energy

and reading signals but also in “sensing”, regarding the appropriate temperature of perishables, for

commercial reasons and private concerns. Finally, whereas the potential benefits of RFID

application are large, the costly implementation, the design restrictions and the resistance of its

acceptance hold beck its establishment (Roy Want, 2006).

GSM technology:

GSM technology is a Global System for Mobile Communications (Groupe Spécial Mobile), created

by the ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute)  for second generation technology

(2G) digital cellular networks. It was created in order to replace the first generation (1G) analog

cellular networks and it is originally described as a 2“digital, circuit switched network optimized

for full duplex voice telephony. The standard was expanded over time to include first circuit

switched data transport, then packet data transport via GPRS (General Packet Radio Services)”.

Packet data transmission speeds were later increased via Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution

(EDGE). A brief description of the way that GSM network operates is described in the appendix

section.

Main attributes of RFID/GSM:2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM

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The main asset of this data is the accuracy that provides in accordance with the possibility for large

dataset with little or not at all workforce. However, RFID technology data can have some

drawbacks as well, as the setting up system for a company that does not have the system already

can be proved very expensive. Moreover, the setting up system can cause labor-intensity or even

technical disturbance before or during the data collection (Varpu Uotila & Skorgster P. 2007)

Finally, while the collected dataset can be very large, there are memory limitations regarding its

examination.

For this study, GSM was chosen as the data collecting method because it was easy to be obtained

through the WIFI system existing at an airport environment. Also as it is already stated, this kind of

data enables large dataset acquisition as that comes out the airport environment, with aim to track

customer with less than one meter accuracy and the great coverage of the system through the airport

stores.

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Appendix B:

News releases 15/01-28/1:

With starting point the 16th of January, the most important financial news’ release was the

downgrade of French credibility. However, Friday January 13th was a really fatal for more euro-

zone countries as Standard and Poor’s (S&P), after American markets closed for week, cut credit

ratings of Austria and France to AA. Three smaller European countries (Malta, Slovenia and

Slovakia) also suffered from a downgrade. Italy and Spain had also their ratings knocked down as

well by two notches (BBB+ and A respectively). Finally, Portugal’s and Cyprus’ debts were

considered as junk by S&P. This, “spiral” downward of 9 euro-zone countries created an overall

feeling of uncertainty among European economy.

On the 17th of January, the leader position of Germany economy is promoted, while Portuguese

news indicates that Portuguese State announced that had losses of 40 billion euro during the year

2011. Regarding, French and Spanish economy, French president and Spanish Prime Minister are

presented to support the proposed taxes on financial transactions. In contrast to the general

European situation, Denmark announced that the occurred downgrade will create 45000 new

vacancies for the country strengthening the competitiveness of national companies.

On 18th of January, Greece is one more time negotiating for the famous “haircut” on its national

debt. Representatives of the private creditors arrived discussing about exchange of debt securities

with maturities of 20-30 years. Moreover, European Commission has requested an infringement

procedure of Budapest, in order to modify the interdependence of Hungarian to the Central Bank

regarding the constitutional reforms. Croatian referendum as well, appeared extremely crucial for

European economy avoidance of collapse.

On the 19th of January, euro-zone crisis is on the center of global discussions. International

Monetary Fund chief asked European members to contribute to organizations coffers by paying

$500 billion while the World Bank has noted that the recession where Europe has got in can affect

the rest of the world. What is more, the Irish government faces a new threat to its advantageous

12.5% corporate tax as Germany and France force to the creation of a pan-European tax system.

On the 20th of January, Spain announced two more years of recession according to IMF forecasts

that Spanish Economy will contract by 1.2% in 2012 and 0.3% in 2013. Moreover, European

market brush aside Triple A loss as France and Spain are paying less regarding their national debt

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and the Paris Bourse gained 1.96 % supported by the banks and has raised more than 5% since the

S&P downgrade.

On the 21th January and 22nd of January, Croatia come to authorize by referendum the Treaty of

Accession to the European Union as the country is about to enter European Union in a crisis

environment. This decision is now followed by second thoughts and nationalist questions.

The following day, on the 23rd of January the Finish elections are on top of news’ releases.

However, the economic news of that day are about France and one of the elections’ candidates who

wants to reform the banking sector, renegotiate the European fiscal Union project and make a new

agreement with Germany. Finally, comparable to financial news is the announcement of Italian

government to liberalize certain employment sectors, promoting the youth employment.

On the 24th of January, European Union decided to cut back on Iranian oil and sanctions against the

Iranian Central Bank with the aim to force Tehran to freeze its nuclear Program. It is obvious that

this decision, like every particular decision of European Union in this time of crisis can lead to

crucial changes of financial situation in global markets. Moreover, Turkish government in Ankara

has warned the French government with economic retaliation because of French approval of

National Assembly bill outlawing denial of Armenian genocide by Ottoman Empire in 1915-16.

The most important release of that day was the announcement of International Labor Organization

that the global unemployment is estimated to reach the 209 million in 2013. The published report of

the organization puts the blame on the Leaders of Europe of plunging the world into recession by

imposing austerity measures balance public finance. This breakdown in growth and jobs leads to

political mobilization. Finally, IMF appears to call for change in Economic policy in Europe, as

IMF chief has criticized European budget mitigations and she is calling for more funds to be

available to European countries, a suggestion that Germany refuses.

On the 25th of January, euro-zone is again on the center of news as IMF has diminished its global

forecasts for 2012 from 4% to 3.3%, blaming again the expected recession caused by the Eurozone.

Also, Italian financial police declared that approximately 7500 people who declared zero income

must now pay nearly 21 billion euros in taxes, a situation that can cause on the one hand the public

anger but on the other hand can give the impression of “reforming” the financial system to better

confront the forthcoming difficulties.

The 26th of January news releases continue the Europe concern but now the World Bank indicates

that Europe should become more productive if it wants to remain “lifestyle superpower”. Moreover,

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regarding the Irish economy, it is announced that private investors have bought 3.5 billion of Irish

government bonds at rate of 5.2%. It is worth mentioned that the last Irish bond sale occurred in

September 2010 just before the European Union IMF bailout. What is more, top economists seem to

warn Europe about its closed borders. Interviewed by the Danish newspaper, the economists argue

that in order to cope with an aging population and global competition the European labor market

should be opened to skilled immigrants. This announcement created a hope for the future of Europe.

However, this information can be counter-argued with the increase of unemployment.

On the 27th of January, the issue of youth employment is enlightened again as France and Germany

are intending to present to the European Council on the 30 of January a recovery plan providing

vocational training and an employment agency for Europe. What is more, the Greek crisis is

presented as far from over. European commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs indicate

that greater safeguards.

Finally, the news released after the weekend of 28 to 29 of January on the 30 th of January, continue

with the crucial persistence of economic crisis. More precisely, Germany’s president pushes Greece

to the barricades. At the European Summit of 30 January, Berlin seeks to place Athens under fiscal

tutelage of the European commission, a proposal which was not well received in Greece.

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List of journal resources:

LES ECHOS, PARIS LA CROIX PARISLE MONDE, PARIS LIBÉRATION, PARISDIE PRESSE, VIENNA FRANKFURTER RUNDSCHAU, FRANKFURT

JORNAL DE NOTÍCIAS, PORTO MILLIYET, ISTANBULLA VANGUARDIA, BARCELONA LE TEMPS, GENEVA

BØRSEN, COPENHAGUE CORRIERE DELLA SERA, MILAN

DAILY EXPRESS, LONDON LA VANGUARDIA, BARCELONALA VOIX DU LUXEMBOURG, Luxembourg SVENSKA DAGBLADET, STOCKHOLM

HANDELSBLATT, DÜSSELDORF TO ETHNOS, ATHENS

THE IRISH TIMES, DUBLIN TROUW, AMSTERDAMPÚBLICO, MADRID NÉPSZABADSÁG, BUDAPEST POLITIKEN, COPENHAGEN LA REPUBBLICA, ROME DIE WELT, BERLIN THE INDEPENDENT, LONDONLA STAMPA, TURIN ADEVĂRUL, BUCHAREST VEČERNJI LIST, ZAGREB FINANCIAL TIMES

DEUTSCHLAND, HAMBURGLAPIN KANSA, ROVANIEMI NRC HANDELSBLAD, ROTTERDAM3

Some examples of the news releases on European newspapers are presented below:

On the Financial Times of London,

“In the wake of

the collective

downgrading of

9 eurozone

countries,

including

France, it’s

become clear

that the EU’s

policy of rescue funds coupled with fiscal austerity has

exhausted itself. It’s time for Angela Merkel and her partners

to find a credible outcome, writes Wolfgang Münchau.”

3 http://www.presseurop.eu/en

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On the ABC of Madrid,

“Two more years of recession for Spain:

The IMF forecasts that the Spanish economy will contract by 1.7% in

2012 and 0.3% in 2013.”

On the Jornal de Noticias of Porto,

“Black market is worth 19 years of unemployment benefits:

According to estimates, the black economy cost the Portuguese state

€40 billion in 2011. A situation that could worsen with austerity and

tax hikes.” 

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Appendix C:

Date frequencies:

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

Valid 15-jan-2012 2822 7,2 7,2 7,216-jαν-2012 2877 7,3 7,3 14,517-jαν-2012 2275 5,8 5,8 20,318-jαν-2012 2513 6,4 6,4 26,819-jαν-2012 2216 5,7 5,7 32,420-jαν-2012 3333 8,5 8,5 40,921-jαν-2012 2612 6,7 6,7 47,622-jαν-2012 3169 8,1 8,1 55,723-jαν-2012 3569 9,1 9,1 64,824-jαν-2012 2420 6,2 6,2 70,925-jαν-2012 2939 7,5 7,5 78,426-jαν-2012 2326 5,9 5,9 84,427-jαν-2012 3425 8,7 8,7 93,128-jαν-2012 2697 6,9 6,9 100,0Total 39193 100,0 100,0

Country frequencies:

Frequency Percent Valid Percent

Cumulative Percent

Valid DE 2939 7,5 7,5 7,5ES 5819 14,8 14,8 22,3FR 3332 8,5 8,5 30,8PT 24083 61,4 61,4 92,3UK 3020 7,7 7,7 100,0Total 39193 100,0 100,0

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Part of the day frequencies:

Frequency Percent Valid Percent

Cumulative Percent

Valid afternoon 14467 37,6 37,6 37,6morning 16618 43,2 43,2 80,8night 7403 19,2 19,2 100,0Total 38488 100,0 100,0

Shopping behavior frequencies:

Frequency Percent Valid Percent

Cumulative Percent

Valid HE 4020 10,3 10,3 10,3NO 29971 76,5 76,5 86,7UT 5202 13,3 13,3 100,0Total 39193 100,0 100,0

Number of visited stores frequencies:

Frequency Percent Valid Percent

Cumulative Percent

Valid 0 21930 57,0 57,0 57,01 14624 38,0 38,0 95,04 1934 5,0 5,0 100,0Total 38488 100,0 100,0

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Multinomial Regression analysis:

Shopping behavior purchase model

Case Processing SummaryN Marginal

PercentageShopping behavior HE 4020 10,3%

NO 29971 76,5%UT 5202 13,3%

MORNINGit 0 22254 56,8%1 16939 43,2%

AFTERNOONit 0 24436 62,3%1 14757 37,7%

BROWSINGi 0 36554 93,3%1 2639 6,7%

PTi 0 15110 38,6%1 24083 61,4%

SPi 0 33374 85,2%1 5819 14,8%

PTNEGNEWSit 0 36918 94,2%1 2275 5,8%

PTNEGNEWSit-1 0 34041 86,9%1 5152 13,1%

SPNEGNEWSit 0 35860 91,5%

1 3333 8,5%SPNEGNEWSit-1 0 36977 94,3%

1 2216 5,7%INT_SP_SPNEGNEWSt ,00 38720 98,8%

1,00 473 1,2%INT_SP_SPNEGNEWSt-1 ,00 38855 99,1%

1,00 338 ,9%

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INT_PT_PTNEGNEWSt ,00 37716 96,2%

1,00 1477 3,8%INT_PT_PTNEGNEWSt-1 ,00 36065 92,0%

1,00 3128 8,0%FRNEGNEWSit 0 36316 92,7%

1 2877 7,3%FRNEGNEWSit-1 0 36371 92,8%

1 2822 7,2%Valid 39193 100,0%

Missing 0

Total 39193

Subpopulation 108a

a. The dependent variable has only one value observed in 2 (1,9%) subpopulations.

Model Fitting InformationModel Model Fitting

CriteriaLikelihood Ratio Tests

-2 Log Likelihood

Chi-Square

df Sig.

Intercept Only

1,497E3

Final 1,019E3 478,673 28 ,000

Goodness-of-FitChi-Square Df Sig.

Pearson 172,206 186 ,758Deviance 187,344 186 ,459

Pseudo R-SquareCox and Snell ,012Nagelkerke ,016

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McFadden ,009

Likelihood Ratio TestsEffect Model Fitting

CriteriaLikelihood Ratio Tests

-2 Log Likelihood of

Reduced Model

Chi-Square df Sig.

Intercept 1,019E3 ,000 0 .

MORNINGit 1,027E3 8,225 2 ,016

AFTERNOONit 1,021E3 2,466 2 ,291

BROWSINGi 1,458E3 439,254 2 ,000

PTi 1,020E3 1,343 2 ,511

SPi 1,023E3 4,221 2 ,121

PTNEGNEWSit 1,019E3 ,000 0 .

PTNEGNEWSit-1 1,019E3 ,000 0 .

SPNEGNEWSit 1,020E3 1,057 2 ,589

SPNEGNEWSit1 1,020E3 1,184 2 ,553INT_SP_SPNEGNEWSt 1,019E3 ,320 2 ,852

INT_SP_SPNEGNEWSt1 1,023E3 4,489 2 ,106

INT_PT_PTNEGNEWSt 1,019E3 ,207 2 ,902

INT_PT_PTNEGNEWSt1 1,020E3 1,043 2 ,594

FRNEGNEWSit 1,019E3 ,000 0 .

FRNEGNEWSit-1 1,021E3 1,782 2 ,410

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Master thesis

Parameter EstimatesShopping behavior B Std.

ErrorWald df Sig. Exp(B) 95% Confidence

Interval for Exp(B)Lower Bound

Upper Bound

HE Intercept -1,374 ,288 22,737

1 ,000

[MORNINGit=0] ,026 ,046 ,330 1 ,566 1,027 ,938 1,124[MORNINGit=1] 0b . . 0 . . . .[AFTERNOONit=0] ,060 ,047 1,599 1 ,206 1,062 ,968 1,165[AFTERNOONit=1] 0b . . 0 . . . .[BROWSING=0] -,877 ,051 295,5

481 ,000 ,416 ,376 ,460

[BROWSING=1] 0b . . 0 . . . .[PTi=0] ,006 ,043 ,020 1 ,889 1,006 ,924 1,095[PTi=1] 0b . . 0 . . . .[SPi=0] -,014 ,059 ,054 1 ,816 ,986 ,879 1,107[SPi=1] 0b . . 0 . . . .[PTNEGNEWSit=0] ,129 ,147 ,776 1 ,378 1,138 ,853 1,518[PTNEGNEWSit=1] 0b . . 0 . . . .[PTNEGNEWSit-1=0] -,190 ,094 4,076 1 ,044 ,827 ,687 ,994[PTNEGNEWSit-1=1] 0b . . 0 . . . .[SPNEGNEWSit=0] -,037 ,066 ,316 1 ,574 ,964 ,847 1,097[SPNEGNEWSit=1] 0b . . 0 . . . .[SPNEGNEWSit-1=0] ,020 ,082 ,059 1 ,808 1,020 ,869 1,197[SPNEGNEWSit-1=1] 0b . . 0 . . . .[INT_SP_SPNEGNEWSt=,00]

,004 ,172 ,000 1 ,984 1,004 ,716 1,406

[INT_SP_SPNEGNEWSt=1,00]

0b . . 0 . . . .

[INT_SP_SPNEGNEWSt1=,00]

,096 ,216 ,197 1 ,657 1,100 ,721 1,680

[INT_SP_SPNEGNEWSt1=1,00]

0b . . 0 . . . .

[INT_PT_PTNEGNEWSt=,00]

-,082 ,187 ,190 1 ,663 ,922 ,638 1,330

[INT_PT_PTNEGNEWSt=1,00]

0b . . 0 . . . .

[INT_PT_PTNEGNEWSt1=,00]

,084 ,125 ,451 1 ,502 1,087 ,852 1,388

Chrysoula Safra -356653

Master thesis

[INT_PT_PTNEGNEWSt1=1,00]

0b . . 0 . . . .

[FRNEGNEWSit=0] 0b . . 0 . . . .[FRNEGNEWSit=1] 0b . . 0 . . . .[FRNEGNEWSit-1=0] ,080 ,068 1,364 1 ,243 1,083 ,947 1,238[FRNEGNEWSit-1=1] 0b . . 0 . . . .

UT Intercept -2,256 ,249 81,882

1 ,000

[MORNINGit=0] ,118 ,041 8,260 1 ,004 1,125 1,038 1,219[MORNINGit=1] 0b . . 0 . . . .[AFTERNOONit=0] ,045 ,042 1,193 1 ,275 1,046 ,965 1,135[AFTERNOONit=1] 0b . . 0 . . . .[BROWSINGi=0] ,865 ,087 98,34

01 ,000 2,375 2,002 2,817

[BROWSINGi=1] 0b . . 0 . . . .[PTi=0] ,044 ,038 1,348 1 ,246 1,045 ,970 1,126[PTi=1] 0b . . 0 . . . .[SPi=0] ,106 ,053 3,948 1 ,047 1,112 1,001 1,234[SPi=1] 0b . . 0 . . . .[PTNEGNEWSit=0] -,171 ,133 1,657 1 ,198 ,843 ,650 1,094[PTNEGNEWSit=1] 0b . . 0 . . . .[PTNEGNEWSit-1=0] ,025 ,091 ,073 1 ,787 1,025 ,857 1,225[PTNEGNEWS-1=1] 0b . . 0 . . . .[SPNEGNEWSit=0] -,054 ,058 ,867 1 ,352 ,947 ,845 1,062[SPNEGNEWSit=1] 0b . . 0 . . . .[SPNEGNEWSit-1=0] -,072 ,070 1,056 1 ,304 ,931 ,812 1,067[SPNEGNEWSit-1=1] 0b . . 0 . . . .[INT_SP_SPNEGNEWSt=,00]

-,086 ,153 ,315 1 ,575 ,918 ,681 1,238

[INT_SP_SPNEGNEWSt=1,00]

0b . . 0 . . . .

[INT_SP_SPNEGNEWSt1=,00]

-,337 ,166 4,132 1 ,042 ,714 ,516 ,988

[INT_SP_SPNEGNEWSt1=1,00]

0b . . 0 . . . .

[INT_PT_PTNEGNEWSt=,00]

,012 ,172 ,005 1 ,945 1,012 ,722 1,418

[INT_PT_PTNEGNEWSt=1,00]

0b . . 0 . . . .

[INT_PT_PTNEGNEWSt1=,00]

,103 ,121 ,726 1 ,394 1,109 ,874 1,406

[INT_PT_PTNEGNEWS 0b . . 0 . . . .

Chrysoula Safra -356653

Master thesis

t1=1,00][FRNEGNEWSit=0] 0b . . 0 . . . .[FRNEGNEWSit=1] 0b . . 0 . . . .[FRNEGNEWSit-1=0] ,046 ,060 ,587 1 ,443 1,047 ,931 1,177[FRNEGNEWSit-1=1] 0b . . 0 . . . .

a. The reference category is: NO.b. This parameter is set to zero because it is redundant.

ClassificationObserved Predicted

HE NO UT Percent Correct

HE 0 4020 0 ,0%NO 0 29971 0 100,0%UT 0 5202 0 ,0%Overall Percentage

,0% 100,0% ,0% 76,5%

Chrysoula Safra -356653