Towards a theory of shopping: a preliminary conceptual framework.

Abstract

One criticism (Arnould, 2000) of Miller's 1998 book, A Theory of Shopping and the jointly authored Shopping, Place and Identity (Miller et al., 1998) is that the authors fail to incorporate or even acknowledge the body of literature which exists within marketing and consumer research. Thus, as Arnould states, `the authors rediscover some of the findings of theoretical marketing literature about shopping venues, shopping and customer- store and service relationships' (Arnould, 2000, p. 106). This paper attempts to redress the balance by proposing a conceptual framework for shopping which incorporates relevant marketing and consumer research literature and which also draws on the wider literature in the social sciences to set the context for progress towards a theory of shopping.