Redefining ‘entertainment value’: A qualitative inquiry of shopping centre managers’ perspectives.

Abstract

Shopping centres stage entertainment events (e.g. children workshops, mini concerts, and mini festivals) to add ‘entertainment value’ to the retail experience and in turn build customers’ loyalty and approach behaviours (e.g. extended stay and increased spending). Despite the relationship between delivery of entertainment value and retail entertainment events, there are gaps in the extant literature, including: i) existing definitions of entertainment value have been mostly examined in retail contexts outside of entertainment events; ii) prior studies have primarily utilised a unidimensional approach to measuring customer value. Customer value is complex in nature and the extent to which a multidimensional approach would be more relevant for understanding entertainment value within the retail entertainment event context remains unknown; and iii) shoppers have been the primary unit of analysis with other stakeholders’ perspectives (e.g. managers) about entertainment value and its dimensionality rarely being considered. To address these gaps in the extant literature, this study involved in-depth interviews with eight shopping centre marketing managers who were highly experienced with staging entertainment events. The qualitative results contribute to the extant literature in three ways: i) a multidimensional definition is proposed as more insightful and practical for examining the entertainment value within the context of shopping centre entertainment events; ii) the multidimensional definition potentially comprises affective, activity, and aesthetic dimensions (evident in extant literature), as well as, functional, social, and altruistic dimensions (emerging from this research) and iii) altruistic value identified in this study highlights the increasing use of entertainment events for cause-related purposes by retailers, reflecting the ‘selfish altruism’ phenomenon (Fairnington, 2010). Theoretical and managerial implications arising from the qualitative findings are discussed together with opportunities for future research.