ACADEMIC PAPERS

Dressing for the thrill: An

exploration of why women dress up
to go shopping
Received in revised form.

Micael-Lee Johnstone
is a senior teaching fellow in the Department of Marketing at the University of Otago.
Her research interests include retail marketing, marketing communications and social
marketing. She is currently working towards her PhD in the area of retail identity.

Denise M. Conroy
is a senior lecturer in the Department of Marketing at the University of Auckland.
Denise’s primary research interest is centred on consumer behaviour. She is currently
taking a constructivist approach to personal appearance, building upon her interest in
both identity and identification.

Keywords:
Abstract
Rituals, ritual
This paper focuses on the pleasurable aspects of shopping from an experiential perspective, ritual
behaviour, ritual
behaviour being the focal point. This research adopts an interpretive methodological approach and
artefacts, social relies on phenomenological interviews with a range of women to explain how ritual behaviour and
identity, hedonic ritual artefacts contribute to pleasurable shopping experiences. The findings suggest that the
consumption, dressing ritual is an important determinant of whether or not the shopping experience will be
symbolic perceived as pleasant or unpleasant. Equally important, the ritual of dressing was found to play an
consumption important role for many of the participants in their maintenance of self. Copyright # 2005 John
Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION (1986) suggest, ritual activities are

Rachel (31-year-old financial controller):
‘I always put on lipstick when I go out always. I
wear bugger all makeup now but I always wear
lipstick when I go out [pause] I think I look
better with it on. I don’t know why actually
[pause] it’s because I think I’m going to come
across someone [pause]. If it’s someone I know I
don’t really care if I’ve got makeup on or not.
They know me and so they know ME not the
makeup. But I’m still putting it on for people I
don’t know [pause]. Yeah probably the people
Micael-Lee Johnstone
Department of that you don’t know are going to judge you so
Marketing, University you want the first impression of you to be fully
of Otago, P. O. Box 56, enhanced [laughs].’
Dunedin,NewZealand
Tel: +64 3 479 8013
Fax: +64 9 479 8172 Like Rachel, everyone has their own set
e-mail: mjohnstone@
business.otago.ac.nz
of rituals that they perform on a regular
basis. As Rook (1985) and McCracken
pervasive in people’s everyday lives.
People perform grooming rituals,
holiday rituals, gift-giving rituals,
business rituals and so on. Yet, within the
retail environment, this area of research
largely has been neglected. This is
surprising since Western culture is very
much defined by its commodities and
consumption activities. It is, as Slater
(1997: 8) suggests, ‘a culture of
consumption’, or a society in which
commodities and consumption activities
influence who people are and what they
would like to become (Belk, 1995). The
focus of this paper is to look at one aspect
of consumer culture — the shopping
phenomenon — focusing primarily on

234 Journal of Consumer Behaviour Vol. 4, 4, 234–245 Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1472-0817

the pleasurable aspects of shopping from
an experiential perspective. Why do
women find shopping pleasurable? As
Clammer (1992: 195) states, ‘shopping is
not merely the acquisition of things: it is
the buying of identity’. Yet, one does not
need to confine shopping to the physical
act itself, it encompasses many other
elements, such as browsing (eg Bellenger
and Korgoankar, 1980; Bloch and
Richins, 1983), socialising (eg Frenzen
and Davis, 1990; Rubinstein and
Parmelee, 1992), people-watching or
voyeurism (eg Bloch et al., 1994; McGrath
and Otnes, 1995) and ‘parading’ or
narcissism (Featherstone, 1982).
LITERATURE REVIEW
Hedonic consumption
Many studies in the past have
investigated the information-processing
aspects of consumer behaviour but, as
Woods (1981, cited in Holbrook et al.,
1984: 728) states, consumers ‘also engage
in imaginative, emotional and
appreciative consumption experiences’.
Holbrook and Hirschman (1982) referred
to this as hedonic consumption
experiences. These types of consumption
experiences are concerned with feelings,
fantasies and fun, and are very much a
multisensory and emotive experience
(Holbrook and Hirschman, 1982).
The experiential perspective has much
to offer retail literature because, as
Seamon (1984) suggests, people form
emotional links with their environments
based upon their experiences with the
environment. By understanding the
experiential nature of consumption one
may come to have a better understanding
of why people regularly patronise
specific retail sites, and why they
participate in various consumption
activities. As Abbott (1955: 40, cited in
Holbrook, 1987: 161) states, ‘what people
really desire are not products but
satisfying experiences’. Yet, as Edgell
and Hetherington (1996: 5) contend,
social relations shape the experience of
consuming. This has important
implications for the retail environment.
Journal of Consumer Behaviour Vol. 4, 4, 234–245 Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1472-0817
Dressing for the thrill
Researchers such as Cova (1997) suggest
that consumers form social links with
others through their consumption
practices. This social link may be more
significant than the product because the
product merely facilitates these social
interactions (Cova, 1997; Aubert-Gamet
and Cova, 1999). Consequently, while
some forms of consumption may
decrease, other forms may increase
because consumers will choose products
and retail environments, not for their use
value, but for their link value (Cova,
1997). Therefore, one could posit that
social interactions within the retail
environment may influence how one
perceives and identifies with the retail
environment and with others within it,
which consequently may affect one’s
pleasurable (or hedonic) shopping
experiences.
The aim of this study was to examine
hedonic shopping experiences within the
retail environment in order to find out
what factors contribute to pleasurable
shopping experiences. For the purpose of
this paper, the findings focus on the
dressing ritual and how this contributes
to positive and/or pleasurable shopping
experiences.
Rituals
Rituals are pervasive in people’s
everyday lives, yet there has been some
difficulty in finding a universal
definition of the term ‘ritual’ because
people have often restricted the meaning
to religious or mystical contexts, viewed
it as a primitive and regressive
behaviour, or depicted rituals as things
that take place in large public settings
(Rook, 1985). For the purposes of this
paper, the authors define rituals as
symbolic behaviour that is actively or
passively performed by a participant in a
public or private setting, either with or
without an audience (Rook, 1985;
Rothenbuhler, 1998).
Rook (1985) relies on the following
four tangible components when defining
a ritual experience. First, ritual artefacts
are physical objects, for example, the
235
Micael-Lee Johnstone and Denise M. Conroy
clothing one wears to go shopping.
Secondly, a ritual script guides the use of
the artefacts and is performed by the
people who are participating in the
ritual. For example, the script will change
depending on the role one assumes
within the shopping environment and
within each store (eg discount store versus
boutique designer store). Thirdly, ritual
performance role(s) can be passive or active
because participants can either interact
directly (eg singing the national anthem at
a sporting event) or indirectly (eg
watching the rugby World Cup final on
television along with thousands of other
viewers). Fourthly, a ritual experience
includes a ritual audience, which may be an
immediate audience, such as family and
friends, or can extend beyond one’s circle
of friends to include one’s community,
city, country and the world.
Essentially, rituals are communicative.
Just as symbolic consumption can
convey much meaning about a person (or
group), ritual actions can also
communicate much meaning about
people and places. Rituals serve to
include or exclude individuals from
community membership and groups
(Bocock, 1974; Rook, 1985).
Social identity theory (SIT) is a useful
framework within which to explore why
people participate in ritualised
behaviour. Social identity, as defined by
Tajfel and Turner (1986: 16), incorporates
‘those aspects of an individual’s self-
image that derive from the social
categories to which he perceives himself
belonging’. This categorisation process
serves two purposes. First, as Ashforth
and Mael (1989) state, it enables people to
define others, as it provides a systematic
means of segmenting and ordering the
social environment. Secondly, it enables
people to locate or define themselves in
the social environment (Ashforth and
Mael, 1989: 21).
As Driver (1991: 132) states, ‘the
reinforcement, if not the actual creation
of social order is perhaps the most
obvious of ritual’s functions’. Not only
do rituals enable people to move from
236 Journal of Consumer Behaviour Vol. 4, 4, 234–245 Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1472-0817
one group or community to the next, but
also through one’s shared consumption
with others these relationships can be
formed (Gainer, 1995: 257). More
importantly, rituals can manage
relationships even in the absence of face-
to-face communication because common
participation still can be shared through
consumption rituals (Gainer, 1995: 253),
such as Christmas celebrations,
birthdays and so on. Therefore,
consumption should not be understood
‘as consumption of use-values, a material
utility, but primarily as the consumption
of signs’ (Featherstone, 1987: 57). As past
researchers suggest, symbolic
consumption and ritual behaviour
communicates much meaning about an
individual (eg McCracken, 1986; Fischer
and Arnould, 1990), about societal norms
and values (eg Solomon, 1985; Escalas,
1993), and about how relationships are
managed (eg Wallendorf and Arnould,
1991; Arnould and Price, 1993).
Therefore, by understanding
consumption activities that take place
during the performance of rituals, one
also may have a better understanding of
those cultural values that are most
important in society (Houston, 1999:
542). Equally important, one may have a
better understanding of how rituals
contribute to making a shopping
experience pleasurable.
RESEARCH METHOD
This paper was undertaken with two
research objectives: first, to explain how
ritual behaviour and ritual artefacts
contribute to pleasurable shopping
experiences and, secondly, to explore the
motivations that drive these rituals. The
study employed an interpretivist
methodological approach because the
authors were interested in exploring the
participants’ lived experiences. Since this
study was concerned with how
individuals construct meaning,
qualitative methods were used. The
advantage of using qualitative methods
is that they enable the study to focus on
ordinary events that happen in ‘real life

settings’; the emphasis being on a
subject’s ‘lived experience’ (Miles and
Huberman, 1994). Qualitative methods
also enable researchers to understand
how ‘the everyday, intersubjective world
is constituted’ (Schwandt, 1994: 192).
Data collection
Twenty women ranging in age from 18 to
74 were recruited for this study and
interviewed individually. The authors
recruited women because they wanted to
eliminate any possible gender effects, as
the interviewer was also a woman. Since
‘primacy is placed on the perspective of
the experiencing individual rather than
on the cultural setting’ (Thompson et al.,
1990: 347), a representative sample was
not required.
Phenomenological interviewing
techniques were used because the
authors were interested in obtaining
‘thick descriptions’. In-depth interviews
are useful because they document
multiple perspectives of reality. In order
to minimise or eliminate any possible
historical effects, interviewing took place
over a four-month period. Interviews
varied in length from one to two hours
and were unstructured in nature.
Pleasurable shopping experiences were
restricted to physical settings, ie
shopping centres, and the authors
explored the dressing ritual from the
individual’s perspective rather than
from a gendered perspective.
Analytical method
Following phenomenological principles,
thematic analysis was used. The
advantage of using thematic analysis is
that it not only involves systematically
analysing the text and looking for
patterns within the text, but also is an
iterative approach, whereby initial
categorisation may be changed and
moved in relation to other texts (Dittmar
and Drury, 2000: 119).
Checks
The authors accept that multiple realities,
and hence multiple interpretations, do
Journal of Consumer Behaviour Vol. 4, 4, 234–245 Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1472-0817
Dressing for the thrill
exist in this world but, from a
constructionist perspective, some
interpretations will be better than others.
Consequently, two independent judges
were recruited to authenticate the
findings. In addition, a variety of checks
were used to ensure that the findings and
conclusions were reasonable and logical.
These checks included descriptive
validity (Wolcott, 1990), interpretative
validity (Maxwell, 1992), dependability
and confirmability (Lincoln and Guba,
1985).
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
Six main themes relating to the dressing
ritual emerged from this study: role-
playing, fulfilling a fantasy, voyeuristic
pleasure, the need for affiliation,
legitimacy and the shopping bag — a
symbolic artefact. These symbolic
activities included dressing in an
appropriate manner (as perceived by the
participant), applying make-up, paying
attention to one’s hair and carrying the
‘right’ kind of shopping bag. The
findings revealed that the majority of
participants in the study indulged in
specific ritualistic activities before going
shopping. Participants reported
ritualistically dressing in a particular
way in order to present the ‘right’ kind of
image to the outside world. Just as
change usually affects personal identity,
so too does the re-enactment of
sameness, such as daily routines (Mol,
1976: 235). As Mol (1976) suggests, daily
rituals become integrated into one’s
personal identity. For example, Rachel, a
31-year-old financial controller, always
wore lipstick when she went out, even
though she habitually wore very little
make-up. As she states:
Rachel (31 years): ‘I think I look better with it
on [pause] I feel more comfortable if I’m dressed
in the part.’
Alternatively, Sue, a 52-year-old
secretary, dressed up to go shopping
because she wanted to project a youthful
image to other people, ie to strangers.
237
Micael-Lee Johnstone and Denise M. Conroy
Sue (52 years): ‘It’s important to, I feel, to
dress up in something trendy because you don’t
want to be perceived as being sort of frumpy
[pause] by the people you don’t know.’
The consequences of not participating in
these rituals often resulted in
unsatisfactory and sometimes
unpleasant shopping experiences, as
Sarah (a television journalist)
commented below.
Sarah (31 years): ‘I always feel when I walk in
[referring to designer stores], there’s this
feeling that the shop assistant’s always looking
you up and down to see whether you can afford
to shop in the first place.’
The dressing ritual contributed not only
to some of the participants’ personal
identities but also to their social
identities. Tajfel and Turner (1986) state
that people will often try to maintain a
positive social identity in order to be
accepted by others. One can relate this
back to the shopping environment
because people may choose to patronise
stores that are congruent with their social
identities, as to do otherwise may lead to
rejection or alienation. Once an
individual has decided on how they
would like to be perceived in a given
social situation, such as shopping in a
particular store or in a certain location,
means of expressing that self are often
formulated. These findings will now be
discussed in detail.
RITUALS CONTRIBUTING TO A
PLEASURABLE SHOPPING EXPERIENCE
Role-playing
The dressing ritual enables people to
role-play. For example, Flora sometimes
pretended to be the type of person who
could regularly afford to shop in
expensive boutique stores. She was able
to adopt this role and change her identity
through her use of clothing. As Driver
(1991: 93) states, ‘rituals are primarily
instruments designed to change a
situation’.
Flora (27 years): ‘That’s especially why I
dressed up like this today, I want to go to posh
238 Journal of Consumer Behaviour Vol. 4, 4, 234–245 Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1472-0817
shops, I want to look like someone who goes to
posh shops [laughs], even if I don’t.’
Fulfilling a fantasy
As with other rituals, eg the wedding
ceremony, there is a performance aspect
to the dressing ritual. Performance via
the ritual mode is done bodily and shown
through symbolic display (Driver, 1991:
91). Flora, a 27-year-old English
postgraduate student, for example,
gained much pleasure in being able to
change her appearance daily, hence
signifying to others that she had created a
new identity. For her ‘the phenomena of
expectation and anticipation play a
central role in shopping’ (Lehtonen and
Mäenpää, 1997: 158).
Flora (27 years): ‘I like all those really
dramatic clothes so I dress up. I think I like
having lots of clothes and just choosing who I
want to be every day, so that’s the
enjoyment . . . changing yourself by wearing
certain clothes.’
As George Herbert Mead suggests, if
people want to change their identity,
they need to change their consumption
habits in order to indicate to others that
they have adopted a new identity, only
then can they assume the new identity
(Campbell, 1995: 112). Flora enjoyed
being on display because she enjoyed the
theatrical aspect of dressing, or ‘playing
dress up’ and living a fantasy. For this
ritual to be meaningful, Flora required an
audience. As her comments below
indicate, dressing in a theatrical or
fantastical manner could be very
empowering for her.
Flora (27 years): ‘I remember this skirt [points
to the one she is wearing] I bought it especially
to intimidate this man I was having problems
with, so [laughs] I was shopping in a very, I
don’t know, vicious mood [pause] I’m going to
buy something very dramatic and walk into the
place and he’ll be there and he’ll just look at me
and he’ll be like crushed to death, and so
[laughs] I bought this skirt. And it kind of
worked too [laughs].’
Yet, one could also suggest that Flora’s
actions verge on being narcissistic. Not

only did Flora take great pleasure in
observing herself, she also enjoyed
observing others watching her. As
Featherstone (1982: 27) states:
‘Within consumer culture, which approximately
coincides with the culture of narcissism, the new
conception of self which has emerged, which we
shall refer to as the ‘‘performing self ’’ places
greater emphasis upon appearance, display and
the management of impression.’
Certainly, for some participants, the
dressing ritual enabled them to pretend
to be something they were not, but, in
Flora’s case, the audience was equally
important to her pleasure.
Voyeuristic pleasure
For some participants, voyeurism played
an integral part in the dressing ritual. The
participant on the one hand was the
spectacle (an object of someone else’s
gaze), but, at the same time, was also a
spectator.
Sue (52 years): ‘I always dress up to go to the
mall [pause] because you’re going to be seen. As
well as looking, seeing other people, you’re
going to be seen in turn by other people.’
The authors suggest that the performance
factor enabled the shopper to experiment
with her appearance and to have fun in the
retail environment; one could even view
the dressing ritual in carnivalesque terms.
For example, it may be fun and exciting to
adopt a new identity each time one goes
shopping or it may mark the beginning of
a new adventure.
Sue (52 years): ‘I think shopping’s an
adventure. It’s an adventure because you never
know what you’re going to see, you might
discover a bargain or you might discover a new
product . . . anything can happen sort of thing.’
At the same time, it is important to view
retail environments as places that
nurture and foster social interactions
because social relationships are often
what shape consumption activities in the
first place.
The store, its goods and even its
patrons become the objects of desire if
Journal of Consumer Behaviour Vol. 4, 4, 234–245 Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1472-0817
Dressing for the thrill
one is to apply film theorist Mulvey’s
(1991) perspective to the retail
environment. Mulvey (1991) applies
scopophilia (the pleasure of looking—
the female gaze) to narrative cinema;
males look at females (ie the spectator
observes the spectacle/object) and, in
turn, females are aware that they are
being looked at.
As Berger (1972: 47) states, men look at
women and women watch themselves
being looked at, which not only
determines the relations between the
sexes but also ‘the relations between
women themselves’. Yet, one could add
that women within the retail
environment are both the spectators and
the spectacle. Within this arena, women’s
adornments and clothing become the
objects of desire, and pleasure is derived
from appreciating other women’s
clothing, jewellery, make-up and hair.
Sally (28-year-old TV researcher): ‘‘‘Oh
those are great shoes!’’ ‘‘YES they are aren’t
they. I got these from sales.’’ There’s this
wonderful thing about girls, it’s always [pause]
kind of complimentary. Girls always do that to
girls all the time.’
The findings from this study suggest that
the participants identified with other
women within the retail environment
based on social categories. The authors
also argue that the female spectator within
the retail arena is an active participant, not
passive, because she actively constructs
and deconstructs her identity.
The need for social affiliation
Identification is commonly conceived as
a cognitive concept that involves an
individual coming to see another entity
(individual, group, object, place, etc) as
being definitive of self. The greater the
number of attributes the individual
considers their self to hold in common
with the entity, the stronger the
individual’s sense of identification (Pratt,
1998; Pratt and Foreman, 2000). Pratt
(1998) suggests that there are two ‘paths’
to identification, ‘affinity identification’
and ‘emulation identification’.
239
Micael-Lee Johnstone and Denise M. Conroy
Accordingly, identification may occur
because an organisation, in this case the
retail environment, is deemed similar to
one’s self (eg a consumer’s identity is
congruent with the store’s identity), ie
‘affinity identification’. Alternatively,
one may make changes to one’s self to
become more similar to an entity because
one admires that entity, in this case the
retail environment (eg a consumer makes
changes to one’s own identity in order to
become similar to the store’s identity), ie
‘emulation identity’. When many of the
participants acknowledged dressing in a
way that deliberately reflected a store
they wished to shop in, this perhaps
suggested that emulation identification
was taking place due to the need for
social affiliation, as highlighted by
Tracy’s comments below.
Tracy (21-year-old art student): ‘I feel weird
in those shops [surf shops] because you feel like
you should have to either surf or wear board
shorts or even go to the beach would be an
advantage [laughs] . . . you don’t want to walk
in with the exact same outfit as in the store but
you want to look like you’ve purchased there
before and you will probably purchase there
now, so then you feel a bit more accepted.’
Many participants suggested that they
often felt intimidated by sales personnel
because they believed judgments were
being made about their appearances.
More importantly, judgments were
being made about them as people.
Consequently, during these brief
service encounters, the shopping
experience was often perceived as
unpleasant.
Flora (27 years): ‘When you go to certain
shops you have to really dress up, it’s the same
when you go to hairdressers. When I go to my
hairdresser, I always put on my best clothes
because otherwise they just treat you like dirt
[laughs]. It’s the same with shops [pause] you
know we’d dress up and try to look really cool
because the shop assistant can be very
judgmental.’
An alternative explanation is that there is
a third path to identification: the ‘fear and
trepidation’ path. The authors suggest
240 Journal of Consumer Behaviour Vol. 4, 4, 234–245 Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1472-0817
that fear and identification go hand in
hand because the dressing ritual may
provide one with a sense of protection on
a personal level. For some participants,
dressing appropriately was important
because they feared being found out as
‘fakes’ and/or being socially alienated.
As Bhattacharya and Sen (2003)
maintain, consumers’ identification with
certain companies often helps to satisfy
one or more important self-definitional
needs. If a person believes that his or her
self-concept is incongruent with the
store’s image, he or she may experience
uneasiness. This study’s findings suggest
that dressing appropriately may often
relieve this uneasiness, which links back
to the ‘fear and trepidation’ path. Hence,
dressing appropriately may lead to high
self-esteem and social acceptance, which
may lead to a sense of social belonging,
which in turn may lead to pleasurable
shopping experiences.
Trish (41-year-old housewife): ‘Well I think
if you’re going to buy say clothes, then you
probably want to feel confident in your
appearance. And I think if you have reasonable
clothes on and you’ve got makeup and you’ve
done your hair and stuff, I think you feel more
confident about that so you can go into a place
and you know too bad if they sort of look you up
and down a bit.’
It appears that for some of the
participants a fear or trepidation path
was being used in some situations and
the emulation path was being used in
other situations.
Legitimacy
Rachel (31 years): ‘And nice bags make you
feel good. You’ve got a nice fancy Max bag or
something. That’s another thing, there was one
day in town, I said to Justine I’ll be going home
on the bus and I looked at the bags I was
carrying and I had a Warehouse bag, a Rendalls
bag and a Deka bag. And they were all
considered the lower end of the scale. They’re
only bags but I thought, ‘‘Oh God people will
think I’m a budget shopper’’. And so I stuffed
them all into one bag just so I didn’t have these
three cheaper department stores sort of thing.
And that’s REALLY sad.’

SIT suggests that humans need to feel
accepted. The desire to belong to a group
or to feel part of a community appeared
to be a motivating factor for many of the
participants. Consequently, much
symbolic meaning can be gauged from
their actions. The fact that a shopping bag
can communicate much meaning, as
illustrated by Rachel’s comments above,
is significant, while the fact that she was
aware of her actions is even more so.
Rachel rationalised that her actions were
absurd but it did not prevent her from
performing these actions, hence
signifying how powerful it is to preserve
one’s self-image and one’s social status.
As stated by Crane (2000: 2), ‘clothes as
artefacts ‘‘create’’ behaviour through
their capacity to impose social identities
and empower people to assert latent
social identities’. Rachel, in this case, did
not want to be perceived as a person who
shopped in lowbrow stores,
consequently her actions appeared to be
motivated by her desire to protect her
social identity. These findings would
suggest that a fear and trepidation path
to identification was being taken because
Rachel was afraid of being ‘found out’ as
a person who shopped in lowbrow
stores.
This third path is very much based on
fear and what might happen if one is
‘found out’. The authors would suggest,
however, that identification based on this
path was not very strong. Consumers
were more likely to be attracted to
emulation or affinity identification when
an alternative presented itself because
there is a basic desire to maintain and/or
enhance one’s self-concept. One’s self-
concept is guided by different motives,
such as the need for self-esteem, the need
for self-consistency, the need for social
consistency and the need for social
approval (Sirgy et al., 2000).
Consequently, the authors would
suggest that loyalty to stores based on the
fear and trepidation path is less likely to
be enduring if an alternative option were
to become available. As Sirgy et al. (2000:
127) propose, ‘the greater the match
Journal of Consumer Behaviour Vol. 4, 4, 234–245 Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1472-0817
Dressing for the thrill
between the store patron image and the
consumer’s self-concept, the more likely
that consumer [will have] a favourable
attitude toward that store’ and, the
authors would add, the more likely that
the person will identify with that store or
location.
The shopping bag as a symbolic
artefact
Eileen (61-year-old housewife): ‘Oh those
wonderful bags. I’m always thrilled with the
bags, I love the bags [pause] it’s quite nice if
you’ve bought something, trotting into the
next shop with a nice bag [laughs] and actually
ideally you could take an old one with you.’
The shopping bag that stores provide
their customers with is steeped in
symbolic meaning. This was highlighted
by Eileen’s comment above. Participants
were very aware of the images associated
with the different stores. In fact,
participants suggested that carrying the
right bag could even enhance their social
identities.
Kristy (22 years): ‘I remember getting a bag
from my brother, he bought something at
Barkers and I thought oh yeah Barkers is cool so
I, you know, just asked him for the bag so I could
take it to school, I mean I never wore anything
from Barkers but as long as I had the bag I was
cool.’
In contrast, bags could also make the
participant feel very self-conscious if she
thought others would perceive her
unfavourably, as highlighted by Rachel’s
earlier comments.
Some participants reflected on their
teenage years and suggested that they
were often influenced by a store’s image
and a store’s bag because this could
enhance their social identity. In fact,
many participants admitted to
borrowing shopping bags from family
members/friends, or keeping bags as
mementos if the bag had a favourable
image.
Tracy (21 years): ‘I keep some of them if
they’re really nice like there’s this beautiful
241
Micael-Lee Johnstone and Denise M. Conroy
Riccochet one that I bought a skirt with [pause]
because it was in this really nice bag it felt like it
was a present. It’s shaped like a handbag, so it’s
like you’re carrying a handbag, which is nice.’
In many ways, the shopping bag extends
the pleasurable shopping experience
long after the initial purchase.
Flora (27 years): ‘I remember once I bought
this dress in London, it was a beautiful beaded
dress and they packaged it up in this box and
put little pieces of paper in-between it and
things, and that was very lovely. It was like a
little present. I still keep it in the box [laughs],
in the box and the paper, and that was a few
years ago.’
Whether the bag was considered ‘nice’ or
not, appeared to be determined by three
factors:
— The store must sell expensive
products and/or high-image
products.
— The store must sell aesthetically
pleasing (ie beautiful) products.
— The bag must be made from quality
paper, it must have the store’s logo
printed on the outside and it must
have sturdy handles. Plastic bags,
even from exclusive stores, were not
perceived as favourably.
CONCLUSION
The aim of this study was to examine
hedonic shopping experiences within the
retail environment, and to find out what
factors contributed to pleasurable
shopping experiences. Clearly, it was
seen that specific ritualistic activities
prior to the shopping excursion were
common and contributed substantially
to the pleasure of the experience. The
most frequently cited ritual (and the
focus of this paper) was the dressing
ritual. Essentially, dressing was seen as
an important way of defining oneself and
gaining social approval. This study
suggests that the desire to dress
appropriately was driven by the
participants’ need to maintain their
social identities, and to locate and define
themselves in the social environment.
242 Journal of Consumer Behaviour Vol. 4, 4, 234–245 Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1472-0817
The participants clearly understood that
it was desirable to adapt their dress code,
and hence their social identity, to match
the retail environment they wished to
consume, in order to enhance their
experience. Equally, they were aware
that neglecting this ritual increased the
displeasure they might experience
during the act of shopping.
As Lurie (1981) suggests, people
choose clothing to define and to describe
themselves. Consequently, acceptance of
one’s clothing can either engage a person
in the group, or exclude them from
participation (Lurie, 1981). As the
findings revealed, the participants often
felt intimidated when they shopped in
certain stores (eg boutique stores),
because they believed the sales personnel
were making judgments about their
appearance. More importantly, they
believed judgments were being made
about them as people. Consequently,
these brief service encounters were often
viewed as unpleasant, which can be
linked to self-congruity theory (Sirgy
et al., 2000). If a participant believed that
their self-concept was not congruent
with a store’s image, they might
experience uneasiness. In contrast, the
findings revealed that this situation
could be appeased easily if the service
encounter was perceived to be pleasant.
Pratt’s (1998) ‘paths’ to identification
(affinity and emulation) were both
represented in the data, but a third path
based more on fear and trepidation
seemed equally apparent. Women
indulged in dressing rituals to ensure
that shop assistants in certain stores
would not question their right to be in
that store, not because of the women’s
emulation with the store, but because of
their concern for being ‘found out’, a fear
that their lack of identification with the
store was apparent to others, particularly
sales assistants. This is an important
point given the human need for social
affiliation, and clearly a point
understood more obviously by
consumers than service providers who
continue to express overt judgments of

consumers. Identification based upon
fear is unlikely to be as strong or
enduring as identification based upon
affiliation or emulation. This being the
case, loyalty to such stores or locations is
likely to be tenuous at best, and will be
replaced easily should an alternative
become available. Consequently,
retailers would be well advised to
encourage and nurture identification
based on affiliation or emulation, rather
than trepidation.
As suggested by Gainer (1995: 258),
joint symbolic consumption activities,
which can occur via participatory rituals,
help people to create and maintain
worlds beyond the self. The authors
suggest that the dressing ritual is
important because of the link value. As
Cova (1997) suggests, the link value is
becoming more important than the
product and the authors would add that
dressing to feel socially affiliated with
other shoppers is no exception.
At the same time, Aubert-Gamet and
Cova (1999) speak of current retail
environments as being non-places,
places in which people wander about
invisible to others, ie invisible to other
shoppers and invisible to sales staff. But
the results from this study suggest
otherwise. The participants did interact
with the shopping environment, whether
directly or indirectly, and they were
affected by the actions of others. More
specifically, voyeurism played a part in
the hedonic experience. Within the retail
arena, women’s adornments and
clothing have become the objects of
desire, and pleasure was derived from
appreciating other women’s clothing,
jewellery, make-up and hair. In this
environment, the female shopper was
both the spectator and the object of
another’s gaze, an active participant who
actively constructed and deconstructed
her identity.
Lastly, the findings would suggest that
lowbrow stores should reconsider the
design of their shopping bags, ie provide
unlabelled, unidentifiable bags in order
to make some consumers feel more
Journal of Consumer Behaviour Vol. 4, 4, 234–245 Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1472-0817
Dressing for the thrill
comfortable about shopping in their
stores. In contrast, highbrow stores
should place more emphasis on the
design of their bags because the store’s
image continues to be communicated
long after the initial purchase.
FUTURE RESEARCH
The results revealed that staff in boutique
stores often appeared to exert a
considerable amount of power over the
participants. Instead of the consumer
being in a position of power, there
appeared to be a reversal of power, ie the
retail staff (wielded power) versus the
shopper (felt powerless). One could
investigate this phenomenon further by
exploring the power relationships that
exist within the retail environment and
the impact they may have on consumers’
shopping experiences. Other potential
areas for future research include
exploring the shopping mall using the
three paths to identification and
exploring the retail environment from a
gendered perspective. Recently, there
has been much discussion in the media
about the ‘metrosexual male’ who enjoys
shopping, buying beauty products,
having facials and so on — activities that
generally have been considered part of
the female domain. Consequently, it
would be worthwhile exploring the retail
environment from both a male
perspective and a female perspective to
see how similar or dissimilar their
shopping experiences are.
REFERENCES
Arnould, E. J. and Price, L. L. (1993) ‘River magic:
Extraordinary experience and the extended service
encounter’, Journal of Consumer Research, 20, June,
24–45.
Ashforth, B. E. and Mael, F. (1989) ‘Social identity theory
and the organization’, Academy of Management Review,
14(1), 20–39.
Aubert-Gamet, V. and Cova, B. (1999) ‘Servicescapes: From
modern non-places to postmodern common places’,
Journal of Business Research, 44(1), 37–45.
Belk, R. (1995) ‘Studies in the new consumer behaviour’, in
Miller, D. (ed.) Acknowledging Consumption: A Review of
New Studies, Routledge, London, UK, 58–95.
Bellenger, D. E. and Korgoankar, P. (1980) ‘Profiling the
recreational shopper’, Journal of Retailing, 56(3), 77–92.
243
Micael-Lee Johnstone and Denise M. Conroy
Berger, J. (1972) Ways of Seeing, British Broadcasting
Corporation and Penguin Books, London, UK.
Bhattacharya, C. B. and Sen, S. (2003) ‘Consumer-company
identification: A framework for understanding
consumers’ relationships with companies’, Journal of
Marketing, 67, April, 76–88.
Bloch, P. H. and Richins, M. L. (1983) ‘Shopping without
purchase: An investigation of consumer browsing
behavior’, Advances in Consumer Research, 10, 389–393.
Bloch, P. H., Ridgway, N. M. and Dawson, S. A. (1994) ‘The
shopping mall as consumer habitat’, Journal of Retailing,
70(1), 23–42.
Bocock, R. (1974) Ritual in Industrial Society, George Allen &
Unwin Ltd, London, UK.
Campbell, C. (1995) ‘The sociology of consumption’, in
Miller, D. (ed.) Acknowledging Consumption: A Review of
New Studies, Routledge, London, UK, 96–126.
Clammer, J. (1992) ‘Aesthetics of the self: Shopping and
social being in contemporary urban Japan’, in Shields, R.
(ed.) Lifestyle Shopping: The Subject of Consumption,
Routledge, London, UK, 195–215.
Cova, B. (1997) ‘Community and consumption: Towards
a definition of the ‘‘linking value’’ of product or
services’, European Journal of Marketing, 31(3/4), 297–
316.
Crane, D. (2000) Fashion and its Social Agendas: Class, Gender,
and Identity in Clothing, The University of Chicago Press,
Chicago, IL.
Dittmar, H. and Drury, J. (2000) ‘Self-image—Is it the Bag?
A qualitative comparison between ‘‘ordinary’’ and
‘‘excessive’’ consumers’, Journal of Economic Psychology,
21(2), 109–142.
Driver, T. F. (1991) The Magic of Ritual: Our Need for
Liberating Rites that Transform Our Lives & Our
Communities, Harper San Francisco, New York, NY.
Edgell, S. and Hetherington, K. (1996) ‘Consumption
matters: The production and experience of
consumption’, in Edgell, S., Hetherington, K. and
Warde, A. (eds) The Sociological Review, Blackwell
Publishers/The Sociological Review, Oxford, UK, 1–10.
Escalas, J. E. (1993) ‘The consumption of insignificant
rituals: A look at debutante balls’, Advances in Consumer
Research, 20, 709–716.
Featherstone, M. (1982) ‘The body in consumer culture’,
Theory, Culture & Society, 1(2), 18–33.
Featherstone, M. (1987) ‘Lifestyle and consumer culture’,
Theory, Culture & Society, 4(1), 55–70.
Fischer, E. and Arnould, S. J. (1990) ‘More than a labor of
love: Gender roles and Christmas gift shopping’, Journal
of Consumer Research, 17, December, 333–345.
Frenzen, J. K. and Davis, H. L. (1990) ‘Purchasing behavior
in embedded markets’, Journal of Consumer Research, 17,
June, 1–12.
Gainer, B. (1995) ‘Ritual and relationships: Interpersonal
influences on shared consumption’, Journal of Business
Research, 32(3), 253–260.
Holbrook, M. B. (1987) ‘O, consumer, how you’ve changed:
Some radical reflections on the roots of consumption’, in
Firat, A. F., Dholakia, N. and Bagozzi, R. P. (eds)
Philosophical and Radical Thought in Marketing, Lexington
Books, Massachusetts/Toronto, 157–178.
244 Journal of Consumer Behaviour Vol. 4, 4, 234–245 Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1472-0817
Holbrook, M. B. and Hirschman, E. C. (1982) ‘The
experiential aspects of consumption: Consumer
fantasies, feelings, and fun’, Journal of Consumer Research,
9, September, 132–140.
Holbrook, M. B., Chestnut, R. W., Oliva, T. A. and
Greenleaf, E. A. (1984) ‘Play as a consumption
experience: The roles of emotion, performance, and
personality in the enjoyment of games’, Journal of
Consumer Research, 11, September, 728–739.
Houston, H. R. (1999) ‘Through pain and perseverance:
Liminality, ritual consumption, and the social
construction of gender in contemporary Japan’, Advances
in Consumer Research, 26, 542–548.
Lehtonen, T.-K. and Mäenpää, P. (1997) ‘Shopping in the
East Centre Mall’, in, Falk, P. and Campbell, C. (eds) The
Shopping Experience, Sage Publications, London, UK.
Lincoln, Y. S. and Guba, E. G. (1985) Naturalistic Inquiry,
Sage Publications, Beverly Hills, CA.
Lurie, A. (1981) The Language of Clothes, Random House,
New York, NY.
Maxwell, J. A. (1992) ‘Understanding validity in qualitative
research’, Harvard Educational Review, 62(3), 279–300.
McCracken, G. (1986) ‘Culture and consumption: A
theoretical account of the structure and movement of the
cultural meaning of consumer goods’, Journal of
Consumer Research, 13, June, 71–84.
McGrath, M. A. and Otnes, C. (1995) ‘Unacquainted
influencers: When strangers interact in the retail setting’,
Journal of Business Research, 32(3), 261–272.
Miles, M. B. and Huberman, A. M. (1994) Qualitative Data
Analysis, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA.
Mol, H. (1976) Ritual. Identity and the Sacred, Basil Blackwell,
Oxford, UK, 233–245.
Mulvey, L. (1991) Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.
Visual and Other Pleasures, M. A. P. Ltd, London, UK, 14–
26.
Pratt, M. G. (1998) ‘To be or not to be? Central questions in
organizational identification’, in Whetten, D. A. and
Godfrey, P. C. (eds) Identity in Organizations, Building
Theory Through Conversations, Sage Publications, Inc.,
Thousand Oaks, CA.
Pratt, M. G. and Foreman, P. O. (2000) ‘Classifying
managerial responses to multiple organizational
identities’, Academy of Management Review, 25(1),
18–42.
Rook, D. W. (1985) ‘The ritual dimension of consumer
behavior’, Journal of Consumer Research, 12, December,
251–264.
Rothenbuhler, E. W. (1998) Ritual Communication: From
Everyday Conversation to Mediated Ceremony, Sage
Publications, London, UK.
Rubinstein, R. L. and Parmelee, P. A. (1992) ‘Attachment to
place and the representation of the life course by the
elderly’, in Altman, I. and Low, S. M. (eds) Place
Attachment, Vol. 12, Plenum Press, New York, NY,
139–163.
Schwandt, T. A. (1994) ‘Constructivist, interpretivist
approaches to human inquiry’, in Denzin, N. K. and
Lincoln, Y. S. (eds) Handbook of Qualitative Research,
Sage Publications, Inc., Thousand Oaks, CA,
118–137.

Seamon, D. (1984) ‘Emotional experience of the
environment’, American Behavioral Scientist, 27(6), 757–
770.
Sirgy, M. J., Grewal, D. and Mangleburg, T. (2000) ‘Retail
environment, self-congruity, and retail patronage: An
integrative model and a research agenda’, Journal of
Business Research, 49(2), 127–138.
Slater, D. (1997) Consumer Culture & Modernity, Polity
Press, Cambridge, UK.
Solomon, M. R. (1985) ‘Ritual costumes and status
transition: The female business suit as totemic emblem’,
Advances in Consumer Research, 12, 315–318.
Tajfel, H. and Turner, J. C. (1986) ‘The social identity theory
of intergroup behavior’, in Worchel, S. and Austin, W. G.
Journal of Consumer Behaviour Vol. 4, 4, 234–245 Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1472-0817
Dressing for the thrill
(eds) Psychology of Intergroup Relations, Nelson-Hall
Publishers, Chicago, IL, 7–24.
Thompson, C. J., Locander, W. B. and Pollio, H. R. (1990)
‘The lived meaning of free choice: An existential-
phenomenological description of everyday consumer
experiences of contemporary married women’, Journal of
Consumer Research, 17(3), 346–362.
Wallendorf, M. and Arnould, E. J. (1991) ‘‘‘We gather
together’’: Consumption rituals of Thanksgiving Day’,
Journal of Consumer Research, 18, June, 13–31.
Wolcott, H. F. (1990) ‘On seeking—and rejecting—validity
in qualitative research’, in Eisner, E. W. and Peshkin, A.
(eds) Qualitative Inquiry in Education: The Continuing
Debate, Teachers College Press, New York, NY, 121–152.
245