Shopping environment preferences of Hispanic consumers in the U.S. : Development of a scale

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop and begin to validate a scale to assess the shopping environment preferences of Hispanic consumers in the USA. Design/methodology/approach – The sample consists of 160 Hispanic consumers attending a Hispanic festival in the southeast USA. A questionnaire contained items to measure shopping environment preferences and scales to measure materialism, hedonic shopping motivations, and perceived discrimination. Findings – The findings suggest a second-order model where three factors (familiarity, price, and experience) load onto a single second-order construct of shopping environment preferences. The result is a scale consisting of three factors permitting the exploration of the retail environmental preferences of Hispanic consumers in the USA. Practical implications – The study develops a scale that can be applied by US retailers to gain additional knowledge of their Hispanic consumers, thus enabling strategies to be developed that potentially enhance their engagement in retail environments. Originality/value – Given the size of this segment and its increasing impact on the retail market, surprisingly, Hispanic consumers in the USA have received relatively little research attention.