From Psychology to Marketing, Using the Repertory Grid Technique to Understand and Provide a Fresh Perspective on the Online Fashion Shopping Experience

Abstract

In Consumer Research, it is hard to avoid mother disciplines such as Psychology and Sociology. This piece has its roots from Environmental Psychology; it builds on stimuli-response relations but is employed in the modern concept of ‘FASHIONSCAPE' i.e. the online fashion shopping environment. Believing that the best person to educate us about consumers are consumers themselves, this paper adopted George Kelly's Personal Construct Theory and employed the Repertory Grid technique to gain a deeper understanding of the overall shopping experience. All participants attended a one-to-one interview which generated one grid each. Content analysis of sixteen grids shows a new categorization of the components of the shopping experience, this includes Situational constructs, Elements-descriptive constructs, Risk, certainty and confidence constructs, Emotional constructs and Behavioural constructs with emotional constructs being the deepest that are formed via ‘laddering' (asking how and why questions). Moreover, analysis of web-elements (characteristics) shows that digital zooming/ 3D images and catwalk videos are two main influential factors on the buying decision whereas the attractiveness of social media integration, customer reviews, and chat with advisers is varying. This endeavour provides a fresh consumer-centric perspective on the shopping experience as lived by consumers and using their own words