Impact of Consumer Innovativeness on Shopping Styles: A Case-Study of Limkokwing University Students (Botswana)

The unprecedented abundance of choice and retail outlets creates a massive array of choice for consumers most especially students. Innovative consumers are an important market segment. This paper seeks to investigate whether consumers¡¯ innate innovativeness is associated with their shopping styles. Specifically, it aims to explore the relationship between two types of innovativeness (sensory innovativeness and cognitive innovativeness and consumer shopping styles). Indeed, the unprecedented abundance of choice and retail outlets creates a massive array of choice for consumers. Despite these significant changes in the commercial environment, very little is known about the decision making processes of consumers in developing countries, most especially in Botswana. Ostensibly, the paucity of research in this area hinders our understanding of consumer decision making processes. The paper integrates the consumer innovativeness and consumer shopping styles literature. A structural equation model was used to test the relationship between cognitive and sensory innovativeness and various shopping styles. Cognitive innovators are inclined to show shopping styles such as quality consciousness, price consciousness, and confusion by overchoice, while sensory innovators are inclined to have shopping styles such as brand consciousness, fashion consciousness, recreational orientation, impulsive shopping, and brand loyalty/habitual shopping. The research is based on a convenience sample of young consumers in Botswana. The findings of this research would hopefully help managers to develop a deeper insight into product development and marketing. Furthermore, since the youth market in Botswana represents an enormous opportunity for marketers, the paper provides valuable insights into this key market segment. It thus provides new insights into the shopping patterns of consumers who belong to different innovativeness types. It also makes a new contribution to the shopping styles literature by explicating potential antecedents to the various shopping styles among the largest private tertiary institution students in Botswana.