An Evolutionary Psychology Approach to Understanding the ‘Why’ of Shopping Behaviour: the Savannah Hypothesis of Shopping

Abstract

‘Life is just a rather complicated form of chemistry’

(Gribbin, 2002: xvii)

So far this book has attempted to answer the question of ‘Why people shop where they do’ (choices of shopping centres) by considering the attributes of shopping centres affecting shopper behaviour and, in the previous chapter, the possible processes by which the environment of a shopping centre affects shopping behaviour. This chapter reports a tentative preliminary attempt to search for a deeper ‘why’. Are shopping styles culturally determined? Or have humans evolved to shop the way that they do? Up to the time of writing, the quantity of data gathered for this study has been very limited. Nevertheless, the results are included here to illustrate the current state-of-play and the potential of this new approach.

This chapter is adapted from a paper on work-in-progress originally presented at the 11 ^th International Conference on Recent Advances in Retailing and Services Science (Dennis 2004).¹