A retailer or shop is a business that presents a selection of goods or services and offers to sell them to customers for money or other goods. Shopping is an activity in which a customer browses the available goods or services presented by one or more retailers with the intent to purchase a suitable selection of them. In some contexts it may be considered a leisure activity as well as an economic one.
The shopping experience can range from delightful to terrible, based on a variety of factors including how the customer is treated, convenience, and mood.
The shopping experience can also be influenced by other shoppers. For example, research from a field experiment found that male and female shoppers who were accidentally touched from behind by other shoppers left a store earlier than people who had not been touched and evaluated brands more negatively, resulting in the Accidental Interpersonal Touch effect.
"Window shopping" is browsing with no intent to purchase, either as a recreational activity or to plan a later purchase.
According to a 2000 report, in New York women purchase 80% of all consumer goods and influence 80% of health-care decisions.
Read more about Shopping: Shopping in Ancient Societies, History of Modern Shopping, Pricing and Negotiation
Famous quotes containing the word shopping:
“Shopping seemed to take an entirely too important place in women’s lives. You never saw men milling around in men’s departments. They made quick work of it. I used to wonder if shopping was a form of escape for women who had no worthwhile interests.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“The new shopping malls make possible the synthesis of all consumer activities, not least of which are shopping, flirting with objects, idle wandering, and all the permutations of these.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“Children’s liberation is the next item on our civil rights shopping list.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (b. 1939)