Hedonic consumption: Confirmation of the scale and analyzing the effects of demographic factors and an application in Izmir by using LISREL

At the point where today?s marketing reached, the consumer has become the focus point and understanding the needs and wants of consumers come into prominence. It is very hard to understand the needs and wants of consumers because they do not just behave in a rational manner. They also try to take pleasure from their consumption experiences. The desire of pleasure taking created a new and popular concept which is called as hedonic consumption.To understand consumers, it is very important to understand their hedonic consumption behaviors. There are a number of scales that measures hedonic consumption. The most popular of those scales are the scale of Arnold and Reynolds (2003)?s scale which suggests that the reasons of hedonic consumption can be grouped under six categories as: adventure, gratification, role, social, value and idea. The aim of this study is confirmation of the hedonic consumption scale and investigation of the effect of demographics on hedonic consumption behavior of consumers.The theoretical parts of the study covers the literature review on the concept of consumer behavior, consumer behavior models, stages in consumer decision process, factors affecting consumer behavior, types of consumption, hedonism, hedonic consumption and reasons of hedonic consumption.With taking the literature review into consideration, a questionnaire was prepared and an application was made to 255 participants from Izmir. Based on confirmatory factor analysis, using LISREL, it was suggested that the original scale of Arnold and Reynolds (2003) which includes six reasons of hedonic shopping should be grouped under five dimensions (adventure and gratification, role, value, social, idea). Also, the effect of demographic factors on hedonic consumption was analyzed by using SPSS 16.0 and it was found that only gender created a significant difference on hedonic consumption.