Abstract
The Sport Shopper Experience Scale (SSES) is a 12-item, multidimensional psychometric instrument developed by Mortimer, Fazel-e-Hasan, O'Donnell, and Strebel (2018) to operationalize and assess the psychological phenomenon of "sport shopping" within off-price apparel and fashion retail environments. Sport shopping represents a unique consumption profile wherein consumers approach retail acquisition not as a routine utilitarian chore or purely passive hedonic distraction, but rather as an active, competitive achievement domain. Grounded in achievement goal theory, the instrument operationalizes three distinct latent dimensions: Effort/Mastery (task orientation), reflecting the dedicated cognitive and physical exertion deployed to navigate cluttered retail assortments and uncover hidden gems; Authentic Pride (ego orientation), capturing the deep internal sense of accomplishment, self-efficacy, and triumph experienced upon securing premium branded merchandise at heavily discounted price points; and Knowledge (social-approval orientation), evaluating the consumer's perceptual expertise, market mavenism, and willingness to share strategic retail insights with peers.
Developed and cross-validated across four progressive empirical investigations involving qualitative depth interviews and quantitative survey samples from both the United States and Australia, the SSES utilizes a 7-point Likert-type response format ranging from 1 ("Strongly Disagree") to 7 ("Strongly Agree"). Psychometric evaluations demonstrate robust structural integrity and exceptional internal consistency across dimensions: Effort/Mastery (α = .867, Composite Reliability [CR] = .871, Average Variance Extracted [AVE] = .695), Authentic Pride (α = .955, CR = .954, AVE = .837), and Knowledge (α = .927, CR = .926, AVE = .716). Confirmatory factor analyses confirm superior model fit for the hypothesized three-factor structure over rival unidimensional and nested specifications. The scale demonstrates rigorous convergent, discriminant, nomological, and predictive validity, yielding substantial applications across consumer psychology, retail strategy, merchandising, and behavioral economics.
Keywords
Sport Shopper Experience Scale, SSES, off-price retailing, achievement goal theory, consumer psychology, smart shopping, authentic pride, task orientation, retail gamification, psychometrics
Authors
The Sport Shopper Experience Scale was developed and validated by an international research team comprising scholars in retail marketing, consumer behavior, and psychometrics:
- Gary Mortimer, Ph.D. — Professor of Marketing and Consumer Behaviour at the QUT Business School, Queensland University of Technology (Brisbane, Australia). Renowned internationally for research in retail marketing, supermarket shopping behavior, consumer psychology, and off-price retail environments.
- Syed Muhammad Fazel-e-Hasan, Ph.D. — Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the Australian Catholic University and former research fellow at Queensland University of Technology (Australia). Specialist in structural equation modeling, consumer gratitude, and goal orientation theories.
- Kathleen A. O'Donnell, Ph.D. — Professor of Marketing and former Department Chair at the Lam Family College of Business, San Francisco State University (San Francisco, California, USA). Research focus includes consumer behavior, marketing communications, and experiential consumption.
- Judi Strebel, Ph.D. — Professor and Department Chair of Marketing at the Lam Family College of Business, San Francisco State University (San Francisco, California, USA). Expert in consumer decision-making processes, consumer information processing, and retail strategy.
Purpose
The primary purpose of the Sport Shopper Experience Scale (SSES) is to conceptualize, calibrate, and validate a psychometrically sound measurement instrument capturing the psychological dynamics of consumers who approach off-price fashion shopping as an achievement domain or competitive sport. Traditional frameworks in retail research have historically polarized shopper behavior into dichotomous categories: utilitarian shoppers, who treat shopping as an errand seeking efficiency and task completion, versus hedonic shoppers, who seek multisensory escapism, immediate sensory gratification, or leisure. While concepts such as "smart shopping" and "bargain hunting" have addressed monetary sensitivity, they fail to illuminate the intrinsic motivational architecture that converts off-price retail hunting into an athletic-like contest involving rigorous physical effort, strategic cognitive mastery, psychological triumph, and social capital.
The SSES addresses critical voids in both academic consumer behavior literature and commercial retail analytics. In academic domains, research has demonstrated that modern consumers increasingly extract identity-defining fulfillment from navigating complex, chaotic, and non-standardized merchandise assortments (such as those observed in discount department stores like T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, Ross Dress for Less, and TK Maxx). The SSES provides behavioral scientists with a reliable instrument to quantify how goal orientations intersect with shopping behaviors, examining how the pursuit of difficult-to-locate designer apparel stimulates psychological rewards that far exceed simple financial savings. Researchers employ the scale to explore nomological networks linking sport shopping to psychological flow, store loyalty, customer engagement value, word-of-mouth dissemination, and retail-induced positive affect.
In applied retail management and commercial contexts, the SSES serves as a strategic diagnostic tool. Traditional inventory merchandising emphasizes pristine organization, visual symmetry, and streamlined navigational ease. However, for consumers high in the sport shopping orientation, excessive orderliness can paradoxically diminish the experiential thrill of the "hunt." By administering the SSES, retail managers can identify market segments that derive satisfaction from unstructured environments requiring deliberate exploration, tailoring visual merchandising, dynamic treasure-hunt promotional architectures, and gamified loyalty programs to appeal to sport shoppers without alienating purely convenience-driven shoppers.
Psychological Construct
The Sport Shopper Experience (SSE) is defined as an experiential and motivational syndrome wherein the consumer perceives the retail environment as an interactive competitive arena characterized by variable rewards, cognitive hurdles, and achievement milestones. The construct is operationalized through three distinct, interdependent dimensions grounded in achievement goal paradigms:
1. Effort/Mastery (Task Orientation)
The Effort/Mastery dimension reflects a consumer's commitment to task-focused investment, persistence, and problem-solving competence. Rooted in task-involvement paradigms, this facet captures the physical and mental dedication required to systematically comb through densely packed clothing racks, irregular sizing assortments, and disorganized inventory displays to uncover exceptional, high-value items. Unlike average consumers who view physical exertion and perceptual clutter as frustrating barriers or service failures, individuals scoring high on Effort/Mastery interpret these logistical hurdles as challenges that validate their competence. For example, a sport shopper willingly invests hours sorting through clearance bins or traveling between multiple retail branches, experiencing intrinsic satisfaction from mastering the operational complexities of the retail terrain.
2. Authentic Pride (Ego Orientation)
The Authentic Pride dimension operationalizes the emotional reward structure experienced when a shopper successfully navigates environmental obstacles to secure a prestigious designer or luxury brand at a fraction of its original retail price. Distinct from "hubristic pride" (which involves arrogance, superiority, and narcissistic aggrandizement), authentic pride is an attributional emotion rooted in genuine personal accomplishment, deliberate effort, and self-efficacy. When an individual discovers an elite designer jacket priced at 80% below traditional department store pricing, the affective response is not merely relief at saving money; it is an intense surge of internal triumph, joy, and validation. The victory is attributed directly to the shopper's own diligence, discernment, and agility within the retail arena.
3. Knowledge (Social-Approval Orientation)
The Knowledge dimension assesses the consumer's cognitive expertise, strategic market intelligence, and the motivational disposition to deploy this expertise within their broader social network. Sport shoppers do not keep their achievements entirely private; they view their acute comprehension of delivery schedules, markdown cadences, label decoding, and garment quality as valuable social currency. This dimension captures the willingness and enthusiasm to advise peers, act as an authoritative retail guide, and broadcast shopping victories to obtain social validation and prestige. Rather than displaying monetary wealth through conspicuous consumption of full-priced luxury items, the sport shopper showcases intellectual savvy and strategic acuity through conspicuous thrift and expert curation.
Theoretical Framework
The conceptual foundation of the Sport Shopper Experience Scale resides primarily in Achievement Goal Theory (AGT), pioneered and elaborated by developmental and educational psychologists such as Carol Dweck (1986), John Nicholls (1984), and Joan Duda (1992). Originally formulated to explain motivational variations, engagement intensity, and performance outcomes in academic classrooms and competitive sports, AGT posits that individuals engage in achievement contexts with distinct definitions of competence and success.
AGT delineates two primary competence valuation structures: task (or mastery) goal orientations and ego (or performance) goal orientations. A task orientation conceptualizes success in terms of self-referenced improvement, skill acquisition, persistence, and the expenditure of effort to master challenging tasks. In contrast, an ego orientation evaluates competence relative to normative standards, external comparison, outperforming others, and demonstrating superior ability. Extensions of this paradigm, particularly in educational and sport psychology, also incorporate social goal orientations, wherein behavioral persistence is driven by the desire to affiliate, earn social recognition, and demonstrate group leadership.
Mortimer et al. (2018) recognized that off-price fashion retail stores (such as T.J. Maxx, Ross, or DFO outlets) function as real-world achievement arenas. Unlike traditional retail environments where inventory is predictable and assistance is readily provided by staff, off-price retailing relies on opportunistic buying models. Inventory arrives in unpredictable, fragmented quantities with irregular size distributions and limited temporal windows. Consequently, the retail space transforms into a competitive sporting domain. Consumers cannot simply purchase success with raw financial capital; they must utilize physical endurance, perceptual speed, and analytical acumen. Mortimer and colleagues integrated AGT with emotional appraisal theory and market mavenism literature, mapping task orientation directly onto Effort/Mastery, ego orientation onto Authentic Pride, and social orientation onto Knowledge sharing.
Validity
The psychometric validation of the SSES followed rigorous methodological procedures spanning four independent, sequential studies conducted across the United States and Australia, ensuring cross-cultural and cross-sample generalizability.
Construct, Convergent, and Discriminant Validity
Initial qualitative depth interviews (Study 1, N = 20) established qualitative content validity, generating an expansive pool of candidate items reflecting real-world shopper language. Following purification and exploratory factor analysis (Study 2, N = 311), confirmatory factor analysis was conducted on cross-national validation samples (Study 3: USA N = 398; Study 4: Australia N = 405).
Convergent validity was substantiated through several rigorous criteria:
- All standardized factor loadings (λ) for the 12 items exceeded the conservative threshold of .70 (ranging from .78 to .94), demonstrating statistically significant associations (p < .001) with their respective latent constructs.
- The Average Variance Extracted (AVE) for all three latent dimensions substantially exceeded the recommended benchmark of .50: Effort/Mastery attained an AVE of .695; Authentic Pride achieved an AVE of .837; and Knowledge reached an AVE of .716.
- Composite Reliability (CR) values across all dimensions exceeded .85, far surpassing standard thresholds of .70.
Discriminant validity was established via the Fornell-Larcker criterion. For each latent factor, the square root of the AVE was greater than any bivariate correlation between that factor and any other construct in the measurement model. Furthermore, heterotrait-monotrait (HTMT) ratio analyses yielded values strictly below the conservative .85 threshold, demonstrating that Effort/Mastery, Authentic Pride, and Knowledge represent empirically distinct psychological phenomena rather than overlapping measurement artifacts.
Nomological and Predictive Validity
Nomological validity was demonstrated through structural equation modeling examining the relationships between SSES dimensions and established consumer behavior outcomes. Authentic Pride and Effort/Mastery exhibited strong, positive predictive paths to store patronage frequency, extended dwell time, and emotional retail attachment. The Knowledge dimension emerged as a powerful antecedent of opinion leadership, market mavenism, and voluntary electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) propagation. Crucially, the SSES demonstrated discriminant validity against general price consciousness, bargain hunting, and compulsive buying scales, confirming that sport shopping captures an active, self-actualizing achievement experience rather than mere financial deprivation or behavioral impulsivity.
Reliability
The Sport Shopper Experience Scale exhibits exceptional internal consistency reliability across diverse cultural, demographic, and geographical cohorts. During structural testing and final scale validation, multiple reliability metrics were computed across American and Australian consumer samples.
The reliability indices documented across the studies are as follows:
- Effort/Mastery (4 items): Demonstrated a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of α = .867 and a Composite Reliability (CR) of .871, reflecting robust item homogeneity and minimal measurement error within the task-orientation domain.
- Authentic Pride (4 items): Yielded an outstanding Cronbach's alpha of α = .955 and a Composite Reliability of .954, indicating virtually flawless construct stability and internal covariance in capturing triumph and self-efficacy.
- Knowledge (4 items): Maintained high internal consistency with a Cronbach's alpha of α = .927 and a Composite Reliability of .926, confirming that items tapping market intelligence and willingness to guide others covary with high precision.
Across validation phases, item-total correlations consistently exceeded .65, and deletion of any single item failed to improve overall scale or subscale reliability coefficients, validating the retainment of all 12 items. Cross-sample invariance testing verified that the reliability parameters remained stable across both gender cohorts and international retail markets.
Factor Analysis
The structural dimensionality of the SSES was evaluated using a rigorous progression of Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) followed by multi-group Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA).
Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)
During the initial purification phase (Study 2, N = 311 off-price fashion consumers), an item pool of 36 initial statements was analyzed using Principal Axis Factoring with Promax (oblique) rotation, reflecting the theoretical assumption that achievement goal dimensions are correlated rather than orthogonal. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy was .912, and Bartlett's Test of Sphericity was highly significant (χ²(630) = 4821.43, p < .001). Scree plot inspection and eigenvalues greater than 1.0 conclusively supported a three-factor solution explaining 74.8% of the total variance. Items exhibiting weak primary loadings (< .60) or cross-loadings (> .30) were iteratively eliminated, producing a refined 12-item instrument with four items per factor.
Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)
CFA was subsequently executed on independent samples from the USA (N = 398) and Australia (N = 405) using Maximum Likelihood estimation. The hypothesized three-factor first-order model exhibited exceptional goodness-of-fit indices across both cohorts, satisfying the stringent standards recommended by Hu and Bentler (1999):
- Chi-square to degrees of freedom ratio (χ²/df): 1.84 (well below the conservative 3.0 threshold)
- Comparative Fit Index (CFI): .982 (exceeding the .95 cutoff for superior fit)
- Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): .977 (exceeding the .95 cutoff)
- Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): .046 (90% CI [.034, .058], below the .06 benchmark)
- Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): .038 (below the .08 benchmark)
Alternative rival models—including a unidimensional single-factor model (wherein all 12 items loaded onto a single "sport shopping" construct) and a two-factor model combining Effort and Pride—demonstrated markedly inferior fit (χ²/df > 6.2, CFI < .80, RMSEA > .11). Measurement invariance tests confirmed metric, scalar, and structural invariance across both American and Australian shopping cohorts, demonstrating that the scale functions equivalently across diverse cultural retail landscapes.
Instrument / Measurement Tool
The Sport Shopper Experience Scale (SSES) is a self-report psychological measurement tool structured as follows:
- Test Type: Self-administered psychometric rating scale / multidimensional behavioral inventory.
- Construct Assessed: Sport shopping experience across task, ego, and social-approval goal orientations in off-price fashion environments.
- Item Count: Exactly 12 items divided evenly across three distinct dimensions:
- Effort/Mastery Subscale: 4 items
- Authentic Pride Subscale: 4 items
- Knowledge Subscale: 4 items
- Response Format: 7-point Likert scale:
- 1 = Strongly Disagree
- 2 = Disagree
- 3 = Somewhat Disagree
- 4 = Neither Agree nor Disagree (Neutral)
- 5 = Somewhat Agree
- 6 = Agree
- 7 = Strongly Agree
- Scoring Rules:
- All items are framed positively in the direction of the underlying construct; there are no reverse-coded items.
- Subscale scores are computed by calculating the arithmetic mean or sum of the four items comprising that subscale. Dimension scores range from 1.0 to 7.0 (if averaged) or 4 to 28 (if summed).
- A global Sport Shopper Experience index can be obtained by averaging all 12 items (range 1.0 to 7.0; sum score range 12 to 84). Higher scores denote a stronger orientation toward treating shopping as a competitive, achievement-driven sport.
- Administration Time: Approximately 3 to 5 minutes to complete.
Permissions & Fee and Test Year
The Sport Shopper Experience Scale (SSES) was developed, validated, and officially published in 2018 by Gary Mortimer, Syed Muhammad Fazel-e-Hasan, Kathleen A. O'Donnell, and Judi Strebel in the peer-reviewed journal Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management (Volume 22, Issue 4, pages 454–475).
Regarding permissions, usage fees, and licensing:
- Academic Research: The SSES is freely accessible for non-commercial, academic, and instructional research under fair dealing / fair use conventions, provided that proper bibliographic citation is accorded to Mortimer et al. (2018) and the publisher Emerald Publishing Limited.
- Commercial Applications: Commercial enterprises, retail consultants, corporate market research agencies, or syndicated market insight firms seeking to deploy the SSES in proprietary commercial diagnostics, fee-based customer segmentation platforms, or monetized applications should contact the primary author (Prof. Gary Mortimer, Queensland University of Technology) or obtain appropriate permissions via Emerald Publishing Limited and the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC).
- Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/JFMM-12-2017-0139
References
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- Dweck, C. S. (1986). Motivational processes affecting learning. American Psychologist, 41(10), 1040–1048. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.41.10.1040
- Hu, L. T., & Bentler, P. M. (1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 6(1), 1–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/10705519909540118
- Mortimer, G., Fazel-e-Hasan, S. M., O'Donnell, K. A., & Strebel, J. (2018). Measuring the experience of off-price fashion shopping: Scale development and validation. Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management: An International Journal, 22(4), 454–475. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFMM-12-2017-0139
- Nicholls, J. G. (1984). Achievement motivation: Conceptions of ability, subjective experience, task choice, and performance. Psychological Review, 91(3), 328–346. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.91.3.328
- Tracy, J. L., & Robins, R. W. (2007). The psychological structure of pride: A tale of two facets. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(3), 506–525. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.3.506