Correspondence: Rajagopal, Department of Marketing Business Division, Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education, ITESM Mexico City Campus 222, Calle del Puente, Tlalpan DF 14380, Mexico. Tel: +52 55 5483 2251; Fax: +52 55 5483 1341; e-mail: rajagopal@itesm.mx, prof_rajagopal@yahoo.com; Homepage: http://www.geocities.com/prof_rajagopal/homepage.html

¹is Professor of Marketing at Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM), Mexico City Campus and a fellow of the Royal Society for Encouragement of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce, London. His biography is listed in the Who's Who in the World, 2008. He holds doctoral degree from Ravishankar University, India and has been conferred the National Researcher — Level-II of Mexican National System of Researchers. He teaches various topics of marketing in graduate, doctoral executive development programmes at the Institute. Dr Rajagopal has held key positions in many premier management institutes in India including Administrative Staff College of India.

Received 3 April 2008; Revised 3 April 2008; Published online 12 May 2008.

Abstract

The strategy of outsourcing salespeople (sales promoters) to prospect for customers through inter-personal communication and develop pre-purchase arousal for products and services is being increasingly employed by manufacturing and marketing firms. Sales promoters are deployed at strategic locations such as in front of malls, large self-service stores, departmental stores and traffic islands in the city. This paper attempts to analyse behavioural drivers that influence consumers' leisure shopping behaviour and measure customer value through empirical investigation in Mexico. The study reveals that sales promoters significantly stimulate interest among customers towards buying products and trigger shopping arousal. Consumers are influenced in making buying decisions by the product attractiveness and pre-purchase arousal generated by the sales promoters.