THE WELL-DRESSED FEMALE SHOPPER GOES TO THE MALL: FASHION ORIENTATION AND THE MALL SHOPPING EXPERIENCE Richard MICHON Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada Donna SMITH Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada Hong YU Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada Jean-Charles CHEBAT HEC Montréal, Montréal, Canada ABSTRACT As labeled by Paco Underhill (2004) the shopping mall is a store of stores. Female fashion occupies most of the retail space. Facing aggressive competition from power centers, outlets and life- style centers, malls rely more than ever on branded fashion merchandise, including luxury retailers. The mall image helps shaping perceptions of merchandise and service quality. In turn, the latter mediate hedonic and utilitarian shopping experiences, and approach behavior. Fashion orientation emerges as an important moderator of female shoppers' perception of product quality, hedonic response, and patronage intentions. Mall developers pursuing a strong fashion forward positioning can neither ignore shoppers' antecedents nor the response process. The model was tested with a latent path analysis model. Key Words: Shopping center, enclosed mall, image, fashion orientation, shopping experience, hedonic, utilitarian, patronage intention, structural equation. Correspondence rmichon@ryerson.ca drsmith@ryerson.ca hongyu@ryerson.ca jean-charles.chebat@hec.ca