We have argued above that many shoppers, particularly females, shop for social and hedonic benefits. The same may be true for e-shopping, where features like chat-rooms have been found to enhance the e-shopping experience (Parsons 2002). Palmer and Koenig-Lewis (2009) have argued that consumer-to-consumer relationships facilitated by social network websites are linked with hedonistic customer experiences. Despite the rapid growth of e- retailing, these benefits are largely unavailable to e-shoppers and e-retailing is preferred by males for utilitarian reasons. At the same time, we have drawn attention to the growth of social networking, particularly amongst young females. Yet, anecdotal evidence and the empirical evidence that female shoppers’ social needs are largely unmet led us to expect that female shoppers are currently not currently combining shopping with social networking to any extent, an activity that we define as “social e-shopping”. Moreover, we also expect th