Abstract: Shopping behavior of urban residents is the main content of the research about urban commercial activities, and researches on its characteristics and decision-making process can provide a basis for urban commercial network planning. Shopping behavior is one of the most important research fields of urban geography and behavioral geography, and it is necessary to review its developing history, appraise its research progress and discuss its future developing trends. Geographical researches on residents’consumption behavior particularly emphasize on consumers’spatial selection activities and spatial-temporal characteristic of obtaining goods or services. The shopping behavior is the basic consumption behavior as a dynamic link within the urban activities system, so most researches on consumption behavior take residents’shopping behavior as a case. Shopping behavior study of Chinese urban residents refers to corresponding detailed study on type of goods, trip distance, travel time, travel frequency, travel mode and trip purpose of urban residents according to the different ages, different occupations and different income. Based on explaining the foreign theory and method study of shopping behavior, the paper reviews the domestic study progress of related shopping behavior. The review indicates that the studies on shopping behavior were shifted from the macroscopic supply level to the demand level at home and abroad; the foreign studies mainly concentrated on basic theories, characteristics and influence factors, forecasting and model simulation and so on; the domestic studies mainly focused on the macroscopic level studies of commercial spatial structures based on shopping behavior, the spatial-temporal characteristics, decision-making and influencing factors of shopping behavior. Through comparing the research situation of domestic and foreign residents’shopping behaviors, it has been found that there was a large gap between our country and the western counties in the field, especially on the starting time, levels of development and the technical means. Based on reviewing the contents and situation of shopping behavior research at home and abroad, we propose several possible future research directions including virtual shopping district, the new retailing pattern, housing and employment factors, the new low-carbon consumption and cross-border consumption.

Key words: research progress, research prospects, shopping behavior, urban residents