Motivational forces are commonly accepted to have a key influencing role in the explanation of shopping behaviour. In retailing research, shopping motives are a field of research that has received considerable attention, often in combination with motivation-based shopper taxonomies. While personal shopping motives and perceived shopping alternatives are often considered independent inputs into a choice model, we argue that shopping motives influence the perception of retail store attributes as well as the attitude towards retail stores. An empirical study, which was carried out in Germany with 560 grocery shoppers as respondents to test these assumptions, showed that the influence of shopping motives is much more profound on the attitude towards retail stores than towards the perception of store attributes, which might be explained by different levels of abstraction and, consequently, subjectivity in the interpretation of these stimuli.