If you remember the article a few months ago about "cultures of gaming" - in the neo-traditional group there's a desire to express the character by having them interact with things. In some ways, that's the point of the game: to let you play out the cool character you made.
The thing is: this doesn't need to be combat. The neo-trad player spent a lot of time and energy build a personality for the character, and they want to show that off, which is a lot easier to do when talking to npc's like shopkeepers. You can't really banter with wolves or even ogres, and pc-to-pc conversations might end up being about the other pc, while an npc is just there to give you something to work off of.
So within that subset of gamers, talking to a shopkeeper is just as much fun as fighting a goblin, because the situations let you use different parts of the characters.
(Of course, there's a limit to how many shopkeepers you can talk to without repeating yourself, and skilled players can do this during pc-to-pc conversations.)