The Impact of Retail Store Atmosphere on Consumer Behavior

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Literature Review The environmental psychologist focuses behavior in two dimensions which are: Approach and Avoidance (Turley & Milliman, 2000). A famous study by Mehrabian and Russell (1974) also classified all behavior as approach and avoidance. Approach is all the positive behaviors that directed to an environment. As research focus is on the retail environment, this will include desire to interact with others in the store, enjoy the environment of the store, patronage intentions, recommending the store to friends. Where as avoidance behavior would be opposite to approach (Donovan & Rossiter, 1982). Zeithaml (1996) defines behavior intentions as “The customer’s willingness to provide positive word of mouth, to visit the restaurant again in the future, to stay longer than anticipated, and to spend more than anticipated”. Further focusing on the approach and avoidance behaviors can generate four different outcomes such as: (1) a wish to remain or depart; (2) a desire to explore and interact or a tendency to want to leave and not explore the store; (3) a desire to communicate with others or to ignore them; and (4) thoughts of happiness or unhappiness (Hoffman & Turley, 2002), (Chebat & Michon, 2003).It is a human nature that if a consumer build up a greatly positive or negative experience with a retail store .It will results in approach or avoidance behavior in the future (Zavotka, 2007).Turley & Milliman (2000) also found out that there is significant relation between atmospherics and shopping behavior. The term atmospherics is defined as dissimilar environmental elements that can be deliberately control by the retailers and helps to enhance the retail store atmosphere in such a way that it provides a positive experience to c... ... middle of paper ... ...omplex stores their pressure levels decrease, their energy increases, and their positive feelings increase. The complex aesthetics related to the elements of design including color and textures and negative feelings for simple retail environments .He used pre-felling survey and post feeling survey and gathered the data from four retail stores (DKNY, Banana republic, Urban Outfitters and Berlyne). She applied descriptive statistics as frequencies and tables for the analysis of data (Zavotka, 2007). Backstroma & Johansson (2006) wrap up their study that the retailers need to focus more on traditional values such as the behavior of their personnel, which is not captured by the retailer’s occasionally. So they find the gap that more and more attention of the retailers comes towards technology side now a days, the result is that they are ignoring traditional aspects.

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