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CONSUMER PSYCH: THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT - Coggle Diagram
CONSUMER PSYCH: THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT
RETAIL STORE DESIGN
TYPES OF STORE EXTERIOR DESIGN
- perception of the shop from the exterior features such as window displays and landscaping. These features are particulraly important for small businesses to attract customers.
S-O-R model
- Stimulus Organism Response Model. Suggests that stimuli such as envirnoment affects the customers attitude which further infleunces the customers behaviour (Babin et al 2003)
landscaping
- evidence suggests that the prsence of vegeation (plants) positively influences a customers mood in an urban setting. For example, shebat and morrin used plants and flowers to decorate malls and found this to have positive effects on the shoppers perception.
Window displays
- Evidence suggests that shops and busineses that have bigger windows have a better chance of creating a better perception of the shop for the customers, setting good expectations. For exmaple, edward and shcackley found that sales were higher for shops that used window displays. Thy found that the larger the window was, the more effective the sales would be.
Example study
- **mower et al Investigated the effects of landscaping and window displays on consumers response such as likings, moods, and purchase intentions. There was an online survey given to mostly female participants and they were asked to imagine a situation where they had to buy a pair of jeans. They then logged onto the website that described different stores to all participants, however, the detials of the windiow display and landscaping varied from participant to participant to test the effect of the variables. Results showed that the presence of the window display and landscaping postively influenced the liking of the store exterior.
TYPES OF STORE INTERIOR DESIGN
- interior design also significantly influences the consumer response. This topic discusses the different interior store layouts that might affect consumer response.
Grid layout
-
grid layouts are generally used more in supermakerts and have long aisles with impulse items placed at the front. This is so that customers have to pass these impulse items and are encouraged to purchase them.
Similar items are grouped together making it easier to shop.
Grid is beneficial because it is easy and familiar to customers because of the shelf construction.
-Grid layouts have predicable traffic flow within the shop anbd is easier to decide where to place promotion so that cusomers will see it.
However, grid may fuel confusion to customers if they dont understand the grouping of items.
-grid also lacks creativity
Freeform layout
-
Freeform layouts are generally more used in places where there is less merchandise but higher value items, such as boutiques and gift/souvenir shops.
There are no specicif rules and customers are encouraged to wander around, prompting more impulse buys. This can be a postivie experience for customers.
However, it can cause a lot of clutter and confusion for the clients as there is no proper organization of items.
Racetrack layout
-
Race track layouts are generally used in bigger shops like IKEA.
Structured in a way that the route is all the way from the starting point through the entire store, past all the merchandise, checkouts and till the exit. This exposes customers to all the mecrhandise, raising the likelihood of purchase.
Has predictable traffic flow pattern, so that promotion can be placed to the customers easily
-Customers might find this frustrating and time consuming as it can cause clutter and confusion.
Example study
-
vrechopoulos et al 2004
. There was a virtual store. He manipulated the three store layouts in this virtual setting. Four hypothesis:
hyp 1:
customers will perceive grid layout most useful.
hyp 2:
customers will perceive freeform layout to be easier.
hype 3:
customers will perceive ractrack layout to be most entertaining.
hype 4:
consumers will spend most time shopping freeform layout.
three layouts analyzed and features transferred to virtual store. background color, images kept constant throughout all layouts. For the grid layout, it was a
hierarchical
structure.
For the freeform layout, it involved
search button
.
For racetrack layout, customers were forced to
navigate
through specific parts of the website to reach their desired product.
120 participants! 20 dollars given! lab experiment! had to make purchaes under this 20 dollars!
Mainly european brands, some foreign brands too. (coco cola for exmaple). Given shopping list and info on availability.
Results showed that
Freeform layout was significantly more useful for finding items.
Grid layout was significantly more easier to use than the other two.
Layout significantly affected the length of times customers spent shopping.
Race track and freeform layout engaged the shoppers for longer than grid.
SOUND AND CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR
EXAMPLE STUDY: WOODS ET AL (2011)
what did it investigate? Investigated whether sounds
not
directly associated with eating could still influence a person's perception of food.
What the design and procedure?**
there were three conditions:
loud white noise - quiet white noise -no white noise. This was
counterbalanced
for each participant and they had to undergo
25 trials
.
There were a total of
48 participants
. They had to close their eyes and wear their headphones then proceed to eat different foods.
There were two caterogies,
crispy and soft foods
, within that, each category had both
sweet and salty food items
. After eating each item, the participants were asked to rate the intensity of sweetness, saltiness and liking.
Results:
the sweetness and saltiness were rater lower in the loud white noise condition.
soft and hard foods were not affected different.
in conclusion, food liking appeared to be lowered by loud background noise, but this was not shown to be statistically significant.
Researchers also concluded that taste was reported to be less intense when in a noisy condition. This was the case for
both
crunchy and soft foods.
WHY DOES SOUND INFLUENCE TASTE?
- four different explanations for the effect of sound on taste
Implicit association
- This explanation suggests that certain types of food are associated with certain types of noises. The cause for this theory is still unclear.
Crisinel and Spencer 2010
found that bitter foods like coffee and salty food like chips were associated with low pitched sounds while sweet foods like donuts and sour foods like lime were associated with high pitched sounds. Therefor it could be that different types of background noise could affect tastes differently.
Attentional
- this explanation suggests that presence of a loud noise can shift our attention away from tasting experience of the food.
Study by boyle et al
shows that loud noise and music takes away from ratings of pain. This can be related back to food as this explanation suggests that loud noise takes away the perception to taste/experience food.
Cross modal contrast-
a contrast effect is a cognitive bias where our perception of something is distorted when we compare it to something else. For example, eating something sweet right after consuming less sweet might make the sweet item seem sweeter. When talking about the effect of sound on taste, cross model contrast suggests that when we listen to something loud and eat food, our perception of the food is altered.
Interaction between sensory cortices
- Our senses are processed independently in different specific parts of the cerebral context also known as sensory cortices. However, some evidence (Teichert and Bolz, 2018) suggests that these sensory cortices can interact. For example, the area responsible for processing taste and interact with the area responsible for processing sound. Wesson and Wilson (2010) conducted a study on rats and found that playing a continous tone, 19% of neurons in the olfactory tube (odour and taste area) were activated. 29% of these neurons changed when the sound was played, portraying a direct effect of sound on odour. It highlighted that the two senses are nor proccessed completely independdently of each other. This could
explain
why sound can influence our experience of taste.
KEY STUDY: NORTH ET AL (2003)
Context-
Research shows that the right genre of music can encourage customers to spend more money
North and Hargreaves (1998) investigated
the effect of music genres on perception of a student cafeteria and purchase intention
classical music
led to a perception that cafeteria is more "upmarket" (fancy schmancy) and claimed that they would spend more money.
Participants listening to classical music claimed that they would spend
20.5%
more than if no music was being played.
MAIN POINT
- However, this study investigated only the purchase intention instead of the spending itself.
Main theories and explanation-
if one likes the music that is being played, they will be more likely to stay and spend more money
another explanation that a particular genre music being played should encourage a particular mood in order to encourage spending.
Different genres are played in order to excite or arouse the customer into possibly making impulse purchases or in order to relax the customer so they spend money more freely. EITHER WAY, THEY ARE SPENDING MONEY. STOP SPENDING MONEY. BE KANJAPISNAARI LIKE THE REST OF US.
North and Hargreaves proved in a previous study that customers in a retail environment associated classical music with wealth, affluence and class, priming them to spend more money.
Aims:
to investigate the effect of
musical styles/genres
on the
amount of money spent
by a customer in a restaurant. They predicted that customers would spend
more money
when
classical music
was played
rather than when pop music
was being played.
Design-
-field experiment
with
three conditions
, INDEPENDENT MEASURE DESIGN, one week classical music, one week pop music and one week, no music.
They
standardized
variables like the volume of music, length of music, and the aspects of restaurant like menu, lighting and temperature.
They
measured the data
by recording the time spent between sitting and paying the bill. This was done as this would affect the money they spent. Collected customer bills and analyzed them.
-
Opportunity sampling-
393 customers! Equal amount of males and females in each condition! Study conducted between feb/march 2002!
IV:
type of background music
DV:
money being spent on all courses. total spending on drinks, food and overall spending.
Results findings and conclusions-
For coffee, starters, total food and overall spending, there was a
significant difference
in the amount of money being spent.
Spending was
highest in classical music condition
.
Research concluded that classical music led to significantly higher spending in restaurant in comparison to pop or no music.
EVALUATION- strengths and weaknesses
field experiment
- has high ecological validity and can be applied to real life situations.
Highly controlled/standardized
so increases validity of study. Because they standardized this, the researchers were more confident to say that the DV was due to the IV.
-
Big sample
as there 400 participants so it can be
generalized
and is more valid.
-
Application to real life
is that using this information, managers can play classical music to help increase their profit
EFFECTS OF BG NOISE IN THE PERCEPTION OF FOOD
-
BG noise can influence our experience in eating in terms of taste and other aspects.
Zampini and spence (2004)
found that manipulating the sound made by biting something crispy by recording it, increasing the volume and playing it through headphones affects rating of crispiness.
Evidence shows that soudns that are connected to the food, like biting something crispy, influences experiencing and tasting the food
RETAIL ATMOSPHERICS
The effect of ODOUR on PAD MODEL:
Stores have begun applying scents as they have realized that the scent of environment is very important on the customer impact. The better the scent, the more it increases the satisfaction and arousal of customers, therefore attracting then. This is why many stores use scents as little as air fresheners all the way to syntethic aroma technology.
EXAMPLE STUDY- CHEBAT AND MICHON (2003)
:
they investigated
the influence of ambient odours on mall shoppers
and they compared the PAD model to cognitive theory of emotions.
The PAD model in this context
suggests that the ambient odours will positively influence customers pleasure and arousal levels, prompting approached behaviour, and avoidance behaviour otherwise.
However,
Lazarus's cognitive theory of emotions
suggests that while customers will be able to recognize/perceive that there is an ambient odour, this perception will not lead to a change in their mood.
Done in a shopping mall in canada-field experiment.
in the experimental week, the mall was diffused with pleasant/ambient odours-citrus scent. This was diffused into the malls main corridors.
Control week- no smell.
Sample of shoppers in each week were asked to complete a questionnaire about their shopping trip. They were not told about the purpose of the study.
Results and findings:
Chebat and Michon concluded that instead of the ambient scent directly prompting a customer to directly feel pleasure and arousal, the scent rather influences the customers perception of environmental quality and therefore, this perception leads to a positive and approached behaviour.
Therefore this concludes that it does not support the PAD model, instead suggets that odour has a direct effect on perception rather than mood.
The pleasure-arousal dominance model (PAD MODEL): Effect of ambience-
developed by MEHRABIAN AND RUSELL 1974 to portray the way physical environment influence people through their emotional impact (effect of ambience on emotions)
PLEASURE
is when a customer is feeling happy and satisfied.
AROUSAL
is when a customer is feeling excited and stimulated.
DOMINANCE
is when a customer is feeling in control.
DONOVAN AND ROSSITER 1982 (cited mehrabian and russell in their study)
applied the PAD model to the customer base of a retail store to suggest that
pleasure and arousal are more significant than dominance is.
They portrayed that pleasure and arousal in fact interact.
Lets say a customer walks into a store where the ambience is nice and welcoming. This would cause feelings of pleasure and arousal (happiness and stimulation). This feeling of pleasure and arousal will lead to a more 'approach' behaviour, where the customer will feel more like approaching employees for any enquiries. However, if the customer walks into a store with bad ambience, they will feel a lack of pleasure and arousal and therefore will tend to lean to 'avoidance' behaviour, where they avoid approaching employees.
Either way, there will be a lack of dominance as the customer will not usually know their way around very well and therefore feel a lack of control. But the ambience of the place can decide whether this dominance will turn into
avoidance behaviour
/lack of pleasure and arousal or if it will turn into
approached behaviour
/heightened pleasure and arousal. in conclusion,
whether pleasure or arousal overpowers dominance or not is decided by the ambience.
The effect of CROWDING on PAD MODEL:
it is a physical aspect of the shopping environment that has been shown to affect the consumer's experience. Perceived "crowding" occurs when a person space has been invaded extremely and they have a demand for space.
spatial crowding
is an excessive amount of objects that cause a demand for space whereas
human crowding
is an excessive amount of people that causes a demand for space. Research by Eroglu and Machleit 1990 shows that perceived crowding can influences a shoppers experience, satisfaction as well as decision making of where to shop.
EXAMPLE STUDY-MACHLEIT ET AL (2002):
investigates how perceived crowding influenced the shopper's satisfaction and how emotions play a role into this relationship.
set of
three studies
carried out.
two field experiments and one lab experiment. -
Field experiments-
samples of students and non students had to snwer questions about their shopping experience across retail anvironments.
Lab experiment
- students were asked to imagine they were going into a bookstore. They were shown videos of bookstores with the density of spatial and human crowding manipulated. Then they were asked to fill a questionnaire about their thoughts, feelings and percpetion towards the bookstore.
Results and findings:
Effect of crowding on shopping satisfaction is complex .
Essentially perceived human and spatial crowding lowers satisfaction.
This effect is greater for spatial crowding.
The study does support the pad model, where the emotions affects the relationship between crowding and satfisfactiion, however only partially.
In conclusion, this is dubbed as "complex" as there are direct effects of crowding on pleasure and arousal however, there are other factors as well.
BRIEFING