Store Atmospherics and Moderating Effect of Motives on Consumer Behaviour—An Indian Perspective

Abstract

An individual may visit a retail store for several reasons other than need fulfilment. Also, there are several external and internal influences that affect the consumer behaviour. A scientific study on these aspects to study the combined effect and individual effect shall enhance the body of knowledge. Store atmospherics can be defined as a conscious effort put by the organized retailer to create a pleasurable retail space. This enhances the experience of the customer and helps develop a favourable or unfavourable attitude towards the store, product, services or other merchandise. The attitude formation directly affects the consumer behaviour. Literature in the past on shopper motivation has indicated that motives are also influential parameters that affect the consumer behaviour, hence, the study attempts to evaluate the direct impact of stores atmospherics on consumer behaviour, and also, the indirect impact of store atmospherics on consumer behaviour with motives as a moderating variable. For this purpose, the data is collected from all over the country, by dividing the country into five strata, i.e. North, South, East, West and Central India. All the visitors of organized retail stores are eligible samples for the study. Regression modelling using SPSS AMOS is administered to evaluate the strength of association with the variables of the study. The research findings in the paper shall be of great relevance to organized retailers and shall help them to design a congenial environment in terms of designing the store layout that shall stimulate the desired behaviour in terms of Pleasure, Arousal and Dominance.

The research paper is an extract of the original work undertaken by me (Dr. Ramchandra Alias Ameet Chate) and submitted to Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU), Belagavi, Karnataka