Abstract In this article we review research from the past decade that explores how elements of social influence in the bricks-and-mortar retail environment impact customers. We focus our discussion on demonstrating how the active and passive social influence of the salesforce and other shoppers in the retail context can impact a focal customer’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Additionally, we utilize our review as an opportunity to highlight a variety of directions future research could pursue to further our understanding of the impact of the social retail environment.’
#1Lisa C. Wan(PolyU: Hong Kong Polytechnic University)H-Index: 11
#2Robert S. Wyer(UC: University of Cincinnati)H-Index: 82
Observers’ reactions to a service failure and their attributions of responsibility for its occurrence can depend on fortuitous characteristics of the protagonists that happen to draw their attention. Four field and laboratory experiments show that when observers have an incidental similarity to one of the persons involved in a service failure (the customer or the service provider), their attention is drawn to this protagonist, often leading them to construe the situation from this person’s persp...
Last. Jennifer Argo(U of A: University of Alberta)H-Index: 26
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This research demonstrates that a consumer’s physical appearance—and, more specifically, his or her body size—predictably influences the product(s) that the consumer is recommended. Four studies conducted in both field and lab settings show that agents more frequently recommend round (vs. angular) shaped products to heavier targets, notably for products and categories in which body size is irrelevant (e.g., lamps and perfume). We attribute this to a combination of shape-congruency and trait-cong...
Last. Jens Nordfält(HHS: Stockholm School of Economics)H-Index: 12
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AbstractThis research examines consumers’ general in-store mobile phone use and shopping behavior. Anecdotal evidence has suggested that mobile phone use decreases point-of-purchase sales, but the results of the current study indicate instead that it can increase purchases overall. Using eye-tracking technology in both a field study and a field experiment, matched with sales receipts and survey responses, the authors show that mobile phone use (vs. nonuse) and actual mobile phone use patterns bo...
Last. Annika Wiecek(RWTH Aachen University)H-Index: 3
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While a rich body of research has examined the psychological costs and benefits of queuing, this research focuses on the customer currently using a retail service and examines how this customer is affected by lines forming at his or her back. Drawing on Social Impact Theory, we postulate that customers feel pressured by people waiting behind them and that this feeling of social pressure leads to more negative affective experiences, poorer participation in co-creation settings, and lower percepti...
Few studies have examined how customers respond to the mere presence of others in the shopping environment, and only one article (Soderlund, 2017) has investigated the unique impact that employee p ...
Psychological ownership, or the feeling that something is mine, has garnered growing attention in marketing. While previous work focuses on the positive aspects of psychological ownership, this research draws attention to the darker side of psychological ownership—territorial behavior. Results of five experimental studies demonstrate that when consumers feel psychological ownership of a target, they are prone to perceptions of infringement and subsequent territorial responses when they infer tha...
This research fills a gap in the retailing literature regarding physical proximity while shopping. Most research in this area examines perceived crowding or social presence and largely ignores issues of distance. Using four studies we explore the impact of the physical proximity of an employee to a shopper. Contrary to common belief, we show that such encroachments can increase consumers’ acceptance feelings and their purchase intentions. We illustrate how these results are consistent with socia...
Across six studies, a female mannequin is demonstrated to have negative implications for both male and female consumers low in appearance self-esteem. In particular, consumers who are lower in appearance self-esteem evaluate a product displayed by a mannequin more negatively as compared with consumers higher in appearance self-esteem. As mannequins signal the normative standard of beauty and consumers with low self-esteem in regard to their appearance believe they fail to meet this standard, the...
Last. Robert S. Wyer(CUHK: The Chinese University of Hong Kong)H-Index: 82
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Feeling crowded in a shopping environment can decrease consumers’ evaluations of a product or service and lower customer satisfaction. However, the present research suggests that a crowded environment can sometimes have a positive impact on consumer behavior. Although feeling crowded motivates consumers to avoid interacting with others, it leads them to become more attached to brands as an alternative way of maintaining their basic need for belongingness. The effect does not occur (a) when the c...
Abstract This study investigates how promotional activities, mall size, and past shopping experiences affect customer shopping duration, and elucidates how shopping duration induces immediate, transient, and long-term effects on customer decisions of whether and how much to buy in the offline shopping mall format. We simultaneously model purchase incidence, purchase amount, and shopping duration to examine empirically the constructs’ dynamic impacts. The proposed model is calibrated using six-ye...
Abstract Numerous studies in the marketing literature focused on consumer behavior in general, but relatively few studies have examined Impulse purchase behavior (IPB). Although few studies examined IPB, the vast majority of the studies were conducted using the cross-sectional design. These studies suffer from certain limitations like random measurement error, common method bias, causality & validity-related issues that are inherently associated with the cross-sectional design. Despite these lim...
Abstract Retail research has highlighted how the presence of others can affect consumers' brand evaluations, purchase intentions, and choice behavior. This field study investigated whether the presence (vs. absence) of peers and other consumers, respectively, could influence consumers' propensity to purchase popular brands (i.e., a market leader) within a given product category. Consumers at a supermarket were observed when standing in front of a spice shelf and their choices were analyzed as a ...
#1Shipra Gupta(UIS: University of Illinois at Springfield)H-Index: 7
#2Merve Coskun(UIS: University of Illinois at Springfield)
Last. Merve Coskun(UIS: University of Illinois at Springfield)H-Index: 2
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Abstract The current research explores how store environmental cues – human crowding and store messiness influence consumer purchase intention across two product type (ingestible and non-ingestible). Importantly, the research also examines the mediating role of contamination perception on these effects. Specifically, for ingested products (e.g., eggs), crowded and messy store environments signal contamination and lead to decrease in purchase intention. However, for non-ingested products (e.g., d...
A customer's journey of searching for a product or service, evaluating it, purchasing it, using it, recommending it, rebuying it or rejecting it is unique in itself. Organisations always have dreamt of getting inside the customers' minds and trying to understand what's happening inside at each of these steps. This chapter explains the customer journey concept and the analysis of the various components of the customer journey. We highlight that the firms need to understand the customer journeys a...
Abstract In the retail sector, it has become necessary for retailers to differentiate themselves using new strategies, such as managing shopping experiences. The retailer can benefit from applying these experiences in order to gain loyal customers. The purpose of this research is to advance in the analysis of the different dimensions of the e-shopping experience, identified from a literature review, and attitudinal and behavioral loyalty. In addition, this study highlights the importance of emot...
The COVID-19 Behavioral Health Mindset inventory (CVBHM) was designed to protect consumers and workers by assessing biosafety risk through acceptance of responsibility for the protection of oneself...
Abstract This research highlights the importance of retailer-consumer identity congruence – the match between the retail brand identity and the consumers’ identity. Retailers can leverage identity congruence to forge meaningful consumer-brand relationships which will result in enhanced engagement, brand loyalty, and willingness to pay. The paper discusses how creative merchandise offerings and innovative merchandising strategies contribute to the creation of a unique retail brand identity and fa...
Abstract The paper attempts to develop an ‘Online Susceptibility Scale’ (OSS) by focusing on the factors that influence shopper buying decisions in an online environment as they are not adequately addressed in the literature. The proposed scale supports the understanding of the impact of online information which leads to consumer decisions. The study involves qualitative and quantitative studies to develop the scale. Eleven items are identified for the scale development which were borrowed from ...