Atmospherics store atmosphere influencing purchases
Decisions relating to the design and arrangement of the store are now key elements of the retail market mix. The growth of self-service retailing in the sixties emphasised the need to make the most of the available space and considering the environment of the store a decade later followed this. ... From the eighties onwards, the emphasis has been on the design of the store and need for stores to look individual and different. Philip Kotler first defined Atmospherics in 1973 as ‘The conscious designing of space to create certain effects in Buyers…atmospherics is the effort to design buying environments to produce specific emotional effects in the buyer that will enhance his purchase probability.’ Kotler’s essay on ‘Atmospherics as a Marketing Tool’ introduced new techniques that could boost the sales in the retailing industry. Many other leading people in the study of retailing followed suit, focusing on certain aspects of what could create the desired atmosphere, including music or the scent of the store. ... Visually, an atmosphere could be enhanced by use of colour, the brightness of the store, as well as its size and shape. ... He correctly predicted that atmospherics would have to be more widely used so that retailers could keep their share of the profits. ... Mentioned in the essay is the use of atmospherics when targeting certain social classes. ... Finally, Kotler asks if the resulting atmosphere will be able to compete effectively with the competitors’ atmosphere. These four questions will help to define the most suitable atmosphere for the consumer, and if answered correctly, it will give the retail outlet a ‘differential advantage’. Some important points that he mentions is that atmospherics is used to create attention, send messages and arouse reactions or trigger sensations that lead to purchases. ... Expanding on the subject, Donovan and Rossiter in 1982 found that if the customer was aroused by the store, they would feel alert and excited and their stay in the store would be longer. They would be more inclined to make eye contact and converse with employees in the store. ... They added that arousal would only be invoked if the store environment was pleasant, otherwise there would be either no influence in the store environment or a negative influence. There has been limited studies relating to music in the store so the findings may not be completely accurate. ... Richard Yalch and Eric Spangenberg continued the research by investigating the ‘effects of store music on shopping behaviour’. He compared the impact of foreground and background music in a clothing store on people of different ages and at different times of the day. ... Relating to the time of day, people made fewer unplanned purchases when listening to foreground music at the purposeful shopping times. Most significantly, shoppers reported spending more time in the store than intended when music that they usually did not listen to had been playing.