Critical Shopping Experiences: Affective Reactions and Behavioural Consequences

There is a recent marketing trend to make shopping a positive experience for the consumer. A pleasant store environment is created with lights, music, an attractive store layout, and friendly service personnel so that shopping has become fun, just like a visit to the movie theatre. The pleasant store atmosphere created seeks to enhance the consumers' experience and encourages purchases by uplifting consumer mood. Although retailers today expend a lot of resources to create a pleasant store environment, they know little about the overall effects on consumer affect and behaviour. The presented research studies consumers' affective reactions to naturally occurring shopping experiences in shopping centres, with the overall aim to investigate consumers' emotional and behavioural reactions. A hierarchical emotion descriptor model is developed and tested for an integrated understanding of consumers' reactions to shopping experiences. The book concludes with the discussion of managerial implications.