Content area
Full Text
Abstract
Ambiance is a general impression formed by a quality of a surrounding. It is another word for atmosphere in the sense of mood, place or a particular setting. It is the surrounding character and atmosphere of a place that creates a special quality, a situation and influences the audience. Consumer mood is an area of inquiry which has captured the attention of consumer researchers because it is not only a subject of theoretical value but it appears to have practical implications to a wide range of consumer and marketing issues. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the ambiance (store atmospheric factors), customer experiences and behavioral intention. Here the experience perceived by the customer is a mediating variable and the customer behavioral intention is a dependent variables. Close ended questionnaires were administered in randomly selected 250 customers of public and private retail stores of Hyderabad district. There are four contributing factors of ambiance i.e. lighting, background music, color and visual merchandising which are also the independent variables in this research. Lighting is measured by instrument designed by Choong (2011), background music designed by Morrison (2003), Color is measured by the instrument designed by Kumar and Rehman (2010), and visual merchandising is measured by an instrument designed by Kim (2013). The dependent variable, behavioral intentions, is measured by the instrument designed by Sangvikar (2012) and mediating variable i.e. customer experiences is measured by the instrument designed by Pantano (2012). Data was analyzed through independent sample t-test and correlation. Findings showed that ambiance is more in private stores as compared to public stores. It was also found that ambiance increases significantly consumer experience and consumer experience results in the consumer buying behavior. This research will have implications to the managers of private and public retail stores regarding the sales increase which will ultimately contribute in the economical development.
Key Words: Ambiance, Customer Experience, Customer Behavior Intention, Public and Private Retail Store, Brand Internationalization.
1.Introduction
Back in 1973, Kotler introduced the concept of store atmosphere, which refers to the effort of designing a physical store atmosphere that provides specific emotional impact on customers which encourages their buying behavior. He also claimed that managers usually considered the practical and operational aspects of the...