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Introduction
Store atmospherics was first introduced by Kotler (1974) and defined as the conscious designing of retail spaces to evoke consumers’ cognitive and emotional responses. Since then, store atmospherics has become a crucial aspect of a retail environment and overall shopping experience (Puccinelli et al., 2009). By stimulating sensory modalities appropriately, retailers could induce positive emotions (Kivioja, 2017) and attitudes (Krishna et al., 2010). Sensory marketing literature overwhelmingly supports the significant association between store atmospherics and consumers’ emotional, behavioural and cognitive responses (for a review, see Skandrani, 2011). As a result, retailers are leveraging on sensory marketing strategies aiming to influence consumers’ senses to affect their perception (Krishna, 2012) and strengthen brand-customer relationships (Costa et al., 2012).
The impact of stimulating different sensory modalities in isolation has been extensively examined in literature (Clarke et al., 2012; Park et al., 2015; Spence et al., 2014). However, prior scholars have found that stimulating multisensory modalities enhances consumer perceptions and behavioural intentions more effectively (Spence et al., 2014). Extending on this notion, Morrison et al. (2011) examined the effects of music and scented candles together and found they significantly enhanced consumers’ experience and pleasure. A well-designed multisensory setting can therefore evoke positive emotions and behaviour. However, most prior studies have only examined the effect of multisensory cues (i.e. presence or absence) but not the number of sensory modalities being stimulated. To fully understand the effect of sensory cues within a store atmospheric, it is important to delineate the effect of the sensory cues and the effect led by the number of sensory cues of sensory modalities being stimulated.
Additionally, sensory intensity is another spectrum that remains unexplored in store-atmospheric literature. Sensory intensity has been acknowledged as a crucial factor influencing individuals’ experiences (Morrison et al., 2011). However, the literature primarily examined intensity as a variation of one single sensory cue such as visual (Berčík et al., 2016), auditory (Kellaris and Altsech, 1992) or olfactory stimulation alone (Leenders et al., 2016). Thus, little is known of the change in perceived intensity when multiple modalities are being stimulated simultaneously. Furthermore, whether that change would influence consumers’ emotional responses and perceptions remain unexplored. Therefore, the current paper seeks to understand the...