CONSUMER DECISIONS: HOW STORE ENVIRONMENTS AFFECT CUSTOMERS’ BEHAVIOR | 1

Consumer Decisions: How store environments affect customers’ behavior

Daniel S. CaldasUndergraduate, Pre-Journalism (Advertising). -- RWG Class

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Daniel Caldas (or “Dan”) is an undergraduate pre-journalism student

majoring in Advertising & Social sciences. He worked at Mentes Digitais as a Social Media

Manager and was a member of the Strategist’s department. Now, his focus is on traditional

Advertising and Marketing strategies.

CONSUMER DECISIONS: HOW STORE ENVIRONMENTS AFFECT CUSTOMERS’ BEHAVIOR | 2

Abstract

There are many different ways to persuade consumers to buy products. From the use of a

popular content such as music to trigger unconscious emotions, to the organization of products

inside the store to stimulate consumerism. Equivalent strategies likewise happens regarding

customer service, including the use of different colors to attract consumers, smells to make them

memorize the brand, touch for a closer sensation, and taste, especially for food products. The

purpose of this paper is to explain different strategies that business use to persuade its customers

and how all of this aspects generate a particular environment, making consumers distinguish a

specific store as one that is different from its competitors.

Keywords

Consumer Experience, Store Design, Marketing, Costumer Behavior, Five Senses.

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Another day, another dollar

7:00 am. Saturday morning. The alarm rings and an enjoyable song starts playing. “He”

gets up, goes to the bathroom and “takes care of business.” After that, he walks downstairs straight

to the kitchen. Opening the fridge, he realizes he needs to restock it for lunch. He sits at the table,

drinking coffee and watching the morning news on his favorite TV channel. There is a cut to a

commercial break. One of them captures his attention. A new “microwave food” is being offered by

a big supermarket franchise that is new in town. The food is presented in an appealing (even that he

knows it is not that much) way and, interestingly, the ad soundtrack features the same music he

woke up to.

8:00 am. He get in his car and heads to this supermarket. He turns the radio on to his

favorite rock station. The radio presenter starts talking about a song that is becoming popular

nationally. Yes, it is the same song he heard in the morning and saw on TV. The presenter says that

this song, “has been brought to you by STORE X, a great supermarket franchise that has this new,

tasty, microwave food!”

8:30 am. He arrives at the supermarket, parks his car, turns off the radio and heads straight

to the store. Without effort, the doors opens for him. He unconsciously notices that the store smells

good, like the fields of a heavenly farm. The music is relaxing, making him want to go back to bed,

and the design of the place, even if it is a big franchise, reminds him of the local markets in his

town. He walks all the way to the other side of the store, passing through various sections of the

market: Electronic gadgets, home supplies, baby care, gun ammunition are just a few of the sections

he passes. On his way, something catches his attention. A young woman with a big beautiful smile

in the “microwave food” section offers him a free sample of “this new tasty microwave food” and,

well, it smells good, so he eats it. But even if it is very cheap, he is not interested in buying it. He

turns back to his major goal: buying supplies for lunch.

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He finally arrives at the grocery section. Putting everything that he needs in his cart, he now

heads to the checkout, to conclude his adventure. Unfortunately, there is a line and he will have to

wait. It is making him bored. Suddenly, “that” song starts playing although he is not conscious of it.

Instead, he starts thinking about everything that he will have to do to prepare his lunch himself. He

starts feeling lazy. Looking to the right, conveniently, he sees that “tasty microwave food” and

starts thinking about not preparing lunch, but taking his time for something else.

9:30 am. The consumer buys the microwave food.

This situation, intentionally described to point out details of behavior modification, is how

brands strategically work to sell its products. As pointed out by Süle (2012), “the entire

consumption process might be described as a series of stages, arranged in a hierarchical order” (as

cited in Matsuno, 1997, p. 214). Consumer decision does not depend on a single offer opportunity,

but on an entire chain of experiences that are related to his background perceptions (culture, desires,

experiences, flavors, etc). Craik 1973, Mehrabian & Russell (1974), Russell & Pratt (1980), Stokols

(1978) argue, “[…] the environment is a stimulus containing cues that combine to affect people's

internal evaluations, which in turn create approach/avoidance responses” (as cited in Spangenberg,

Crowley & Henderson, 1996, p. 68). The role of store design is to keep the consumer engaged in its

offers from the moment he arrives at the store he has heard about on the radio and seen on TV, to

the moment the money is exchanged for product.

Selling happiness

There was a time not so long ago that retail environments had few standards to

meet. A store should be clean and organized to maximize sales per square foot. It

should also be pretty… Today, though, the retail environment must tie in directly to

the brand, and, in fact, speak the brand’s value proposition. – Nancye Green (As

cited in Baker, Parasuraman, Grewal & Voss, 2002, p. 120)

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“Value”, according to the Oxford Dictionaries (2013), is defined as “the regard that

something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something […]”. A brand’s

value proposition is not uniquely related to its monetary aspects, but also encompasses the

subjective perceptions that consumers have regarding the business environment. Normally, these

aspects are communicated by the companies’ branches’ layouts, in their products, through the

design of the packages, and also by the use of music and scent cues. As Neisser (1976) points out,

“[…] consumers gather sensory information from their environments so that they can navigate their

way through them and make judgments and evaluations as they go along. Basically their

multisensory input (touch, smell, hearing, taste, and sight) forms the basis for human cognition (as

cited in Jansson-Boyd, 2011, p. 531).” This means the value proposition of a brand not only

depends on the price of products, but also on the consumers’ feelings regarding them.

Humanity has evolved to a stage in which buying products is no longer just purchasing the

physical thing that one needs, but is also purchasing the entire experience that relates to its

subjective characteristics. Marketing researchers have noticed that business are changing their

“product-to-consumer” strategies into humankind issues (Kotler, 2010). According to this thought,

it is possible to argue that contemporary companies are not just selling a product anymore, but are

looking to sell experiences related to human values and emotional perceptions. To achieve this,

businesses must always be rethinking or upgrading their strategies to create, or maintain, the

brand’s identity for the customer.

“The concept of brand equity […] refers to the basic idea that a product's value to

consumers, the trade and the firm is somehow enhanced when it is associated or

identified over time with a set of unique elements that define the brand concept.”

(Erdem et al. 2013, p. 302)

Creating a brand concept requires effort from the company. There is no easy or inexpensive

path to reach a fixed positioning in the consumer’s mind. This is done through unconscious

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communication strategies, including the logo’s colors, the store’s unique identifiable smells and

sounds, the individual consumer’s store experience, the products’ placements, and other specific

strategies that represent the company’s concept.

Manipulating the senses

“The crucial challenge for advertising, and all sponsored marketing

communications about brands, is what consumers can be made to learn about the

brand that transcends its transactional qualities.” (Alexomanolaki, Loveday &

Bennett, 2013, p. 54)

For each brand concept, companies must construct (or manipulate) different perceptions in

the consumer’s mind. Normally, before deciding which type of strategies will be used, businesses

conduct Perception Research to identify how they are being perceived by the consumers according

to their strategies. This is an important process since it will reveal meaningful information that is

required to determine if these companies’ ideas and strategies are on track to achieve their goals. In

this process, how conscious and unconscious sensations will be perceived from the moment that

someone wakes up in the morning to the moment that money is exchanged for a product is

considered. For that, Spangenberg et al. (1996) mention that the way the different aspects of the

store’s atmosphere combine will determine a customer’s level of pleasure and excitement when in

that store. Considering that different environments affects people’s behavior, stores must be

perceived as places where the customers feel comfortable and, at same time, wants to buy. Because

of this, business work together with architects, designers and advertisers to achieve the proper way

of engaging the customers through the design of store’s environment, which doesn’t just take how a

store looks into account.

For a long time, vision dominated scientific research related to consumption.

However, in the past 15 or so years there has been a gradual but steady interest in

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how the other senses can impact upon aspects such as consumer decision-making,

product evaluation, and attention. (Jansson-Boyd, 2011, p. 531)

COLORS (SIGHT) – McDonalds, Burger

King, KFC, Domino’s Pizza, Wendy’s.

These companies, and others of the same

type, for example, have a very specific

conceptual characteristic in common: the

color red. The colors red or yellow, when

in strong evidence on logos and in the

infrastructure of branches, powerfully affect

the subconscious of the human brain,

making people optimistic or excited to act

(See image 1). As pointed out by Madden,

Hewett & Roth (2013), marketers use colors as a means of creating, maintaining, or modifying

brands in the customer’s minds.

Since vision is generally the first sense that is activated when a person notices something,

generally, the main objective for using colors in logos and in companies’ branches is to simplify the

amount of information to consumers, so that they memorize important aspects of the brand’s

concept with minimal effort.

MUSIC (SOUND) – As Baker et al. (2002) discovered,

“As customers' perceptions of store music cues become more favorable, customers

will perceive interpersonal service quality to be higher1. […in addition] As

1 2 emphases added

Image 1 – Psychology of Colors in Logo Design (2013). [Image]. Retrieved August 08, 2013 from

http://thelogocompany.net/blog/

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customers' perceptions of store music cues become more favorable, customers will

perceive merchandise quality to be higher2” (p. 128).

According to these assertions, sounds has great influence on customer’s behavior. Music is

commonly known as being the universal language which directly affects the emotions of people,

influencing meaningful perceptions. For example, in fashion stores, depending on the type of store,

pop music will be playing to connect the store to what is new, cool or beautiful. As discussed by

Dolfsma (2013), “By consuming pop music, people want to express who they are, to which group

they belong, what their identity is. […] Since the late 1950s and early 1960s pop music has become

an important way for many people to distinguish themselves from others (Frith 1983, 1987a)” (p.

1020). Customers are influenced not only by the rhythm of the song, but by the entire relationship

that they have with the artists, which then translates into their “favorite” products, services, which

then makes the store become part of their identity. The use of sounds in marketing strategies aims to

increase the rate of engagement between the customer, the products, the stores and the brand.

TEXTURES (TOUCH) – The definition of “Touch”, by the Oxford Dictionaries (2013), is to

“come into or be in contact with”. However, this experience is not only physical. As Jansson-Boyd

(2013) pointed out:

“´[…] when consumers experience a haptically pleasant product it triggers an

emotional response that may be the factor that drives the evaluation of that

particular product. Consequently, by making consumers feel emotionally connected

to products they are ultimately making them feel closely connected to them, and

this in turn increases likelihood of purchase and repeat purchase” (p. 532).

Tactile strategies are commonly used for children. In a toy store, for example, a great

number of products offer the possibility to experience them by touching a specific part such as

button that will make the toy move or sing. Referencing Bushnell and Boudreau (1991) and Piaget,

2

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(1952), Jansson-Boyd (2013) says, “Infants and young children clearly use touch to explore and

evaluate their surroundings, something that adults also do but to a lesser extent” (p. 532). This does

not mean that touch strategies are less effective on adults. Generally, they are the buyers, which

means that even if the strategy is directed to children, the main goal of it is to make the child

complain until the parent buys it3.

SMELL & TASTE – Apart from announcing their products, the main objective of business to

advertise themselves is to achieve positioning in the customer’s mind. As pointed out by Marcel

Proust, in 1913, in his “Proust Phenomenon” study, particular smells have the power of bringing

back memories. The strongest and longest lasting memories are the scent ones. “[…] scents are

processed in the limbic system of the brain, which is the center of emotions […] (Leukel 1976;

Restak 1984) argue (as cited in Spangenberg et al., 1996, p. 69)”. Smell memories are some of the

strongest memories that can transport people back to certain times and experiences. Because of this,

brands, small and large, from food companies to car companies, to clothing companies and others,

artificially create a unique, identifiable smell to manipulate memory, relating the shop experience of

the customers with their emotional references. For example, when the customer gets closer to a

Burger King’s kitchen, it is possible to smell that burgers are being “naturally” cooked. The scent is

a complicated chemical formula that is commonly referred to the ‘Smell of burgers being grilled

(Lindstrom, 2008) ” When consumers smell these aromas, they are transported to, hopefully,

positive memories of this franchise, which stimulates the desire to buy. Smells not only will make

consumers remember positive memories, but will also increase their emotional relationship with the

products.

Conscious Consumption

To cite all the different strategies businesses use to persuade its customers would take

years. However, it is possible to say that the ways to strategically stimulate people to act (buy) are

3 For more information, watch The Corporation by Jennifer Abbot & Mark Achbar (2003).

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extremely vast. Hence, beyond influencing impulsive consumption, Canter (1983) argues that “[…]

the most important role of a space (in this case, the store) is its ability to facilitate the goals of its

occupants (as cited in Baker et al., 2002, p. 122)”. “Buying” is nothing more than exchange money

for a material that will satisfy a need. The role, then, of companies is to facilitate the customer’s

ability to find a specific product without effort, so that he feels “happy” about it and chooses to

patronize that specific store again.

There are strong criticisms regarding how marketers use tools to “manipulate” customers’

behavior for the sake of unconscious consumption, which is, getting people to buy things that are

not needed. However, what is forgotten by most customers is that conscious consumption can be

achieved without effort. A simple explanation for this would be that a company can only offer

products and services that, through the power of advertising and store design, becomes desirable to

a targeted audience, but still does not determine the customer’s choices. Being aware that there are

strategies that businesses use to persuade people is the first step that leads to conscious

consumerism. A store is nothing else but a place where “happiness” can be found in different types

of products. These strategies are used not only to persuade a customer, but also to help him to make

the best decision. Even if that decision is not the best for him.

References

CONSUMER DECISIONS: HOW STORE ENVIRONMENTS AFFECT CUSTOMERS’ BEHAVIOR | 11

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Baker, J., Parasuraman, A., Grewal, D., & Voss, G. B. (2002). The Influence of Multiple Store Environment Cues On Perceived Merchandise Value And Patronage Intentions. Journal of Marketing, 66(2), 120-141.

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