Effects of Store Characteristics and In-Store Emotional Experiences on Store Attitude

This study examines how various characteristics of retail environments influence consumers’ emotional responses in the shopping environment, and how these emotions, in turn, influence consumers’ store attitudes. It also supplements emerging research on in-store emotions by identifying through ethnographic interviews emotions generated in the retail shopping environment that are not typically tapped by standard inventories of general human emotions. The data, collected from a sample of 294 consumers in Korea, indicate that store characteristics have a pronounced effect on consumers’ in-store emotions, and that these emotional experiences serve as critical mediators in the store characteristics–store attitudes relationship. The implications of this research for future work on the retail environment and consumers’ emotional responses are discussed.