An empirical examination of perceived retail crowding, emotions, and retail outcomes

Abstract

Crowded retail shopping conditions can result from many shoppers being present during a given time and at a given place, as well as from limited customer space owing to inadequate floor layout design and allocation of fixtures and merchandise on the floor. This study investigated the effects of the perception of human crowding and spatial crowding on consumer shopping behavior through mediation of emotions of pleasure, arousal, dominance, and a feeling of satisfaction in an international market. A store intercept survey was conducted on 554 hypermarket consumers in Taipei, Taiwan. The proposed structural relationships among perceived retail crowding, emotions, and retail outcomes were analyzed by using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling with Lisrel 8.54. The results of the study demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed model in delineating the relationships of retail crowding-emotions-satisfaction-retail outcomes under actual retail environments. The study found that while human crowding perceived during shopping at a hypermarket store positively impacted shoppers' feelings rather than negatively, spatial crowding perceived due to high spatial density negatively impacted shoppers' positive emotions. The findings supported the view that retail crowding affected various shopping activities through influencing positive emotions and summary feelings of satisfaction. Managerial implications of the study were also discussed.