This is especially so given that we have known for some time that “an arousing store environment or atmosphere combined with a pleasant shopping experience have a positive effect on consumers’ willingness to buy” ( Bitner, 1992). The growing importance acquired by the environment in which the consumer’s patronage occurs means that this analysis is a chance to explore the evolution and adaptation of the various shopping behavior models based on the stimuli received by consumers from the setting in which their general shopping experience takes place. But what is interesting is that such companies do not abandon their physical channel but rather adopt an “omnichannel” strategy as a strength vis-à-vis purely online firms (“pure-players”), which paradoxically are also starting to set up physical environments or “experience” stores ( Blazquez et al., 2019).īeing present in multiple channels offers greater exposure and market reach, but if the customer is the same, companies must start to consider the congruence of customer experience when switching from one channel to another and whether they are maintaining branding uniformity and consistency across specific marketing attributes in each channel so as to enhance value in the consumer’s shopping process ( Juaneda-Ayensa et al., 2016). In this regard many companies which had focussed their efforts on traditional physical channels are now also adding online channels in a multichannel strategy. The internet offers companies a great opportunity to enlarge their customer base by marketing their products and services online, in what is known as “e-commerce.” Our study thoroughly analyses and reviews the most widely accepted models in the study of the influence of sales atmospherics on consumer behavior in physical store environments, and the adaptation and application of such models to today’s omnichannel shopper behavior, where shopping environments combine physical sales settings with new digital sales atmospheres. Following the developing trend from traditional marketing to new online sales channels, various authors have sought to transfer and validate these theories with virtual outlets or e-stores, so as to validate them in a context of e-commerce. Subsequently in 1982 this concept was applied to retail outlets so as to better understand the effect on consumers of atmospheric stimuli experienced in a physical store. The conceptual framework for our analysis is the approach to environmental psychology first introduced by different authors in 1974.
Department of Business Economics and Accounting, National University of Distance Education (UNED), Madrid, Spain.María Dolores Reina Paz * and Fernando Jiménez Delgado *
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