Store Environment

Question 1

1. According to Roggeveen et al. (2019), four factors determine retail atmospherics. These four factors are not limited to affect just the in-store experience and out-of-store experiences that the retailer can control or influence, thus incorporating multiple retail touch-points that a customer may encounter during a journey. What are these four factors? Name and define each of them, and provide examples of (digital) elements belonging to each of these key dimensions.

Answer 1

Four factors are as follows:
Design factor: pertains to visual elements, whether in store, online, or on other retailer-controlled touchpoints, so it includes the layout and style of the store, website, or flyer. Functional design pertains to layout of the store, comfort of the store, etc. While aesthetic design refers to the colors of the store, the style of the store, accessories in the store. An example would be the path of an IKEA store (functional, in-store) or pictures used on a website (aesthetic, digital)
Ambient factor: while the design factor pertains to the forefront of our awareness, ambient factors are background conditions, like lightning (in-store) or brightness of pictures on the website (digital)
Social factor: the social factor encompasses ”the people”, in a broad sense we’re talking about customers & employees (in-store) or comments from other customers (digital)
Trialability: refers to the ease with which a customer can “try out” a new product or service. A perfume sample from ICI Paris XL (in-store) is a good example, or a Netflix free monthly trial (digital) is another good example.

Question 2

2. In modern online retailing environments, retailers are continually striving to overcome the lack of sensory inputs, and emerging digital technology can attract consumers by creating multi-sensory experiences. The results from Heller et al.’s (2019) study suggest that, in an m-AR online retailing context, touch control, compared to voice control, positively affects consumers’ willingness-to-pay, as touch control reduces the effect of mental intangibility. Based on this paper and the DAST-framework (Roggeveen et al., 2019), can this finding affect how online stores intend to sell their products?

Answer 2

For sure it can affect how online stores intend to sell their products. Online retailers have to be very aware about the concept of mental intangibility (something being hard to “imagine” if you buy it online as opposed to buying something physically). The objective for online retailers is to make their products as tangible as possible. By providing sensory feedback in the form of touch control (and other sensory feedback, not ONLY visual sensory feedback) customers will be able to “feel” the products way better and this will make it so mental intangibility drops, which will lead to an increase in decision comfort. Decision comfort will lead to an increase in willingness-to-pay. To be very concrete: online retailers should invest in providing multiple digital options so that customers can “experience” the products in multiple ways (e.g. auditory cues, visual cues, touch cues)