Store Design: Visual Complexity and Consumer Responses

Modern shopping spaces are full of sensory stimuli. Retailers, challenged by efficient online operators, tend to eagerly fill their stores with fixtures, furniture, decoration, displays, and product stock to provide experiential value to shoppers. Retailer efforts to attract consumers’ attention and maximize in-store experience can result in the exposure of consumers to a highly complex store environment, specifically from the visual perspective. Intangible stimuli, such as music and fragrance, are also routinely employed in stores, which may contribute to the increased sensory complexity. As visual sensation is the most dominant factor for people in perceiving and understanding the external environment, and marketing efforts heavily depend on visual communication, it is unsurprising that previous studies have emphasized the effects of visual complexity in understanding shoppers’ responses to grocery or deli store environments (Gilboa & Rafaeli, 2003; Nasar, 1987; Orth & Crouch, 2014; Orth & Wirtz, 2014; Orth, Wirtz, & McKinney, 2016). A store environment has both conscious and unconscious effects on consumers’ emotions. Environment can influence shopping behaviors including purchase intention (Donovan & Rossiter, 1982; Spence, Puccinelli, Grewal, & Roggeveen, 2014; Turley & Milliman, 2000), money or time spent in the store (Baker, Levy, & Grewal, 1992; Sherman, Mathur, & Smith, 1997), approach tendency (Bitner, 1992; Donovan, Rossiter, Marcoolyn, & Nesdale, 1994; Foxall & Greenley, 1999), and patronage (Wu et al., 2013). The store environment has a considerable effect on unplanned purchases by stimulating consumers’ cognitive and emotional status through product display or sensory stimuli (Chang, Eckman, & Yan, 2011; Inman, Winer, & Ferraro, 2009; Iyer, 1989; Piron, 1991; Silvera, Lavack, & Kropp, 2008). Creating an appealing store environment is an essential job for retail designers and managers, as it allows a unique and easy to recognize store image for consumers in highly competitive market conditions (Baker, Grewal, & Parasuraman 1994; Orth, Heinrich, & Malkewitz, 2012); it also positively affects consumer satisfaction and loyalty by boosting the store’s attractiveness and aesthetic value (Baker, Parasuraman, Grewal, & Voss, 2002; Vieira, 2010). The visual complexity of a store environment draws the attention of consumers and affects their emotional and behavioral response (Gilboa & Rafaeli, 2003; Orth & Wirtz, 2014; Orth et ORIGINAL ARTICLE