Don't ignore the floor: Exploring multisensory atmospheric congruence between music and flooring in a retail environment

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In retail environments, consumers commonly evaluate products while standing on some type of flooring and concurrently being exposed to music; however, no study has examined the interaction of these two atmospheric cues. To bridge this gap, this research examines whether retailers can benefit from creating multisensory atmospheric congruent rather than incongruent retail environments of flooring and music. The results of an experiment in a real retail store reveal positive effects of multisensory congruent retail environments (e.g., soft music combined with soft flooring) on product evaluations. This study provides a new process explanation with consumers’ purchase-related self-confidence mediating these effects. Specifically, consumers in congruent rather than incongruent retail environments experience more purchase-related self-confidence, which in turn leads to more favorable product evaluations. Furthermore, this study shows that consumers with a low rather than a high preference for haptic information are influenced more by multisensory atmospheric congruence when evaluating a product haptically.

Original languageEnglish
JournalPsychology and Marketing
Volume34
Issue number10
Pages (from-to)931-945
Number of pages15
ISSN0742-6046
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.10.2017
Externally publishedYes

    Research areas

  • flooring, fluency, multisensory atmospheric congruence, retail store design, store atmosphere
  • Management studies

DOI

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