Store atmosphere and consumer purchasing behavior: with reference to self-serving convenience stores

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of retail store atmosphere on consumer purchasing behavior at self-serving retail convenience stores in Ampara district. There are four contributing factors of store atmosphere are being identified, which are exterior, interior, design, social cues, while consumer purchasing behavior is a dependent variables. Each of the store atmosphere attributes was tested to determine and measure the relationship with consumer purchasing behavior. The questionnaires were filled by the respondents who already purchase products at self-serving retail stores for this quantitative research, a total of 300 respondents participated in the survey. The participating respondents represented a return rate of 97% after distribute the questionnaire directly to the respondents face to face. AMOS 23.0 and PSS 20.0 were used. Reliability and Validity test, EFA and SEM analysis were performed to test the hypotheses and model fit. As a result, atmospheric design factors has the greatest impact on purchasing behavior followed by exterior and interior while the relationship between social cues and consumer purchasing behavior was not significant. The results from our research are applicable for all self-serving retail stores in Ampara district, Sri Lanka