Chapter 16: Environmental Simulation Techniques in Retailing: A Review from a Store Atmospheric and Customer Experience Perspective

Publishing about the ‘customer experience’ concept as such, and its meaning for retailing in particular, is rather recent (e.g. [1,2]). Up till now, when dealing with customer experience in a retailing context, the notion of ‘customer experience’ is often linked to the study of atmospherics, the ‘space’ wherein these atmospheric cues are ‘implemented’, and consumer interaction within such spaces or settings.

In atmospherics research, literature typically narrows down to an examination of the effect of atmospheric cues and their influence on consumer behavior in retail settings [1]; see [3] for an overview of these studies). Starting from 1973, Kotler [4] introduced the notion of ‘atmospherics’, which since then has generated a substantial stream of research. Typically, these studies have been framed in environmental psychology theory, while focusing on developing insights on and predictions about the influence of certain isolated atmospheric cues (i.e. Stimuli), which mostly are under the control of the retailer, upon shopper emotions (i.e. the Organism) and subsequent behavior (i.e. Responses). In these studies, researchers hypothesized that the influence of a physical environment was mainly of an affective nature.