Environmental and emotional influences on willingness‐to‐buy in small and large retailers

Addresses two critical issues for the small retailer faced with competition from large national one‐stop chains: do customers perceive environmental and induced emotional influences the same for these different retailers and do these influences have differential effects on a customer’s willingness‐to‐buy (WTB)? Two studies were performed within a small town in the mid‐western USA. It was found that the small downtown retailers primarily use empathy to influence WTB. It was also found that the large national one‐stop chains in this small town primarily use assurance to influence WTB. It was further found that small retailers manage empathy through responsiveness, where the large national chains balance tangibility, reliability and responsiveness to jointly influence assurance.