blog




  • Essay / Retailing in the Digital Age - 2137

    IntroductionTo broaden the shopping experience and customer satisfaction, the atmosphere during which they shop was necessary. Atmospheres were first founded by Kotler (1973) as an essential instrument for the business environment to produce an emotional effect on the customer's purchasing decision. More in-depth studies are being carried out to classify them. However, most of them were about the physical environment, but after the 21st century, online store concepts were applied. Multiple channels are a concept of this age, to survive retailers must also adapt. This report contains the findings and analysis, which include atmospheric variables, online retail environment, online retail atmosphere, and online retail opportunities and challenges . .Results and AnalysisAtmosphere, as defined by Kotler (1973), is an important marketing tool that directly affects customer behavior. Simply put, it is the atmosphere of sensory effects, including sight, hearing, smell and touch. It is also a part of the product that could have an impact on consumer behavior. Attempting to retain a specific segment of the target could increase the atmosphere in the store and increase shoppers' consumption, thereby leading to an increase in purchase probability. According to Turley and Milliman (2000), consumer behavior could be influenced by the environment. From the study, five categories could be identified that affect consumer evaluation and determine behavioral response: external variables, general interior variables, layout and design variables, point of purchase and decoration variables and human variables, as can As shown in Figure 1.Figure 1: Turley and Milliman's retail atmosphere analysis framework. Nowadays, the retail industry has shifted from physical retailing to click-through retailing. The development of the Internet has increased the flexibility for retailers to operate an online store in addition to their physical store. Additionally, the online channel also offers the advantage of selling products to the online buyer that add value to another customer segment (Ofek et al, 2010). Otherwise, consumer behavior at that time was not driven by a single channel. They use relevant technologies to search for information in different ways, such as reading reviews from other customers, visiting the physical store before purchasing online, finding the best purchase price (Aubrey and Judge, 2012 ). This could illustrate that customers use multi-channel for their purchasing decision. In the 21st century, customers tend to be the multi-channel shoppers that affect the retail industry..