Factors Influencing Retail Store Atmospherics
There are several important factors that influence consumer store choice behavior. Although the influence of these elements differs, depending on such variables as the type of product purchased the type of store (such as discount, department or other), and the type of consumer , the factors discussed in this section have been found to exert general influence on store choice. They include store location, physical design assortment, prices, advertising sales promotion personnel and services.
Store location
Location has an obvious impact on store patronage. Generally the closer consumers are to a store, the greater their likelihood to purchase from that store. The farther away consumers are from a tire, the greater the number of intervening alternatives and thus the lower the likelihood to patronize that store Research on the influence of location on store choice has taken several directions
Intercity choice
Marketers have long been interested in the factors that cause consumers outside metropolitan areas to choose city A rather than city B in which to shop. Research has been conducted on the drawing power of urban areas on consumers located near these cities. Believing that population and distance were not the causes of consumer store choice but could be used as good substitute variables for all the factors influencing consumers’ the law of retail gravitation was developed to explain the strength of one city’s attraction on consumers living near it. In effect, this law states that two cities attract retail trade from an intermediate city or town in the vicinity of the breaking point (that is, where 50 percent of the trade is attracted to each city) approximately in direct proportion to their population and in inverse proportion to the square of the distance from these two cities to the intermediate town. This concept was tested by computing the breaking point between thirty pairs of cities. The predictions were very close to results of actual field studies in
Store location
Location has an obvious impact on store patronage. Generally the closer consumers are to a store, the greater their likelihood to purchase from that store. The farther away consumers are from a tire, the greater the number of intervening alternatives and thus the lower the likelihood to patronize that store Research on the influence of location on store choice has taken several directions
Intercity choice
Marketers have long been interested in the factors that cause consumers outside metropolitan areas to choose city A rather than city B in which to shop. Research has been conducted on the drawing power of urban areas on consumers located near these cities. Believing that population and distance were not the causes of consumer store choice but could be used as good substitute variables for all the factors influencing consumers’ the law of retail gravitation was developed to explain the strength of one city’s attraction on consumers living near it. In effect, this law states that two cities attract retail trade from an intermediate city or town in the vicinity of the breaking point (that is, where 50 percent of the trade is attracted to each city) approximately in direct proportion to their population and in inverse proportion to the square of the distance from these two cities to the intermediate town. This concept was tested by computing the breaking point between thirty pairs of cities. The predictions were very close to results of actual field studies in