Towards an Holistic Understanding of Retail Atmospheric Cues

Research on how retail environments can affect consumer behaviour owes much to the work of Kotler (1974). Coining the term ‘atmospherics’, Kotler (1974) argued that buying environments can be purposefully designed to produce specific emotional effects in shoppers, thereby enhancing their purchase probability. However, it was not until Donovan and Rossiter (1982) that research in this area was popularised. In their paper, the authors introduced the Mehrabian-Russell framework (Mehrabian & Russell, 1974), suggesting that it provides a parsimonious description of environments, intervening variables and behaviours that are relevant to retail settings.