Retail apparel stores’ atmospherics – An Empirical Study on Customer Expectation in a Non-metro Indian City

The retailers embrace different strategies to increase the sales, attract the customers and to retain them. The retail outlet that provides the customers with a memorable shopping experience would have a lasting impression and invariably attracts more sales. In the past, shopping habits were mostly determined by needs whereas in the modern era shopping is influenced by many other factors such as hobby, entertainment, life style, hangout etc. The store atmospherics became an effective strategy in modern retailing. Though there are different atmospherics factors, the present research considers music, lighting, store decor and merchandise visibility that are widely used by the apparel retail stores in the study area. The study results show that the customers give utmost importance to the lighting aspects in the apparel retail stores followed by scent and music.