For any business activity consumer is the most important factor and its importance gets manifested when the business includes service activity. In this competitive business environment where the competitive difference in services and products are essentially narrowing down, shopping experience has become the differentiating factor for most. Besides, the growth of e commerce has forced the traditional brick and mortar retailers to respond with this differentiation. When it comes to services, the service provider’s task becomes to manage the evidence which is essentially to tangibilize the intangible. Service firms try to demonstrate their service quality through physical evidence and presentation.
Kotler (1973) claims that atmospheric aspect of the store has often been given less importance because managers usually tend to focus more on practical and operational aspects. He also maintained that designing the store area to induce desired cognitive and emotional feelings in the customer is not an easy job. A number of researches have proposed a dependency of satisfaction level and purchase behaviour of the customers on the environment of the store (Donovan et al., 1994). However, the existing literature regarding influence of the entire setting of the store/outlet on the emotional reaction of the customers and their approach to purchase and loyalty, when all components of the store environment traditionally identified by music, lighting, colour, smell, temperature, decorative, etc. come into play together, is limited.
Problem Statement: Theoretical frameworks to adequately determine the effect of surrounding or store ambiance in consumer behaviour are lacking which leads managers to depend on their intuitions while designing the store area. This leads to a selection of specific design without knowing the effect of that design on consumer preference. Such selections