Consumer Behavior and Shopping Experience in Retail Environments

Consumer behaviour in retail settings emerges from the interplay of cognitive, emotional and social factors that shape perceptions of value, satisfaction and loyalty. Shoppers evaluate both utilitarian and hedonic aspects of a retail environment, weighing practical benefits such as convenience, product assortment and price against experiential dimensions like atmosphere, social interaction and sensory stimulation. The physical design of stores—including ambience, layout and service encounters—joins digital and omnichannel touchpoints to form an integrated journey. The COVID-19 pandemic further recalibrated priorities, boosting the influence of utilitarian and transactional values on revisit intentions while attenuating the role of hedonic and social drivers. Across global markets, retailers deploy marketing-mix and retail-mix instruments to manage product, price, place and promotion, alongside emerging concerns for sustainability and personalised engagement. Advances in data analytics and indoor positioning now enable real-time mapping of customer flows, informing targeted store layouts and tenant strategies. At a strategic level, coherent collaboration between mall management and retailers via integrated customer-relationship frameworks enhances traffic, satisfaction and long-term loyalty. The growing emphasis on creating a distinctive sense of place underscores the importance of retail environments that resonate emotionally and culturally with diverse consumer segments, pointing to practical applications in design, service training and digital-physical integration.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Building on the stimulus–organism–response paradigm, recent work has developed a comprehensive conceptual framework linking twelve retail-mix instruments (stimuli) to six types of customer value perceptions (organism) and four distinct engagement behaviours (response). Through qualitative interviews with generations X and Y at fast-moving consumer-goods outlets in Thailand, the study refines the S-O-R model to account for pandemic-induced shifts in consumer priorities. The resulting framework offers descriptive detail on thematic relationships and suggests how targeted retail-mix strategies—such as tailored sales promotions—can be deployed to foster perceived value and drive engagement. This theoretical contribution guides future empirical research and provides practitioners with a structured approach to designing retail environments that align instrument choice with specific engagement objectives.

Consumer Behavior and Shopping Experience in Retail Environments publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in consumer behavior and shopping experience in retail environments across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Utilitarian value: The functional benefits a consumer gains from efficient product acquisition, such as convenience, price savings and task fulfilment.

Hedonic value: The experiential or emotional rewards derived from shopping, including enjoyment, sensory stimulation and social interaction.

Stimulus–Organism–Response (S-O-R) framework: A behavioural model positing that external stimuli influence internal psychological states (organism), which in turn drive observable responses.

Retail-mix instruments: The set of controllable elements—product assortment, pricing, store design, promotion and service—that retailers manipulate to influence consumer perceptions and actions.

SERVQUAL dimensions: A service-quality measurement scale encompassing tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy to assess customer perceptions of service performance.

References

1. From traditional to transformed: Examining the pre- and post-COVID consumers’ shopping mall experiences. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services (2024).
2. Effectiveness of Customer Relationship Management in Shopping Malls: Mall–Retailer Collaboration Empirics. Administrative Sciences (2025).
3. Retail mix instruments influencing customer perceived value and customer engagement: a conceptual framework and research agenda. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (2024).
4. Testing Retail Marketing-Mix Effects on Patronage: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Retailing (2018).
5. What Influences Customer Flows in Shopping Malls: Perspective from Indoor Positioning Data. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (2020).
6. Sense of place, shopping area evaluation, and shopping behaviour. Geographical Research (2021).
7. Evaluating the influence of service quality, hedonic, and utilitarian value on shopper's behavioral intentions in urban shopping malls during the COVID-19 pandemic. Heliyon (2022).