Reactions to Integrated Store Environments

In retailing store environmental elements help differentiate one store from another, an important aspect in customer loyalty and competitive positioning. Historically the study of these environmental elements within stores looked at only a single component at a time and neglected the robustness of their interaction. Retailers have dozens of different characteristics that can be manipulated. These “manipulatable” objects provide the look and feel of the store. However the immensity of the unique combinatorial elements (numbers way beyond the trillions) precludes this process from being directly studied holistically. As a result, an accepted and unifying definitive atmospheric model has not yet been developed. Complicating the issue is that the realm of impact is no longer limited to the physical world. In the dozen plus years since the introduction of commercialism to the internet (1994) the nature of atmospherics has only been limitedly addressed. The paper explores how the ideas of retail atmospherics may be applied to website designs and offers the Cyberspace Atmospherics Mental Model (CAMM) as a method to facilitate design decisions.