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Although academics and retail managers share a common belief that crowded stores generate more sales, there is a growing concern about the negative impact of retail crowding on customer relationship management (CRM). This research aims to understand the underlying processes driving the effect, and it explores potential moderators that may mitigate the negative effects on consumer satisfaction.

This research employs a meta-analysis on retail crowding effects and potential moderators.

The integrative model of retail crowding reveals that social needs, crowd similarity, crowd expectation and uncertainty avoidance mitigate the negative retail crowding effects on satisfaction.

The authors advance the retailing literature by synthesizing recent studies on retail crowding. The findings also provide a clearer understanding of the mediating role of negative emotions in the relationship between retail crowding and satisfaction.

This research offers guidance for retail managers on how to mitigate the harmful effects of crowding on customer satisfaction.

This research contributes to the retailing literature and offers guidance for retailers on how to mitigate the harmful effects of crowding on cvustomer satisfaction. Our moderation analyses provide insights into how and when crowding drives consumer satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the effect of store messiness and human crowding on shoppers' competitive behaviours, in-store hoarding and in-store hiding, through the mediating effect of perceived scarcity and perceived competition.

2 (store messiness: messy × tidy) × 2 (human crowding: high × low) between-subject factorial experiment was conducted online to manipulate retail store atmospheric factors. A total of 154 responses were collected through Amazon MTurk. The hypotheses were analysed using ANOVA and PROCESS (Hayes, 2013) procedure.

Results suggest that store messiness and human crowding within a fast-fashion store lead to perception of scarcity and competition that further affects competitive behaviours. When consumers experience store messiness, they are likely to hide merchandise in store, thus making it inaccessible for other consumers. Further, when they experience human crowding in the store, they feel that the products will be gone immediately so they have a tendency to hoard them.

This study examined the effects of scarcity perception by studying the case of fast-fashion retailers; generalizability needs to be established across different contexts.

Retailers by manipulating human crowding and store messiness can create a perception of scarcity in their stores, thus enhancing sales. However, they should also pay attention to deviant behaviours such as in-store hoarding and in-store hiding as these behaviours may decrease the store sales.

This research contributed to the retailing literature by finding a significant relationship between human crowding, store messiness and competitive behaviours through perceived scarcity and competition.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the direct impact of shopping experience of tourists on their satisfaction with shopping, while perceived crowding is used as a moderator in this relationship.

The proposed conceptual model was tested by an empirical study where the data were collected from 411 German tourists, visiting Kaleiçi, Antalya-Turkey.

The study results revealed that tourist shopping experience (consisting of education, esthetic, entertainment and escapism dimensions) significantly determines satisfaction with shopping. Moreover, crowding perception has a two-dimensional structure, as human and spatial crowding. Human crowding, which reflects high human density, is found to negatively moderate the effect of shopping experience on satisfaction, where spatial crowding, which is related to high space density, does not influence this relationship.

This study exceptionally shows that crowding perceptions of German tourists in shopping are affected by both human and spatial crowding. In addition, the moderating role of perceived crowding is clarified in the relationship between shopping experience and satisfaction.

Extant research on the crowding-out effects of government subsidies on the positive role of firm innovation resources or activity remains limited. This paper aims to investigate the crowding-out effects of subsidies on the utilization of technological capabilities and also the contingency mechanisms of market-oriented economy based on the resource-based view (RBV), given the co-existence of the subsidies and technological capabilities for firm innovation in transitional economy.

This paper used panel data of 115 Chinese high-tech firms from 2002 to 2010. Fixed-effects model was used to test several hypotheses.

This paper empirically demonstrates that the subsidies crowd out the utilization of firms’ technological capabilities for invention outcomes in the near-term. Furthermore, this paper finds that the crowding-out effects are weaker when firms have high export intensity or are located in provinces with high market-oriented systems.

The findings of this paper apply to Chinese firms. Future research could test their generalizability to different samples and other transitional economies.

This paper highlights the crowding-out effects of the subsidies, revealing that high-tech firms should balance the direct effects and crowding-out effects of the subsidies.

This paper highlights the neglected interactions between the subsidies and technological capabilities based on RBV and provides a more nuanced understanding of the crowding-out effects of the subsidies in transitional economy.

Much of the research on crowding in a service context has focused on customer reaction to crowding in a retail setting. This paper seeks to examine the effect of consumer goals on consumers' reactions to crowding for extended service encounters.

The authors used a 2 (Crowding: crowded or not crowded) × 2 (Goal: utilitarian or hedonic) × 2 (Service level: bad or good) factorial, between‐subjects design to test hypotheses. Service level and tolerance for crowding were entered as control variables. A service encounter in a casual restaurant was used as the service setting in the study. Subjects were randomly assigned to a written scenario describing an experience in a restaurant. They were then shown a photograph depicting the interior of the restaurant.

Consumption goal moderates the effect of perceived crowding on satisfaction. Significantly lower satisfaction ratings are associated with a crowded service environment when the primary consumption goal for the service experience is utilitarian, rather than hedonic, in nature. Furthermore, regardless of the consumption goal, crowding negatively impacts positive in‐store behaviors (i.e. desire to spend more money and time at the restaurant).

The study was limited to one extended service setting. Future research across other extended service settings is needed establish the generalizability of the findings.

The study has implications for the design of the service facility and the application of demand‐shifting revenue management strategies.

The paper extends the literature on shopping motivations to extended service settings by examining the effect of consumer goals on consumers' reactions to crowding, specifically consumer satisfaction with, and consumer behaviors within, the extended service encounter.

The purpose of this paper is to present findings from an experiment designed to test the impact of crowding perceptions (both human and spatial), emotions (positive and negative) and shopping values (utilitarian and hedonic) on shopper satisfaction. Culture is explored as a moderating variable with the expectation that it systematically affects perceptions and values, which, in turn, influence the shopper's experience with the store.

Data were collected via a 2×2×2 full factorial between subjects design with two variables, one manipulated and one measured. The two manipulated variables were spatial density (high versus low) and human density (high versus low). The measured variable was country of origin, where subjects were coded as either American or Australian.

Culture moderates the effects of perceived spatial crowding as well as both hedonic and utilitarian shopping values on shopper satisfaction. Specifically, the adverse effect of perceived spatial crowding on shopper satisfaction is less pronounced for Australians than is the case for Americans. With respect to both utilitarian and hedonic shopping values, the positive relationship between shopping values and shopper satisfaction is greater for Australians than for Americans.

Shopping has been generally described by Rintamaki et al. as “relativistic, because it involves preferences among objects, it varies among people, and it is specific to the context”. This paper demonstrates that culture clearly affects shopper's perceptions and shopping values, which in turn affect shopper satisfaction. It is reasonable to speculate that these effects would be even more pronounced had countries with greater cultural distance been examined.

The purpose of this paper is to propose and to test a model that illustrates the impact of technology anxiety on the intention to use a self-service technology (SST) in public. The study includes two context variables that are relevant in public settings: perceived crowding and perceived time pressure.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted to reflect individual perceptions and intentions when initially using a self-checkout. The proposed relationships and interaction effects were examined using structural equation modeling.

The analysis confirms the core relationships of the model (technology self-efficacy→technology anxiety→perceived ease of use→ intention to use) and yields three important results. First, technology anxiety has a direct negative effect on intention to use, which is greater than the indirect effect through the reduction of ease of use. Second, perceived crowding reinforces the negative effect of technology anxiety. Third, when perceived crowding coincides with perceived time pressure, technology anxiety almost completely inhibits the intention to use the SST in public.

Technology anxiety is examined as the only antecedent of perceived ease of use.

Initial encounters to public self-service technologies should be provided in servicescapes that avoid or at least reduce perceptions of crowding and time pressure.

The approach highlights the impact of technology anxiety on the acceptance of self-service technologies used in public by considering two context variables that are salient in public settings: perceived crowding and perceived time pressure.

Recognizing that crowding in a restaurant waiting area forms a first impression of service and sets service expectations, the purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of crowding in the effective control of the waiting environment. The study seeks to examine the impact of crowding on customers' emotions and approach‐avoidance responses and to examine the mediating role of emotion and the moderating role of desired privacy in the relationship between crowding and approach‐avoidance responses.

Using real‐scale, interactive virtual reality (VR) technology that allows high‐fidelity representations of real environments, the authors created a navigable, photo‐realistic three‐dimensional model of a restaurant waiting area. Through an experimental study which manipulated crowding levels in the VR restaurant, they surveyed the subjects' responses toward crowding conditions.

The study found significant effects of crowding on emotions including arousal and dominance, but not pleasure, and on approach‐avoidance responses. The impact of crowding on approach‐avoidance responses was more direct than indirect, without having emotion as a mediator. It was also found that the desire for privacy as a psychological trait moderated the relationship between crowding and affiliation.

The findings of this study offer restaurant managers insights toward the effective management of the pre‐process service environment during the waiting state that minimizes the negative consequences of waiting/crowding. This study provides three courses of management actions that can make unavoidable crowding in the restaurant waiting situation more enjoyable and comfortable.

By using VR simulation, this study adds a new approach for crowding studies. Theoretically, this study broadened the scope of crowding studies by adding a potential mediating variable, emotions, and a moderating variable, desired privacy, in examining the relationship between crowding and approach‐avoidance responses. Also, by focusing on a restaurant waiting area, the authors were able to explore the pre‐process service expectations.

To provide high quality services under conditions of crowding, it is important to understand the relationships between crowding and personal control. Indeed, in recent years, there has been growing belief that personal control is significant in coping with crowding. However, most studies have been of limited theoretical and practical value because they did not provide an integrated conceptualization of crowding. The results of a field study demonstrate that the personal control‐crowding relationships depend on the individual's crowding experience and the nature of personal control.

Residential crowding and underlying causes of crowding have been changing across the globe over time. The aim of this paper is to examine the dynamics of housing consumption and residential crowding in Hong Kong.

While the two‐step Engle‐Granger co‐integration approach based on an error correction model (ECM) is used to test for long‐run relation and short‐run dynamics of housing consumption, the study also uses a multivariate regression model to analyze the factors affecting residential crowding. Along with other variables in previous literature, the study introduces a new institutional factor, i.e. land supply, into the model that analyzes these two issues over a time span of 25 years.

The study's results suggest that many households in Hong Kong still have inadequate housing, and residential overcrowding is a serious issue. Coupled with market forces (e.g. income, housing price, household size), the new land supply factor noticeably has exerted significant influence on the two subject issues under investigation.

The paper provides policy implications that to address such deficiencies, the government should change its current land supply policy. A policy shift is recommended away from its “high‐land price” policy towards comprehensive developments in outer urban areas. This institutional change should help improve housing consumption in the territory overall.

This study adds knowledge to previous works in analyzing residential crowding and its underlying causes over the years, rather than in a particular point in time. It is also the first of its kind in Hong Kong.