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The majority of past studies on the physical store environment have focused on the impacts of distinct store environmental cues like music, crowding and décor on consumers' responses. However, recent research posits that consumer is more likely to experience several cues in a combination, rather than in isolation, i.e. different categories of store environmental cues are likely to impact consumer psychology holistically. Hence, our study aims to identify the relevant factors of store atmospheric cues impacting consumer's attitude in physical retail store context and validate scales to measure such factors.

This research develops and validates psychometrically reliable scales to measure two broad store stimuli factors namely: attractive and facilitating store stimuli, following the scale development method suggested by Churchill (1979).

The study shows that attractive store stimuli predict affective and sensory store brand experiences. The facilitating store stimuli moderate the effects of attractive store stimuli on affective and sensory store brand experiences. Affective and sensory store brand experiences predict store satisfaction.

This research contributes to the existing body of store ambience research by empirically understanding the psychological mechanism through which customers perceive different store cues holistically leading to the elicitation of store satisfaction.

The aims of this paper is to determine, via an empirical study of beer consumers in Croatia, the influence of tasting on the validity of conjoint analysis (CA) under presence of familiar or unfamiliar brands.

The research comprised a face‐to‐face survey with 403 beer consumers. The respondents were divided into four groups regarding CA experiment (familiar/unfamiliar beer brand in combination with presence or absence of beer tasting). CA validity was measured with five criteria: face validity, convergent validity, internal validity, predictive validity and subjective evaluation of conjoint task. In addition to the CA experiment, a structured questionnaire was used consisting of a few questions regarding respondents' socio‐economic characteristics, beer purchasing, and consuming behaviour.

The research results confirmed that tasting as an additional presentation method has significant influence on validity of CA. However, the results of the study indicate that tasting should be used as a stimulus presentation method for CA with food and beverage products/brands, which are unfamiliar to the consumers. When testing familiar brands and brands with established perceptions, simpler and less expensive verbal stimulus presentation can be used.

According to the research results, it could be concluded that when performing CA with strong familiar brands, it is not necessary to use CA with tasting since tasting increases research complexity and costs and it does not achieve better results. However, tasting as a stimuli presentation method gives better results than pure verbal CA in the case of unfamiliar brands.

The paper is one of the first to deal with tasting as a presentation method in conjoint analysis and its results have direct implications for the future use of CA with food and beverages.

The presented research aims to depict shoppers' touching behaviour in relation to the introduction of visual and olfactory sensory cues at point‐of‐purchase in a retail setting. In the field of retailing research, there is a paucity of knowledge on how visual and olfactory sensory cues impact on consumers' touch behaviour.

The author presents a review of theoretically relevant work from retailing and consumer psychology, and an original study examining the impact of visual and olfactory sensory cues on consumer touch behaviour. The study was a field experiment in the glass department of the Swedish retailer IKEA. The design was quasi‐experimental with a convenience sample of shoppers assigned to a control group (n=451) and an experimental group (n=435).

In the reported study, the author finds significant differences between shoppers' touching behaviour in a manipulated point‐of‐purchase compared to a conventional one. The findings show that visual and olfactory sensory cues have a positive impact on shoppers' touching behaviour, purchase intentions and total sale.

The findings demonstrate that sensory cues exert a positive impact on consumers' desire to touch. Sensory cues frame consumers' affective responses and decision making through involving the sense of touch.

The findings provide guidelines for managers of retail and service outlets, concerning the benefits of sensory cues in enhancing shoppers' touching behaviour at point‐of‐purchase.

The research demonstrates that the introduction of visual and olfactory sensory cues impact consumers' touch behaviour at point‐of‐purchase in a retail setting.

Several frameworks of retail store environment variables exist, but as shown by this paper, they are not particularly well-suited for supporting fashion store design processes. Thus, in order to provide an improved understanding of fashion store design, the purpose of this paper is to identify the most important store design variables, organise these variables into categories, understand the design constraints between categories, and determine the most influential stakeholders.

Based on a discussion of existing literature, the paper defines a framework of store design variables and constraints between these. The framework is investigated through six case studies of fashion store design projects.

Through a discussion of literature and empirical studies, the paper: identifies the most important store design variables, organises these variables into categories, provides an understanding of constraints between categories of variables, and identifies the most influential stakeholders. The paper demonstrates that the fashion store design task can be understood through a system perspective, implying that the store design task becomes a matter of defining a set of subsystems, while considering their mutual interdependencies.

The proposed framework may be used as a point of departure and a frame of reference for future research into fashion store design.

The paper may support retail designers and retail managers in fashion store design processes by clarifying which store design variables to consider and providing an understanding of the constraints between them.

The perspective on the fashion store design task offered by the proposed framework adds a layer of understanding to the way in which existing literature describes the challenges related to store design. The empirical studies of fashion store projects demonstrate that the described system perspective offers a useful way of organising fashion store designers’ experiences from design processes.

States that reference price has emerged as a central feature in consumer decisions. The goal of this study was to explore the contribution of mode of payment to the formulation of personal reference prices (what one believes to be a fair price for a product) and reservation prices (the highest price one is willing to pay for a product). Reference prices for the products were significantly influenced by mode of payment (check, cash, credit card). Those in the credit card condition formulated significantly higher reference and reservation prices than when other modes of payment were considered. That credit cards can raise reference prices leads to a better understanding of why consumers spend more with credit cards.

The key challenge that urban cities in most developing and transitional economies is confronting is municipal solid waste (MSW) management. Waste separation is a critical component to successful recycling management in terms of enhancing the quality of recyclables, reducing MSW and optimizing incineration. The urge to actualizing sustained waste separation behavior has been hindered by potential barriers. This study aims to examine the influences of external and internal stimuli of targeted households' waste separation intention in parts of China.

A multifactor framework predicting the process that leads to waste separation attitude and behavioral intention is proposed. SEM analysis is conducted in SmartPLS based on 371 survey questionnaires collected in Nanning city in China.

Policy regulation is the biggest determinant of attitude among external stimuli, while awareness of consequence has the strongest relationship with an attitude among internal stimuli. Facilitating conditions, subjective norms and moral norms are all significant predictors of attitude. As a result, increasing positive attitude leads to enhance waste separation lifestyle.

This study adopts a cross-sectional design to investigate the waste separation intention of local households. Data collection is restricted to one point in time for every individual. A mixed method is recommended. Quantitative research can examine variables provided in existing literature with numerical analysis. Qualitative research might be helpful to identify other unknown factors. Also, the survey questionnaires employ a self-reported manner, and respondents might be overrating to avoid embarrassment.

Future research is recommended to engage observation at houses or at the waste-collecting points for actual waste separation behavior. Moreover, this study measures intention toward household waste separation, but whether this intention will eventually lead to waste separation behavior is not a guarantee. Future study is recommended to examine whether intention translates into actual waste separation behavior.

Emphasizing the importance of policy element as a direct influence toward attitude, this paper focuses on the waste separation attitude accumulated from external and internal stimuli, and, concurrently, waste separation behavioral intention is influenced by accumulated attitudes. The study provides relevant policy development information of three Asian countries to enhance their present and future policy directions for a sustainable household waste separation management process

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of atmospherics in the creation of an hedonic retail experience by comparing the perceived differences between a retail environment attempting to provide an hedonic experience and one with a more utilitarian focus.

A qualitative methodology was employed, using protocol analysis and in‐depth semi‐structured interviews that were conducted with ten participants.

The paper highlights several atmospheric cues and their influence on the hedonic retail experience. The first category of cues – attractive stimuli – were those cues that attracted attention, exciting the participant and eliciting approach behaviours. The second category – facilitating stimuli – included those cues that were necessary in order to facilitate product engagement.

The paper provides a broad categorisation of atmospheric cues, providing factors that shop designers can be aware of when creating a store with the hedonic experience in mind.

The purpose of this paper is to study whether the consumer’s perceptual processing style impacts consumer preference. Specifically, whether consumers with local perceptual processing style in emerging Asian countries are more likely to perceive that Asian skincare brands are suitable for them, compared with emerging Asian consumers with global perceptual processing.

An experiment was conducted with 249 Asian female respondents in an emerging Asian market. The Navon letter – a hierarchical letter – is used to classify the respondents’ perceptual processing style. The Navon stimulus used is a big letter H made up of small letter Ls. Those who saw letter H (L) at first glance were classified as consumers with global (local) perceptual processing style. ANCOVA was used to analyze the main effect of global/local perceptual processing style on product preference, as well as to test the moderating effect of age.

The results suggest that consumers with local perceptual processing style are significantly more likely to perceive that Asian brands are suitable for them, compared with respondents with global perceptual processing style. Additionally, the covariate “age” is not the covariate between global/local perceptual processing and skincare preference.

Managers can apply the findings to their targeting and communication strategies. First, it will be advantageous for managers marketing Asian skincare products to target Asian consumers with local perceptual processing style. For managers marketing Western skincare products in Asia, it will be better to target Asian consumers with global perceptual processing style. In terms of communication strategy development, managers marketing Asian skincare products to Asian consumers are recommended to encourage local perceptual processing, while managers marketing Western skincare brands to emerging Asian consumers should encourage global perceptual processing.

The value of this paper is that it applies the perceptual processing style to explain consumer decision-making in the context of consumers in emerging Asian countries. It also highlights a new perspective that helps managers craft targeting and communication strategies that help make their products to be perceived as a better fit or to facilitate consumer processing style so the product becomes a preferred choice.

The aim of this paper is to explore how employees make sense of their work context and its influence on their learning orientation to improve their quality of work life.

Qualitative data drawn from a dynamic online discussion that spanned three years were used in the content analysis. A total of 137 MBA participants from a university in the southwest of the USA contributed to the online forum.

Perception of work-life context influences the cognitive intent of employees in such a way that they change their learning orientation and develop learning strategies to improve their current work conditions. These strategies are in turn influenced by their sensemaking of the context to determine their quality of work life.

The study illuminates the relationship between learning and context through the theoretical perspective of sensemaking. It extends the concept of learning orientation as operating at the individual and group levels other than the organizational level.

Organizational leaders and human resource development (HRD) professionals will recognize how certain contextual stimuli can trigger their employees ' readiness to learn and improve their work life. They can direct their employees ' learning orientation through job redesign and job enrichment.

The study provides a learning context to quality of work life, an area that has not been extensively researched in the HRD literature. By exploring sensemaking of quality of work life in the context of learning, the paper offers a more encompassing perspective of learning orientation and quality of work life contexts.

Investigates empirically the perceptions of non‐exporters regarding factors stimulating export initiation. Draws on research based on a representative sample of 112 Cyprus‐based manufacturers. Reveals that stimuli relating to the fulfilment of the firm′s traditional objectives exhibited the highest motivating impact, followed by factors aiming at minimizing domestic market‐related risks. These findings generally contrast with the results of previous research on export stimulation. Analysis of perceptions on stimulating factors according to certain organizational determinants showed the firm′s size to have the greatest discriminating effect, followed by the type of goods produced and exposure to export activities; the age of the firm had no differentiating role whatsoever. Finally, classification of the stimuli according to internal/external and proactive/reactive taxonomies demonstrated that factors of an internal and proactive nature provided the strongest stimulating impact, denoting a positive predisposition towards exporting.