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The purpose of this paper is to examine how crowding without violating personal space influences consumers’ channel selection and the underlying mechanism of this process. Crowded environment is ubiquitous and affects consumers’ behaviors. However, less attention has been paid to whether and how crowding influences consumers’ preference for purchasing channels.

There were three studies to test the validity of the theorized model, including two laboratory experiments and a field study. The variance analyses and mediation analyses were used to give more insights into the analytical process.

This study proposes that crowding makes consumers lose their perceived control, leading them to form certain compensatory behavior through the conversion between online and offline purchasing channels – the type of goods moderates the process of compensatory behavior.

The results of this study are helpful for retailers to design effective strategies to allocate resources into online or offline channels and to choose the appropriate types of product to promote.

Environmental clues have been widely studied in previous marketing research. Crowding, as a common environmental clue, has only been noticed in recent years. This study examines the impact of crowding on consumers’ channel preference. The results of three studies have confirmed that consumers have higher preference for offline shopping when they are in a crowded environment and found the intrinsic mechanism and the marginal scenario of this process.

This study assessed the roles of atmospheric harmony, human crowding and sensation seeking towards hedonic value to determine re-patronage intention amongst mall consumers. Additionally, this study aims to investigate the moderating roles of past experience amidst mall consumers within the context of Pakistan.

The study data were collected from 334 mall consumers of Rawalpindi/Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi by using the judgemental sampling technique. Data analysis was performed using SmartPLS 3 via partial least squares structural equation modelling.

This study revealed that atmospheric harmony and human crowding displayed positive and adverse impacts, respectively, on hedonic value. The sensation seeking tendencies exerted by the consumers displayed no significant impact on hedonic value in light of mall habitat. The hedonic value exhibited a mediating role for the relationships of re-patronage intention with atmospheric harmony and human crowding. Besides, a significant interaction was noted between hedonic value and past experience in light of re-patronage intention.

The proposed model embeds hedonic value as a second higher-order construct, apart from amalgamating environmental and psychological factors of the mall shoppers to determine their re-patronage intentions. The study outcomes posit that mall re-patronage intention is built on several factors that offer mall managers an opportunity to enrich the hedonic consumption experience among mall consumers, aside from ensuring their re-patronage intention.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the interactive effect of social crowding and solo consumers’ sense of power on attitudes toward the restaurant menu with popularity and scarcity cues.

In total, 181 US consumers were recruited. Using a quasi-experimental design, social crowding and promotional cues on a restaurant menu were manipulated and solo consumers’ sense of power was measured.

Low-power individuals exhibited more favorable attitudes toward the menu with a popularity cue at a crowded restaurant. High-power individuals’ attitudes toward the menu were equally favorable across the two promotional cues and crowding levels.

Restaurant managers might want to leverage popularity cues on the menu during peak hours to appeal to solo diners. After diners indicate their dining type (alone vs with others) in kiosks and tablets, restaurants can tailor promotional cues accordingly. Restaurants can also embed more popularity cues in dinner (vs lunch) menus because dinner is more hedonic and social in nature.

This study contributes to the crowding literature by examining promotional cues on the menu and sense of power as moderators of consumer responses to crowding. This study further adds to the solo consumption literature by extending the notion of power and social crowding to ethnic dining contexts.

In retail environments, the atmosphere communicates to consumers through non‐verbal channels, impacting on their beliefs about a product, a service or the way in which a service is provided. The current paper explores the bar environment, and the use of atmospherics by managers as well as responses to atmosphere by consumers,

The research takes a qualitative approach, utilising focus groups with consumers, and in‐depth interview with bar managers to assess the use and importance of atmospheric elements in the bar environment.

The findings suggest that managers and consumers want the same things from the bar environment. However, parties are divided as to the best way of achieving this.

The research is limited to a sample of bars in one city. However, implications for bar retailing in general can be drawn from the observations by customers and managers.

The study provides confirmation that atmospheres have the ability to creative positive emotions and behaviours. The results also highlight areas where atmospherics can not only be used to attract more patrons, but also to allow managers to reflect on their atmosphere creation practices.

Research into atmospherics in service and retailing is still limited, with specific studies of unique environments' aspects required to further our knowledge of the part that atmospheric elements play in the success of these settings.

This study aims to explore the good crowding effect among Indian domestic travellers during the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of the city destination. This study uses the framework of social motivation theory to achieve the objective.

This study adopted a qualitative research design by taking the case of Shimla, Himachal Pradesh. Using purposive sampling, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 37 respondents, and themes were drawn manually.

The analysis found four themes that create a good crowding effect among domestic tourists, namely, convenience and price; familiarity and place attachment; social affiliation; and safety. The themes indicated that despite the pandemic, and constant occurrences of new variants, Indian domestic tourists’ on-site attitude towards crowding was favourable.

Firstly, the good crowding effect during the pandemic could have been better understood using empirical data. Secondly, the results cannot be generalized, specifically for developed economies.

This study offers practical implications to destination managers and local administrative bodies for whom achieving sustainability in urban tourism has always been concerning. These include developing infrastructural facilities, encouraging cultural activities in city centres and improving the perception of safety to sustain the good crowding effect.

The affective dimension involved in making a travelling decision played a significant role in the post-pandemic phase. While suppliers needed survival, tourists needed social affiliation and escape from the mandated home isolation due to multiple phases of COVID-19 lockdown in India. This study adds value to society by emphasising that the need for social affiliation among travellers remains intact, and the tourism industry should embrace this transformation.

While most of the pandemic-related studies criticised crowd and tourists’ crowd averting behaviour, this study reported that the good crowding effect could also be an outcome owing to different factors. Therefore, this study offers distinctive nuance of tourists’ behaviour in the post-COVID-19 phase, allowing destination managers and tourism stakeholders to re-think their strategies.

This paper aims to explore the evolution of the service environment literature and speculates about future research in this area. This paper focuses on studies regarding how the interior and exterior environments of physical service settings (including retail stores) influence consumer response. Web atmospherics are not covered in this paper. In addition, while a number of studies have been conducted on retail and service atmospherics elements in other disciplines, such as environmental psychology and leisure and hospitality, the focus is on research published in marketing and consumer-related journals.

This paper reports the results of empirical studies; however, as there are few empirical studies on the effects of exterior environmental characteristics (e.g. storefronts) in marketing, two conceptual papers on this topic will be reviewed to set the stage for future research on exterior design.

Over the past 40 years, there has been a proliferation of articles on how service environments influence consumer responses. The review covers illustrative examples of articles in several categories of environmental topics. The areas for future research based on the review are suggested.

An up-to-date review of service environment research that is broad in scope is provided. The authors also propose 41 different research questions based on the review that services scholars can use to take this area of inquiry forward.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which the perception of crowding by medical staff and patients impacts patients’ perceived service quality (SQ), overall satisfaction and emotional well-being.

Data were collected from 258 matched pairs of medical staff members and their patients at six public hospitals.

Medical staff-perceived crowding negatively influences patients’ perceived SQ. The perceived SQ then impacts patients’ overall satisfaction and emotional well-being. Patients’ perceived crowding does not significantly impact their perceived SQ but increases the positive emotional well-being of patients.

Scant research has investigated a matched pair of service providers and their customers. This study concentrates on how individuals’ perceived human crowding and medical staff SQ affect consumers’ emotional well-being. This research leads to the formulation of theoretical and public policy suggestions to improve the quality of interactive services with minimal cost and disruption.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the holistic atmospheric cues encountered in a retail environment contribute to the creation of a retail experience. The interaction between these cues, and how they impact on the various stages of the retail experience is also explored.

A qualitative methodology was employed, using protocol analysis and in-depth semi-structured interviews that were conducted with 18 participants. Data were collected in the context of the women’s fashion sector.

The findings highlight the importance of store owners ensuring atmospheric cues create a store image congruent with their target market’s self-image. A model is also developed which highlights how atmospheric cues are able to affect successive stages of the retail experience.

This paper provides a holistic understanding of how retail atmospheric cues are able to influence the overall retail experience; from how a retail store is initially evaluated through to the intention to purchase.

This replication and extension of Hirsch and Gruss examines the impact of spatial density and ambient scent on consumers' spatial perception and anxiety. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A 2 (spatial density: high, low)×3 (ambient scent: no scent, scent associated with spaciousness, scent associated with enclosed spaces) between-participants experimental design was implemented in a laboratory setting. A pretest determined scent selection and manipulation checks were successful.

Spatial perception was influenced by spatial density, but not ambient scent. Ambient scent and spatial density interacted, such that consumers' anxiety levels significantly increased under conditions of low spatial density combined with an ambient scent associated with spaciousness, and directionally increased under conditions of high spatial density combined with ambient scent associated with enclosed space.

This research was conducted in a laboratory setting in order to increase experimental control. An exploration of the strength of the observed effects in a field (retail) setting would be insightful.

Results of this study suggest that retailers need to consider both spatial density and choice of ambient scent carefully in order to reduce consumers' anxiety levels.

This research is one of the few to consider the impact of spatial density and ambient scent on consumers' anxiety levels. The use of a between-participants design and the experimental manipulation of both spatial density and ambient scent results in a more rigorous test of the scent – anxiety relation observed in previous research.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of robust design in retail service literature.

Using a Taguchi design comprising of inner L₈ (2⁷) and outer 2² arrays, a discrete choice task was designed for 233 students respond to. Signal‐to‐noise (S/N) ratio was used to test design robustness.

Negative effects of uncontrollable design factors on service choice were minimized through the use of inner and outer Taguchi arrays. The single composite measure of consumer choice called S/N ratio accounted both for mean and variance of choice probabilities.

Use of student sample was a major limitation. Also, the interaction between design factors was not tested as it required the use of more complicated designs.

This method can be used to improve design robustness by minimizing the impact of uncontrollable noise factors. Use of S/N ratio can help to select the design that simultaneously maximized the choice probabilities and minimized performance variation.

The paper makes important methodological and operational contributions to the retail service design literature. First, the concept of controllable and uncontrollable factors in choice‐based designs is introduced. Second, the use of S/N ratio as a single, composite measure of design robustness was incorporated. Operationally, this study highlights the impact of less‐studied concepts of wayfinding and customer incompatibility on satisfaction of retail customers.