Background of the study

Consumer’s choice in buying fashion and apparel products is an expression of their identity. There is a link between identity and consumption which explains how people make choices in buying products from fashion shop (Bhattacharjee et al. 2014). Majority of consumer’s buying behaviour is dependent on factors of motivation and need, beliefs and attitude, learning and conditioning and retention. For example according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a consumer will give greater priority to their basic needs. Hence, if products meet one of the motivating drives of a customer, that product is most likely to sell (Durmaz 2014). Similarly consumer’s shopping behaviour is also influenced by many factors such as their attitude and beliefs, access to information about products and reviews.

The consumer behaviour is evolving and it is important to understand the changing consumer behaviour to overcome the fierce competition present in retail industry in UK. Factors like past buying experience, price and branding affects their purchasing decision. There are many researches done on pattern of consumer’s shopping, however the rationale for those behaviour is not known. The advent of digital technology is now giving access to many types of digital information that acts as physical evidence or information about the success of a fashion shop and product (DU Press 2017). Therefore, to look into the consumer’s decision making process, the purpose of this literature review is to find relevant research articles that express the importance of physical evidence and location to consumer’s choice in fashion shop in London. It will help to refine the research topic and create awareness about the current state of knowledge in the topic area and its limitations (Saunders 2011).

This research looks into the factor of physical evidence and location as driving force behind consumer’s choice in fashion shop in London. Hence, to find relevant research articles that elaborates the importance of the two factors in consumer;s choice, peer-reviewed articles will taken from database of Pro quest, ABI/ INFORM Global, EBSCO host, Factiva, Business Source complete and Google scholar. The inclusion criteria for the articles are as follows:

• Selection of business article that gives detail related to location as a factor affecting consumer’s choice in fashion shop.
• Selection of those articles which gives detail on physical evidence as factor influencing consumer’s choice in fashion shop.
• Choosing articles published within 2007 to 2017.
• Selecting peer-reviewed article to maintain the reliability and credibility of the data obtained from relevant articles.

Location as a factor influencing customer’s choice in fashion shops

A customer’s willingness to continue to shop in fashion store depends a lot on the location of the place and its attachment with the customer. The easy convenience of getting to the place or a nice environment may invite them to the place again and again. Research into shopper’s willingness to shop in a particular store revealed that they select stores based on their shopping experience, location and attachment with the place. Furthermore store location attributes like atmosphere of the place, opportunities for leisure, pricing and design factors drives more customers to a shop and make them have a pleasant shopping experience. The most important findings of this literature was that it gave the idea that place or location attachment is one of the significant predictor of store loyalty and store owners can bank on this attribute to modify their store design and location to continue to attract more customers and boost the sale of their fashion products (Johnson et al. 2015).

Search Strategy

The research by Goodman and Remaud (2015) gave an alternative insight into the reason regarding why customer’s choose where to shop among small and large scale retailers. A choice experiment approach was used to determine regarding shopping preference of customers such as their choice of where to shop or to determine whether it is within their reach. Physical availability or easy accessibility is an important factor that affects consumer’s choice for fashion shops. However, only physical availability does not determine the likelihood of customer’s visiting the shop, it is also dependent on brands or quality of products offered by the store. Hence, to analyse customer’s mind-set in choosing shops, the research was done with three type of wine stores available to customers and assess how people determine where to shop. The result of the investigation revealed that the most important factor affecting a person’s decision include the store attribute of good customer service and the closeness of the store to home or workplace. Therefore, this research reflects that a consumer visits those shops more often that is conveniently located and this result has great implication for retailers who are planning new fashion stores in London. The limitation of this research is that investigation was done regarding wine store and not fashion store, hence it might be possible that pattern of shopping for fashion products may differ. However, despite this limitation, the study gives valuable insight into the segmentation approach that a fashion retailer can take to choose a convenient location and plan format of the store to develop store attributes in alignment with consumer’s desire and preference.

Role of physical evidence in customer’s choice for stores-

Physical evidence is related to the incorporation of elements in the service to make it tangible and measureable. Physical evidence is important in getting the target customer and building a brand image in the industry. In the context of fashion shops, it means having unique store characteristics or attributes to attract more customers to the shop. Hence, physical evidence is the incorporation of all those factors that attract the desired customer profile. For example in case of retail stores, the store attributes of ambience, layout and promotions of products may influence consumer’s choice is selecting particular fashion shops for shopping (Liu et al. 2016).

 Similarly, visual merchandising or the method of presentation or promotions of a store may determine the preference of customer’s in selecting fashion stores. The research by Park et al. (2015) extends the view point on the importance of physical evidence in consumer’s brand attitude and purchasing intention in fashion retail stores and explains that a customer’s perception of visual merchandising determines their choices for fashion retail stores. The researcher developed measures of visual merchandising cognition to determine favourable brand attitudes that positively affects purchasing intention of customers. Consumer’s attention in fashion stores are captured by display of store design and store products. A mixed method of descriptive and exploratory research was used to conduct a survey with shoppers at fashion stores and confirmatory survey was done again to gain idea about functionality, attractiveness and in-fashion factors in visual merchandising cognition. The significance of this research finding is that it provided measure to understand visual merchandising cognition and it would help to understand the relation with brand preference for consumers. It also demonstrated that a stores visual merchandising can help to identify brands and consumer’s purchase intention. Hence, if fashion retailers work to enhance the aesthetic and quality of visual merchandising, they can maintain customer’s association with the brand.

Literature Review

Exploring the store as a brand strategy and its impact on customer responses

The research by Kumar and Kim (2014) explored the influence of store environment on customer’s internal evaluation and attitude towards selecting the store for shopping. With the presence of too many fashion retailers selling similar products, having an understanding about why customers prefer one brand over another can help to retailer to identify their special offering and effectively compete with other retailers. The Store-as-a-brand (SBA) strategy is a recent strategy adapted by retailers which facilitates strategic manipulation of store atmosphere to create unique shopping experience for customers and it helps to eliminate lack of fit between store image and brand image. As there is lack of studies investigating customer’s motivation to shop in these stores, this research tried to analyse the branding process and determine the impact of store design, ambient, social and merchandise cues of customer’s evaluation and shopping decision. The study utilized the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework to determine the customer behaviour in the context of SBA retailers (Goi et al. 2014). The five-point Likert scale ranging from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’ to conduct a mall-intercept survey in two malls in US and questionnaires were handed to shoppers. The confirmatory factor analysis of the data revealed that merchandise cues had better impact on consumer’s choice compared to social, design and ambient cues. Hence, this study has important implications for retailers as they need to pay attention to their overall brand image to pull customers.  This study is also important as it gives idea on merchandise as a stimulus within the store environment of a fashion shop which was not considered in previous studies. The limitation is that this study was done within a limited geographic area and particular consumer segment should be targeted in future studies (Kumar and Kim 2014).

Impact of store design (lighting) on consumer’s shopping perception and behaviour-

Planning pleasant and functional store space is a challenge for fashion retailers and the uniqueness of this literature is that it presented the impact of store lighting on customer’s perception and behaviour. The lighting effects can have an impact on how different aspects of store are perceived (perception level), how customers respond to the store (emotional level) and how they behave in the store environment (behavioural level). The researcher conducted an experiment in a supermarket in Belgium with three different lighting settings to analyse its impact on consumer’s perception and behaviour. The participants were observed and interviewed regarding their perception and emotional response to the store environment. The results of the study revealed that subtle difference in lighting can have an impact on the atmosphere of the store and warm lighting set up has a pleasant impact on participants. However, there was no difference in in-store behaviour of customers and shopping behaviour. Hence, this study gave the indication that lighting cannot have an impact on buying behavior, however it can give a unique store experience to customers. It can provide the right message about brands and apparels if lighting effects are done in effective way (Quartier et al. 2014).

Impact of store characteristics on shopping values and store switching

Another research literature examined the influence of psychographic variables and store characteristics on shopping value. It analysed the impact of store characteristics such as sales service, assortment and ambience on customer’s shopping experience and results revealed that interpersonal factors have an impact on shopping values and better store characteristics leads to reduction in store switching and retention of customers. Hence, if a retailer understand the preference of customers and control those variables, it will lead to consumer driven shopping value. Therefore, the study has useful implication for future retailers as they can make strategic adjustments in their store characteristics to provide better shopping experience and increase the shopping value for customers (Shukla and Babin 2013).

Reference

Bhattacharjee, A., Berger, J. and Menon, G., 2014. When identity marketing backfires: consumer agency in identity expression. Journal of Consumer Research, 41(2), pp.294-309.

Durmaz, Y., 2014. The impact of psychological factors on consumer buying behavior and an empirical application in Turkey.

Goi, M.T., Kalidas, V. and Zeeshan, M., 2014. Comparison of stimulus-organism-response framework between international and local retailer. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 130, pp.461-468.

Goodman, S. and Remaud, H., 2015. Store choice: How understanding consumer choice of ‘where’to shop may assist the small retailer. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 23, pp.118-124.

Johnson, K.K., Kim, H.Y., Mun, J.M. and Lee, J.Y., 2015. Keeping customers shopping in stores: interrelationships among store attributes, shopping enjoyment, and place attachment. The International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research, 25(1), pp.20-34.

Kumar, A. and Kim, Y.K., 2014. The store-as-a-brand strategy: The effect of store environment on customer responses. Journal of Retailing and Consumer services, 21(5), pp.685-695.

Liu, S., Brown, L.M., Chen, Q., Huang, J., Liu, L. and Yan, S., 2016. Visual Attributes for Fashion Analytics.

Park, H.H., Jeon, J.O. and Sullivan, P., 2015. How does visual merchandising in fashion retail stores affect consumers’ brand attitude and purchase intention?. The International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research, 25(1), pp.87-104.

Press. (2017). On the couch. [online] Available at: https://dupress.deloitte.com/dup-us-en/industry/retail-distribution/understanding-consumer-behavior-shopping-trends.html [Accessed 5 Mar. 2017].

Quartier, K., Vanrie, J. and Van Cleempoel, K., 2014. As real as it gets: What role does lighting have on consumer’s perception of atmosphere, emotions and behaviour?. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 39, pp.32-39.

Saunders, M.N., 2011. Research methods for business students, 5/e. Pearson Education India.

Shukla, P. and Babin, B.J., 2013. Effects of consumer psychographics and store characteristics in influencing shopping value and store switching. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 12(3), pp.194-203.