Perception of other customers’ presence and its relationship with emotions and hedonic shopping value

Abstract

This paper investigates how the perception of other customers’ presence relates to emotions and hedonic shopping value in a popular retail environment. We conducted a survey with 247 customers and used structural equation modeling, and found a significant effect of other customers’ presence on individual consumer response in the purchasing process. This study makes an important contribution to the field of consumer behavior in retail environments, since the validation of the scale (Other Customers’ Perception) in traditional retail allows the possibility to better understand the impact of retail environment’s social dimension in a variety of contexts. It also corroborates that consumer experience involves more than simply assessing retailers’ performance, drawing attention to social factors in the retailing environment