Abstract:

The success of any business depends on a firm’s understanding and meeting of the customers’ needs and demand. Retail shops are fast becoming venues for relaxation where consumers are made to have a unique experience while shopping. Experiential marketing is a new and exhilarating concept and marketing experts have come to realize that understanding consumer experience during the shopping process in a retail industry and how to provide appealing shopping experiences for them is critical for differentiating their market offerings in a competitive environment.  The objective of this study is to critically examine the effects of store atmospherics on consumer shopping behavior using customers of Ikeja City Mall as a case study. The data required for this study was gathered through the instrument of questionnaire. Series of questions were asked using the questionnaire adopted by the researcher and four objectives and hypotheses were proposed and tested in the study. One hundred (100) copies of questionnaire were administered and collected for analysis. The data were analyzed using simple frequency tables, regression analysis and ANOVA test statistics and employing the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20. Findings from this studies indicate that store atmospherics is a very important aspect of experiential marketing in a retail industry, as this is what influences the behavior of consumers during and after shopping. More importantly, store atmospherics is essentially needed to be used as a strategy for attracting and stimulating buying motives to enhance customer patronage.  Based on the above findings, it is recommended that store atmospherics should be done in a way to influence consumer shopping behavior and increase the patronage level of consumers.