Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jretconser Multi-sensory congruent cues in designing retail store atmosphere: Effects on shoppers’ emotions and purchase behavior Miralem Helmefalk ⁎ , Bertil Hultén The Marketing Department, School of Business and Economics, Linneaus University, Sweden ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Atmospheric stimuli Multi-sensory congruent cues Store design Emotions Purchase behavior and field experiments ABSTRACT This paper explores the effects of multi-sensory congruent cues om shoppers’ emotions and purchase behavior in designing retail store atmosphere. Prior research suggests atmospheric stimuli to contribute to establish an appealing atmosphere and studies have confirmed that shoppers react to different stimuli. However, extant studies have not examined how multi-sensory congruent cues added to a visually dominant store atmosphere might impact shopper emotions and purchase behavior. The findings demonstrate a positive effect of multi- sensory congruent cues on shoppers’ emotions, through valence, and purchase behavior, through time spent and purchase. It is evident that shoppers perceive multi-sensory cues, such as auditory and olfactory ones, to be more effective in a dominant visual store atmosphere compared to only adding new visual stimuli. For retailers, a visually dominant store atmosphere should be designed more in the direction of a multi-sensory atmosphere in offering shoppers more appealing experiences of the retail setting. 1. Introduction Retail atmospherics influence shopper cognitions and emotions in facilitating purchasing behavior (Michon et al., 2005; Turley and Milliman, 2000). Moreover, how congruent these atmospheric cues are with the store design, product categories, and store image have also been considered (Cheng et al., 2009; Garaus et al., 2014; North et al., 2015). For retailers, the use of sensory cues might be useful in influencing shoppers’ emotions and purchase behavior through retail store atmosphere (Hultén, 2012; Krishna, 2012). However, research has not investigated how multi-sensory cues, although congruent, might impact on shopper emotions and purchase behavior at the point-of- purchase (POP) in retail settings. In this experimental research, multi-sensory cues are defined as those that complement vision in a store atmosphere, such as the addition of scent in an otherwise odorless store environment, or music/voice in an originally rather quiet retail setting. Since visual stimuli are the most common ones and often dominate in store atmosphere, retailers could supplement the atmosphere with auditory, aesthetic/gustatory, haptic or olfactory cues, so as to provide a multi- sensory atmosphere (Ballantine et al., 2015; Foster and Mclelland, 2015; Spence et al., 2014). This kind of atmosphere has been observed to exert a superior impact on cognition, emotion and behavior, and it can similarly be argued that retailers should consider the use of multi- sensory cues in designing store atmosphere (Spence et al., 2014). Accordingly, retailers can use multi-sensory cues to differentiate themselves from competitors and their product categories, that are often linked to a particular retail context (Ballantine et al., 2010). This means that the same furnishing store – like Habitat or IKEA - could use, for example, music and/or scents as additional non-visual cues for such product categories as beds, bed linen or carpets in designing store atmosphere. For retailers, decisions on how to design a store atmo- sphere might involve multiple sensory cues, but the question is, which are the most relevant? While congruency is defined as the fit between concepts, one definition of sensory congruency in sensory marketing is, “[…] the degree of fit among characteristics of a stimulus” (Krishna et al., 2010, p. 410). This explanation depicts congruency as the degree of fit and how cues corresponds with each other in a given context. In practice, there seems to be no consensus among retailers about what kind of multi-sensory congruent cues should be seen as comple- ments to visual stimuli, and in what context. Also, in retailing research, few insights are offered on how to introduce multi-sensory cues, to design a store atmosphere that positively influence shoppers’ emotions and purchase behavior. A need to change the current retail atmosphere and to evaluate its consequences, instead of relying only on simulated shopping tasks, is one of the main arguments for the present experi- mental research (Spence et al., 2014). To assist retail managers in making the appropriate decisions regarding choosing and applying multi-sensory cues in designing store http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2017.04.007 Received 8 November 2016; Received in revised form 22 March 2017; Accepted 26 April 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: miralem.helmefalk@lnu.se (M. Helmefalk). Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 38 (2017) 1–11 0969-6989/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. MARK