Defining, Applying and Customizing Store Atmosphere in Virtual Reality Commerce: Back to Basics?

This paper studies the concept of Store Atmosphere in Virtual Commerce (V-Commerce) through the Web in order to empirically define its determinants and investigate their applicability and customization capabilities. A series of in depth interviews with field experts (study #1) along with an online questionnaire survey (study #2) served as the data collection mechanisms of the study. The empirical findings suggest that while the social aspect dimension of V-Commerce limits customization capabilities, it provides several innovative options for manipulating Store Atmosphere. Additionally, the results indicate that Store Atmosphere attributes can be grouped in three factors with high average scores concerning the importance users attach to them. Specifically, storefront, store theatrics, colors, music and graphics are grouped in Factor #1 and reflect the “Store’s Appeal”. Crowding, product display techniques and innovative store atmosphere services are grouped in Factor #2 labeled “Innovative Atmosphere”, while store layout constitutes the only attribute included in Factor #3. The paper outlines the theoretical and managerial implications of these research results.