The Closed Circuit Television system is a tool employed in most retail environments to ensure public security, especially after the September 11 attacks, but it is usually ignored by researchers. For shoppers, CCTV may be a critical factor affecting their perspective on a retail environment and their purchasing behaviors, especially when CCTV and retail density exist together in a retail store. This study finds that shoppers' hedonic and utilitarian evaluations of their shopping experiences are most positive under conditions of moderate notice of the CCTV accompanied by high density and extreme notice of CCTV accompanied by low density. The results highlight the need to examine the interactive effects among retail factors to understand the impact of retail environments on shoppers.
Turley and Milliman's research [32] highlights a variety of shopping responses that retailers could influence and the different retail environment factors involved. Studies on retailing have generally found that the retail atmosphere really affects shopper behavior and shopping outcomes.
[...] However, the question is whether a moderate or an extreme notice of the use of CCTV should be employed in retail environments of varying density. Retail density means that shoppers perceive retail crowding when lots of people and objects occupying a specific space interfere with their activities [11]. When the retail environment is unusually dense, shoppers might feel uncomfortable and their opinion of the store and its shopping environment could be adversely affected [11,24]. It is proposed that the interactive effect of moderate/extreme notices of CCTV and retail density has a significant influence on shoppers' evaluations of the hedonic and utilitarian value of their shopping experience. [...]
[...] Third, from the point of view of the protection of the right to privacy, it is important for retailers to inform shoppers that there are several CCTV around the store. However, cultural aspects may influence the value assigned to this right, especially with respect to the collectivism/individualism dichotomy. Reactions to notices of the existence of a CCTV and dense retail environments might be less negative in the East than they are in the West. However, this must be confirmed by future research. [...]
[...] The results show that shoppers' hedonic and utilitarian evaluations of their shopping experience are highest under conditions of moderate CCTV notice attributes accompanied by high density and extreme notices attributes of CCTV accompanied by low density, which is consistent with the schema incongruity theory [17]. When in a dense retail store, shoppers need to process more information and keep shorter distances between themselves and others. The information overload theory applied to crowding defines the latter as a high density condition in which the rate and amount of environmental stimuli exceed the capacity to cope with them. [...]
[...] On the basis of the results of the paired-samples T-test, “Please Smile, the CCTV is running!”(Mean= 4.48 ) and “Taping now! Shoplifters will be fined ten times the price of the stolen goods!!”(Mean= 2.40 ) were chosen as the key moderate and extreme sentences for the following factorial designs test. The study applied a two-by-two factorial structure (moderate/extreme notice of CCTV and high/low retail density). Furthermore, Chinese New Year being the most important and longest vacation of the year for Chinese people (as significant to them as Christmas is to people of the West), Chinese New Year's Eve was chosen as the high density setting and the day after the Chinese New Year vacation as the low density setting. [...]
[...] pp 101- Mehrabian, A. and J. A. Russell; An approach to environmental psychology. Cambridge MIT Press Milgram, S.; The experience of living in cities, Science, Vol. 167(3924), pp 1461– Milliman, R. E.; Using Background Music to Affect the Behavior of Supermarket Shoppers, Journal of Marketing, Vol. pp 86- Monroe, K. B. and R. Krishnan; The effect of price on subjective product evaluation. In: J. Jacoby & J. Olson (Eds.), Perceived quality. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books Poyner, B.; Video cameras and bus vandalism. [...]
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