“Tackling the ‘death’ of brick-and-mortar clothing retailers through store atmospherics and customer experience”

The threat of online shopping propels brick-and-mortar retailers to innovate and de- sign their retail atmosphere to create unforgettable shopping experiences to compete effectively and retain customers. The study firstly identifies store atmospherics factors that enhance the shopping experience and secondly explores the hypothesized relationships between store atmospherics dimensions (lighting, music, layout, and employee interaction) and customer experience. Furthermore, the effect of customer experience and repurchase intention is also explored. A self-administered survey was used, and data were collected from 390 respondents who visit physical clothing stores regularly in the City of Johannesburg in South Africa. The survey results were analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) for descriptive statistics. Covariance-Based Structural Equation Modelling (CB-SEM) was utilized for the path analysis. The findings reveal that only store layout, lighting, and employee interaction are essential elements in creating pleasurable customer in-store experiences (β = 0.163, p = 0.05; β = 0.207, p = 0.01; β = 0.293, p = 0.001). It is also evident that consumers perceive music to be less effective in enhancing their shopping experiences (β = 0.048, p = ns). Moreover, the results show that enriching customer experiences stimulate repeat purchases (β = 0.745, p = 0.001). The findings demonstrate that innovating the store environment should be based on shop layout, illumination, and employee contact to create appeal-ing experiences. This study contributes to consumer and retailing services literature.


INTRODUCTION
In a world where shopping online has been triggered, is there a future for physical retailers? The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) stated that Covid-19 has activated changes in online buying patterns and highlighted that the most significant shift to online shopping was from consumers in emerging economies. However, as an emerging economy, South African consumers still depend on in-store (physical) shopping, particularly for clothing (Ungerer, 2019), making the store atmosphere crucial than ever. Store atmosphere comprises all the sensory effects such as physical features and design in the customer journey touchpoint that contribute to the consumer experience (Gültekin & Saraç, 2021). As such, store owners are altering their environment to have exciting experiences (Munaro et al., 2019).
Even with the closure of many physical retailers, some online stores are doing the opposite, opening up physical stores to supplement the online environment (Egan-Wyer et al., 2021), indicating that the phys-ical retail format is not dead (Maguire, 2020). Since in-store shopping has resumed worldwide for retailers, the online sales for textiles and clothing saw a decline, and on the other hand, consumers started visiting the brick-and-mortar shops (Spinoso, 2021). In South Africa, the sales of apparel, textiles, and footwear bounced back by 12.3% after experiencing a decline in 2020 and the beginning of 2021 (Stoddard, 2021). In recent times, consumers find anything they are looking for online, and it is important to investigate why would the same consumers visit a brick-and-mortar shop (Smit, 2021). The effect of store atmosphere on consumer behavior has recently received much attention (Barros et  Berčík (2016) argued that consumers are first attracted to certain features within the store environment during the product selection stage, including lighting, music, scent, and color. Furthermore, Helmefalk and Hultén (2017) posit that retail atmospherics strongly impact consumer cognitions and emotions during the purchase decision process. Berman (2019) argues that in pursuit of combatting the death of store-based retailers, retailers should ensure that stores design their environment for entertaining and competing with pleasurable leisure activities such as visiting a cinema. Similarly, Kim et al. (2021) showed that physical retailers will not evaporate; however, retailers should improve their store environment to keep up with customers' shopping habits. Kim et al. (2021) further stated that high-experience products such as clothing require to be seen and touched before a customer can make a purchasing decision. There is a lot of attention focusing on the increase of online shopping and shopper experience strategies. To compete successfully, understanding how best to provide customer experience to stimulate repurchase behavior within the physical store environment has become necessary. As a result, the study draws on the framework and its influence on customer shopping behavior. The design aspect refers to the store's visual components, such as the layout and style of the store or website (Wang et al., 2021). The ambient factors include the lighting, brightness, and music, also referred to as a visual stimulus (Helmefalk & Hultén, 2017). The social aspect involves people; this could be store personnel or other customers in-store (Poncin & Mimoun, 2014;Roggeveen et al., 2020). For this study, the latter description is adopted. Lastly, trialability refers to how easy it is for customers to try new products and services (Roggeveen et al., 2020). Trialability will not be included because this paper explicitly focuses on clothing stores, where sampling is not always necessary. Consumers visit a physical retail store because they will get to touch (try) the clothes they buy by design unless they already know what to purchase. More so, there seems to be some overlap between the design and trialability factor as both include visual and touch elements, which the current study measures under design. As a result, trialability will not apply.

LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESES DEVELOPMENT
To assist retailers in creating meaningful experiences, the study seeks to unearth insights on atmospherics classification, including design (layout), ambient (music and lighting), and social factors (employee interaction) and their effect on customer experience and repurchase intention. Studies have shown that the brick-and-mortar store environment is one of the most critical features in customer purchasing decisions (Wang et al., 2021). The store layout emphasizes how products are grouped and how the shelf and floor space is divided (Hussain & Ali, 2015). A central function of the store's layout is to display products and services to customers to assist in contemplation and eventually purchase. A flourishing store lay-out design can help persuade customers to move around the store and relate to the merchandise, ultimately affecting their shopping experience and purchase (Mowrey et al., 2018).
Similarly, a successfully designed store layout has been positively linked with the time spent in-store and approach or avoidance behavior (Mowrey et al., 2019). The retailer would want at all costs to evade avoidance. Therefore encouraging customers to pursue a decision, music can be used as a stimulator. Music has been found to influence experience, meaning that enjoyable music enhances pleasurable feelings for customers (Triantafillidou et al., 2017). The use of music is effective in retailing and advertising (Raja et al., 2019). Playing the right music can assist retail stores in developing a good and acceptable atmosphere, which contributes to the store's image and the type of consumers that visit it (de Farias et al., 2014). According to Raja et al. (2019), consumers are likely to experience three emotional states in a retail environment, pleasure (satisfaction), arousal (stimulation), and dominance (feeling in charge), which may or not determine the time spent in-store and purchasing decisions. Another critical element in the physical store environment is lighting. Lighting is a feature in a store that stimulates the visual appearance of the products. The key reason for utilizing lighting within stores is to attract the customer's interest to influence their purchasing decision (Hussain & Ali, 2015).
There is a strong relationship between music and lighting on customer experience, influencing a customer's purchase intention (Sharma & Agarwal, 2017). However, purchase intention can also be stimulated by social factors, for example, the presence of an employee in-store, which has been linked positively with pleasurable in-store experiences (Triantafillidou et al., 2017). During these interactions, the service person must be of great assistance in terms of products and services required by customers. It includes service personnel's appearance and helpfulness; as such, a positive experience with an employee enhances how customers perceive the store's service quality (Roggeveen et  There has been considerable interest in studies relating to store atmospherics in emerging economies, including retail atmospherics on store patronage in supermarkets (Dokcen et al., 2021) and store environment impulse buying (Hashmi et al., 2020). However, there have been limited studies in the South African context on physical store atmospherics' impact on customer experience and repurchase intention within the clothing industry. Furthermore, the preceding literature shows that customer experience has primarily been explored as the predecessor of repeat purchase. Since the study focuses on current customers who already know the physical clothing store environment, the biggest challenge for these retailers is to identify strategies that will enhance customer experience and repurchase intention. With the role of store atmosphere, customer experience, and repurchase intention emphasized, the purpose of the study is to investigate the effect of store atmospherics on customer experience and ultimately repurchase intention. Therefore, the study attempts to answer the following questions: 1) what store atmosphere factors stimulate customer experience in physical clothing stores? 2) does customer experience encourage repurchase intention behavior in physical clothing stores? To address the research questions, the proposed hypotheses are formulated:

METHODS
This study used a quantitative approach and a structured questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of sections, namely, sections A and B. Section A collected information about respondents' demographic profile and characteristics, including gender, age, marital status, level of qualification, occupation, and monthly income. Section B included the study's constructs (store layout, lighting, music, employee interaction, customer experience, and repurchase intention) as proposed in the conceptual model and their respective measurement items. It is crucial to highlight that the survey consisted of a screening question to ensure that the correct people participated in the study. The reason for having a screening question was that it was essential to determine that the participants were regular consumers of physical clothing retail stores. Customers who are well-informed and experienced on the subject matter will provide meaningful feedback to enable the research to respond to the research questions (Tucker et al., 2015).
The measurement items were developed using a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree. The measurement items were adapted from previous studies (

RESULTS
The data analysis was performed on SPSS 25 to obtain descriptive statistics and AMOS 25 to run the CB-SEM, including Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and structural model assessment. The smallest group of the sample stated "other" as their level of qualification, while 9.49% of the participants have a post-graduate degree. A large majority of the respondents are students (76.92%), which makes sense considering the study was conducted in a city that houses higher education institutions; 7.44% of the respondents stated that they are employed, and 4.62% said that they are self-employed. In comparison, 3.33% of the sample is unemployed. Only 1.03% of the respondents stated their occupation as "other", while 6.67% are temporary/part-time students. Regarding monthly income, most of the participants (67.69%) indicated their income to be less than $350, while 21.54% of the participants' income ranged from $350-$700. Additionally, 6.92% of the participants indicated an income of $1,051-$1,400, with 3.85% of the respondents' income being above $1,400.
The structural model was assessed to check the significance of the hypotheses, as demonstrated in Table 4. Four of the five hypotheses were supported. The findings reveal that the strongest relationship is between customer experience and repur- chase intention (β = 0.745, p = 0.001), followed by employee interaction and customer experience (β = 0.293, p = 0.001), and store lighting and customer experience (β = 0.207, p = 0.01). Therefore, H5, H4, and H3 are supported. The results also show that store layout enhances customer experience (β = 0.163, p = 0.05). However, the results demonstrated that store music does not enhance customer experience (β = 0.048, p = ns). Therefore, H2 is not supported.

DISCUSSION
The retail environment is highly competitive, mainly because of the rise of online shopping, leaving physical retailers with challenges of increasing in-store traffic. In a physical store environment, certain elements play a crucial role in keeping customers in-store longer and, more importantly, keeping them coming back. This study investigated store environment factors that can   Notes: *** means p < 0.000; ** means p < 0.01; * means p < 0.05, ns means not significant.
enhance customer experience and, in turn, repurchase intention. Barros et al. (2019) argued that the store atmosphere is a noteworthy feature in determining consumer satisfaction, affecting consumers' feelings regarding their shopping experiences. Prior studies have used the DAST (design-ambient-social-trialability) framework to investigate consumer decision-making in the retailing environment; however, limited studies have adapted the framework (excluding trialability) to a physical retail clothing store environment in South Africa.
Furthermore, prior studies have also focused on shopping behaviors such as purchase intention and not so much on repurchase. Therefore, this study attempts to close this gap. The findings reveal that the design factor (layout of the store), ambient factor (lighting), and social factor (employee interaction) have a positive impact on customer experience. The results are consistent with Gokcen and Anderson (2018), Mowrey et al. (2018), and Sharma and Agarwal (2017), who found these elements necessary in the retail environment. Interestingly, one of the ambient factors, music, does not impact customer experience, which contradicts findings from prior research (Sharma & Agarwal, 2017).
Similarly, music has also been found to stimulate consumer spending (Roggeveen et al., 2020). However, this might also indicate that music is not an essential factor that keeps consumers in-store when shopping for clothes. Furthermore, the most vital relationship was customer experience and repurchase intention in physical clothing stores, as confirmed by Kavitha and Haritha (2018). Even with the increase in online shopping, consumers still want the opportunity to touch and inspect the clothes with the benefits of fulfilling their needs or wants for instant ownership (Mowrey et al., 2018). Moreover, it is imperative to note that a positive consumer experience is one of the antecedents of store attachment (Egan-Wyer et al., 2021). Store attachment is necessary because it means that consumers will repurchase.

CONCLUSION
The purpose of the study was to investigate the effect of store atmospherics on customer experience and ultimately repurchase intention. The results show that only store layout, lighting, and employee interaction affect customer experience positively. Moreover, customer experience significantly impacts repurchase intention. The first contribution is that the DAST framework is adapted to the physical clothing store environment. This study did not test trialability and only applied DAS (design-ambient-social) as important factors to consider when designing memorable in-store shopping experiences. Secondly, only one ambient aspect, lighting, is an enhancer of customer experience and not music. Thirdly, the study confirmed the most vital relationship to be between customer experience and repurchase intention within the physical retail clothing store environment. Therefore, marketers must consider these factors during mapping out the customer journey for brickand-mortar stores. Future studies can replicate the proposed model within rural areas and other emerging economies. Additionally, the study used a convenient sampling technique, which limits generalisability, and that out of the 390 respondents, 314 were between the ages of 18-25. Future studies could also ensure that the distribution in terms of age is representative as per the store customer database (presenting generalisability opportunity), which can also be achieved through a quota sampling technique.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This study is based on the research supported partly by the University of the Witwatersrand Chancellor's Female Academic Leaders Fellowship.