The Effect of Visual Merchandising on Customers’ Purchasing Decisions

In fashion industry, retail environment is more and more saturated, with additional challenges coming from E-commerce. In this bachelor’s thesis, the ability of visual merchandising to serve as a tool maintaining a company’s visual consistency, at- tracting new customers and adding competitive advantage was studied. The research was ad-hoc and explanatory. Both desk and field research were exe- cuted. The data gathering method for this study was quantitative survey. The data was collected based on convenient sampling, and the sample size was 52 people. The results of the study suggested that when it comes to brand recognition (espe- cially decoding brand identity) and differentiation on a saturated market, visual merchandising is an important aspect. Visual merchandising techniques play a role in influencing purchasing choices, yet they are not the key tools for this. Research have also found that women tend to be more receptive to visual cues and promo- tional offers than men