Consumer Perceptions of Higher and Lower-Level Designed Store Environments

The role and influence of aesthetics in the consumption of store environments remains poorly understood. Little is known about how aesthetics propose substantial or adjunctive roles in consumers’ store experiences. The aim of this paper is to examine consumer perceptions of store design-architecture in higher and lower-level design contexts. Building on the aesthetics, and environmental psychology literatures, our findings confirm consumers’ determinations of perceptual differences in the aesthetic content contained in presented store environmental stimuli. Latent-means comparisons confirm consumers’ perceptions of the presence of a higher-level design in one fast-fashion store with a lower-level design of a second store of the same retailer using a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). The results demonstrate the reliability and validity of the proposed constructs in confirming the presence of higher and lower-levels of design. This research thus expands on the extant number of store specification and response constructs and prospectively opens up new lines of store environments research