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Retail space invaders: when employees’ invasion of customer space increases purchase intentions

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Abstract

This research fills a gap in the retailing literature regarding physical proximity while shopping. Most research in this area examines perceived crowding or social presence and largely ignores issues of distance. Using four studies we explore the impact of the physical proximity of an employee to a shopper. Contrary to common belief, we show that such encroachments can increase consumers’ acceptance feelings and their purchase intentions. We illustrate how these results are consistent with social identity theory. The results show a shopper can have higher purchase intentions the closer an employee physically gets to them due to an increase in feelings of acceptance. This result is strengthened when being included to an in-group is important to the shopper. The negative effects of feeling anxious in a purchase situation can also be buffered the closer an employee gets. Finally, the positive relationship of felt acceptance to purchase intentions is most critical when the product being purchased is perceived as less expressive. These results have important implications to our understanding of shopper behavior and reactions to physical proximity.

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Notes

  1. Males and females often see the expressiveness dimension of the same product differently; thus we focus on one gender in Study 1 to minimize the variance in ratings.

  2. Physical encroachment has a positive main effect on anxiety [F(1,68) = 43.36, p < .001; Mfar = 1.48, Mclose = 3.22], although multicollinearity is not problematic (tolerance = .61, VIF = 1.64).

  3. Physical encroachment has a marginally positive main effect on anxiety [F(1,88) = 3.83, p = .054; Mfar = 2.24, Mclose = 2.99], although multicollinearity is not problematic (tolerance = .96, VIF = 1.04).

  4. Participants were asked to rate both employees and other shoppers as part of their in-group. An employee and a customer do not differ in regards to feelings of in-group (Memployee = 3.97, Mcustomer = 3.73, F(1,54) = .03, p = .41).

  5. Physical encroachment has a positive main effect on anxiety [F(1,59) = 5.63, p < .05; Mfar = 2.72, Mclose = 3.41], but multicollinearity is not problematic (tolerance = .91, VIF = 1.10).

  6. The Johnson-Neyman technique was also used to examine the moderation variable of expressiveness on the acceptance to purchase intentions relationship. This analysis replicates the results in Studies 2 and 3. This floodlight analysis (Spiller et al. 2013) showed a significant effect of acceptance on purchase intentions for any expressiveness feelings of 2.42 (SE = .09, p = .05) or lower, but not for any expressiveness score greater than 2.42.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Daniel Flint, Charles Noble, and Ann Fairhurst for their thoughtful comments and suggestions on previous drafts of the manuscript and Adam Farmer for his help with PROCESS.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Marketing, Quantitative Analysis, and Business Law, Mississippi State University, 324 McCool Hall, Mississippi State, MS, 39762, USA

    Carol L. Esmark

  2. Department of Marketing and Supply Chain Management, University of Tennessee, 310 Stokely Management Center, Knoxville, TN, 37996-5311, USA

    Stephanie M. Noble

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Correspondence to Stephanie M. Noble.

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Dhruv Grewal served as Area Editor for this article.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 3 Related research overview
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Table 4 Descriptive statistics and correlations
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Table 5 Conditional indirect effects of personal space encroachment on purchase intentions at values of the moderators for Studies 2 and 4 *Significant paths in bold
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Esmark, C.L., Noble, S.M. Retail space invaders: when employees’ invasion of customer space increases purchase intentions. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 46, 477–496 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-016-0488-3

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