Store Atmospherics towards Patronage Intentions of Supermarket Patrons in Sri Lanka

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of store atmospherics on the patronage intentions of supermarket patrons in Sri Lanka, due to the lack of application of the new typology of Berman and Evans. The data were collected over mall intercept by randomly administering structured questionnaires from 200 respondents who visited eight supermarkets in Southern Province, Sri Lanka. Multiple regression and factor analysis were performed to explore the impact of five atmospheric variables on patronage intentions and to explore the significance of atmospheric dimensions. The results of the regression analysis indicated that all store atmospheric variables have a positive impact on the patronage intentions of supermarket patrons in Sri Lanka. Moreover, it suggested that the human atmospheric variable (i.e., Supermarket employees) was the most significant atmospheric variable, while the point of purchase and the exterior atmospheric variable were the less significant variables towards patronage intentions. The study has outlined to examine the five atmospheric variables introduced by Berman and Evans (1995) and Turley and Milliman (2000), but this study utilized a couple of atmospheric dimensions presented in such classifications. The study unveiled that supermarket employees are the most influential variable for generating patronized supermarket customers. The findings based on the regression analysis provided that the impact of the point of purchase variable was lowest on retail patronage and retail shoppers are not paying much attention to such type of an atmospheric variable at present due to all the supermarket retailers practising the most common pricing strategies. Findings indicated that when shoppers are getting old, they are willing to visit the supermarket which displays low prices, prices clearly and noticeably and also have a friendly, polite, and helpful sales force.