The Effect of Creative Design on Consumer Behavior: A Study on Designing Window Displays in Retail Environments

Md. Islam (Oklahoma State University)

Research has shown that the store environment effects consumer behavior. Many of these environmental factors affect consumer’s psychological aspects such as emotions and cognition, as well as physiological aspects such as body comfort. The proper design of retails environments have shown to effect individuals and their shopping behavior. Lindquist (1974) suggests that there are 9 retail environmental attributes that affect the shopping behavior such as lighting, air conditioning, in/out-store layout, architecture etc.

Store window displays capture the consumer’s attention and persuade them to visit the store. It is the first element in the retail environment that the consumer interacts with, and therefore one of the most important aspects of any retail environment. Does the novelty or creativity in store window affect the consumer’s mindset? This paper focuses on understanding the relationship between the creativity in store window displays and the purchase intention of consumers. This study has been conducted in two stages. In the first stage of this study two participants were recruited; a senior level student from a design related discipline, and a senior level student from a non-design related discipline. The participants designed window display according to the given brief individually and their design process was recorded, coded and analyzed using protocol analysis. Employing linkography, the researchers calculated the entropy levels of each design process, and assessed the creativity of each design using a panel of professional designers. In the second stage, 60 participants were recruited to give their opinion and perception from the customers’ point of view on the two sketches. The survey to assess the consumer perception was based on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) model (Do-novan and Rossiter, 1982; Mehrabian and Russell, 1974).

The findings and results of this study have a clear implication that retailers might benefit by emphasizing the creativity factors in store window designing.