Crowding no varejo: diferenças na satisfação e percepção de valor hedônico de consumidores de alta e baixa renda no Brasil

• Ano de defesa: 2011
• Autor(a) principal: Brandão, Marcelo Moll
• Orientador(a): Parente, Juracy Gomes
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Palavras-chave em Português: Varejo; Comportamento do consumidor; Ambiente de loja; Percepção de crowding; Comportamento de compra
• Link de acesso: http://hdl.handle.net/10438/9277

This research offers contribution towards a better understanding of the phenomenon of human crowding in stores in the context of the Brazilian market. It investigates how the consumers’ responses vary between low and high income segments, and searches to explain these differences. An experimental methodology was adopted to test how the increase in human densitiy in stores differently affects low and high income consumers’ responses. We have adopted Income (high and low), and also Familiarity (high and low) with situations of crowded stores as moderators of the relationship between human store density and consumers’ responses. Adopting a factorial design, two experiments tested the proposal hypotheses using the following multivariate analysis techniques: ANOVAs, ANCOVAs and Linear Regressions. The results indicate that income those moderate the consumers’ responses, as it was found significant differences between low and high income consumers in store situation of high human density. We found the following responses of low income consumers, as compared to upper income, in situations of store human density: A more positive attitude and higher level of satisfaction; a higher perception of hedonic value. These are conflicting results as compared to most of the findings of investigations conducted in the United States about crowding, over the last three decades. While most of these findings indicated negative consumers’ responses to high human density in the stores, our findings have demonstrated that there are more positive responses among lower income segments. The results also indicate a moderating effect of familiarity in the relationship between human density and satisfaction, and also the mediating effect of the hedonic value perception between human density and satisfaction. The findings offer a theoretical contribution to enrich the understanding of the crowding phenomenon, as they highlight the importance of explicitly taking account of the socioeconomic context diversity, and to warrant the development of generalizations which correctly reflect the different marketing realities. For managerial implications, the study reinforces the need of retailers to develop a wider differentiation in the store atmosphere to better fulfill the peculiar preferences of different segments.