Irritating Aspects of the Shopping Environment

of this article is that retailers and marketing researchers also should be on reducing or eliminating the environmental aspects that concerned with environmental stimuli that create irritations among shopdisplease shoppers is important since several studies have pers and try to come up with strategies aimed at reducing or eliminating confirmed the prominence of negative information over posisuch irritants. A study is presented where environment-based shopping tive information in the formation of consumer evaluations irritants are identified on the basis of a conceptual framework and the (see Mizerski [1982] for a review). degree of irritation induced by these irritants assessed. Results from a The present research centers around identifying aspects of survey of 281 shoppers show that the degree of perceived irritation depends the shopping environment that are likely to produce negative on the nature of the environmental variables considered and is affected emotions among shoppers and explores the role of key individsignificantly by shoppers’ gender and age. While women appear to be ual moderators (i.e., age, gender) on shoppers’ irritability pergenerally more irritated than men by displeasing aspects of the shopping ceptions. Such research has important implications for retailenvironment, the impact of age on shoppers’ extent of irritation depends ers interested in learning what environmental factors impact on which specific irritating factor is considered. J BUSN RES 2000. 49.149– negatively on shoppers’ feeling states, what to do to improve 156.  2000 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved. the shopping environment, and what types of actions are required for specific market segments.