Sales impact of servicescape's rational stimuli: A natural experiment

摘要

Environmental psychologists suggest that people feelings and emotions determine what they do and how they do it. We used the Stimulus-Organism-Response model (S-O-R) as an inspiring theoretical basis for our empirical contribution. We conducted a natural field experiment in six stores, settled in six different Italian cities, of a multinational company who sells furniture, furnishing accessories and household articles. We provided empirical evidence about the effects of a rational-functional stimulus, i.e. the availability of a new tool for collecting items that is more comfortable and less cumbersome for consumers. Through both a non-parametric and parametric testing, we found a positive effect of the stimuli in terms of sales.