Abstract:
The supermarket industry is one of the most dynamic and fastest-growing industries in Sri Lanka. Given the current intense competition in the industry driven by homogenous merchandise, retailers often focus on in-store atmosphere and personal factors in order to differentiate their offerings from the competitors. It was observed that customers make impulse purchase decisions inside the store, primarily driven by the in-store stimuli. The purpose of this research is to examine the impact of in-store atmosphere and personal factors on customer impulse buying behavior in the supermarket. Money availability, time availability and family influence are recognized as the main personal factors affecting customer impulse buying behavior whereas in-store advertisements and promotions, music, store layout and friendly employees are identified as the main factors contributing to the in-store atmosphere under this study. The study adopted a quantitative research approach where self-administrated survey questionnaire responses were collected from 120 supermarket customers spanning over 06 supermarket chains. In order to test the hypothesized relationships between the variables, multiple regression analysis was performed using SPSS. The findings revealed that both personal factors (i.e., Money availability, Time availability, Family influence) and determinant factors of in-store atmosphere (i.e., In-store advertisements and promotions, Music, Store layout, Friendly employees) make a significant positive influence on consumer impulse buying behavior. Consequentially, these findings are valuable for the retailers to identify key in-store environmental and personal factors that enhance overall customer shopping experience and to identify the factors that trigger impulse buying behavior.
