Visual Merchandising and Consumer Demography : The Impact on Impulse Buying Behavior

This study, to begin with, throws some light on Indian retail scenario, concept of visual merchandising and impulse buying and then attempts to explore the relationship between the factors of visual merchandising and consumers' demographics so as to analyze the impact of visual merchandising on consumers' impulse buying behavior. Indian retail is one of the fastest growing markets in the world. Modern and online retail business is growing tremendously with growing lifestyle of Indians. There are increased number of international brands entering the country and national brands penetrating the market. Consumers are becoming savvy in terms of their purchase decision. There is a trend that consumers see the product in physical channel compare price online and buy through channel which offers same product at lesser price. Omni channel makes it more difficult for retailers especially in physical channels to hold customers in their stores and lead them to buy. Hence, this study was conducted to find out relationship between factors of visual merchandising and consumer demography. Variables of visual merchandising under study were window display, in-store form/mannequin display, floor display, promotional signage. From the analysis it is found that there is weak relation of attractive window display with different age groups, gender, and income. Other than window display, the impact of visual merchandising on consumer behavior is almost irrelevant with respect to gender, age, education, monthly income, and education of consumers and, therefore retailers should, in general, create very impressive visual displays for all types of footfalls in the store. If a marketer tries to enhance the display of their stores, making the stores more creatively attractive, it will impact consumers to get into stores, remain there for some time and influence their impulse buying behavior to make them buy from the stores