Theme: Consumers & Producers

THE EFFECTS OF EMOTION AND TIME

TO SHOP ON SHOPPING
BEHAVIOUR IN AN INTERNATIONAL
AIRPORT TERMINAL
Work In Progress

BRAD BOWES
Manager Corporate Services and Secretary
BRISBANE AIRPORT CORPORATION LIMITED
(Affiliated with Griffith University, Brisbane Australia)

Address for all correspondence:

Brad Bowes
PO Box 61
Hamilton Central,
Queensland 4007
Australia

Phone: 61 7 3406 3138

Fax: 61 7 3406 3113

E-Mail: Brad.Bowes@Bne.Com.Au

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 THE EFFECTS OF EMOTION AND TIME
TO SHOP ON SHOPPING
BEHAVIOUR IN AN INTERNATIONAL
AIRPORT TERMINAL
Work In Progress

ABSTRACT

The airport retail market is substantial ($US12.6 billion worldwide in 1994) and
seems to offer a growth potential (12% pa to 2000, compared to 4% pa for general
retail) not available to domestic retailing, yet the nature and key drivers of the
market and consumer behaviour therein are not well understood.

Although airport terminals may offer a plethora of opportunities to retailers, there

are also significant challenges because of a terminal’s unique physical, processing
and security characteristics, the motivations and emotional states of passengers,
time constraints, and the impact that these can have on shopping.

Previous non-airport studies, particularly in the environmental psychology field,

have shown that an individuals’ perception of, and behaviour within a given
environment are the result of emotional states created by that environment. This
study therefore investigated whether one of the major obstacles to the
achievement of optimum retail visitation is the passengers’ states of mind as
influenced by the terminal environment.

Preliminary findings indicate that the intervention of a security screening X-ray

point increases some aspects in the arousal level of departing passengers. Another
important element on both emotional state and shopping behaviour is time
availability, a key feature that distinguishes airport shopping environments from
general retailing. Not surprisingly preliminary findings reveal that decreases in
time availability increase arousal and reduce the likelihood of shop visitation.

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1.0 INTRODUCTION AND RESEARCH PROBLEM

1.1 Airport Retailing – Significance and Nature

Humphries (1996) reports that the world’s airport retailing market was worth $US
12.6 billion in 1994, some 0.2% of global retail sales, and is projected to rise
above 1% before the year 2000. More remarkably, airport sales are forecast to
grow an average of 12% per annum to 2000, compared to only 4% per annum for
general retail.

Although airport terminals may offer a plethora of opportunities to retailers, there

are also significant challenges because of a terminal’s unique nature, viz a viz
retailing -

i) Purpose : the primary purpose for visiting an airport terminal is either to

travel or to farewell/greet those who are travelling, not to shop.
ii) The presence of time pressures : everything that happens in an airport
terminal is driven around flight schedules and in particular the requirement
to have departing aircraft leave on time.
iii) Heightened emotions : many of the elements in the facilitation process,
leading from arrival at the terminal to aircraft departure, include
potentially emotionally charged experiences.

1.2 Purpose and Contributions of the Study

The primary purpose of the study was to determine if a relationship exists

between an individual’s emotional state as influenced by the terminal
environment, and his or her propensity to visit an airport retail store.

2.0 SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND LITERATURE

2.1 The Environment-Emotion-Behaviour Relationship

The essence of the phenomenon that this research explored is the conclusion that
Bitner (1992) reached following her extensive review of several decades of
literature. This was summarised by stating “that human behaviour is influenced
by the physical setting in which it occurs is essentially a truism” (p59).

Mehrabian and Russell (1974) undertook an extensive literature review and

experimental studies in the area of environmental psychology (the study of human
reactions to environments), and developed a paradigm which postulates that all
responses to an environment are approach or avoidance behaviours. Approach-
avoidance is defined by these authors to include “physical movement towards, or
away from, an environment or stimulus, degree of attention, exploration,

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favourable attitudes such as verbally or non-verbally expressed preference or
liking,…and approach to another person” (p96).

Mehrabian and Russell (1974) further propose that three basic emotional
responses - pleasure-displeasure; arousal-nonarousal; dominance-submissiveness -
mediate these approach-avoidance behaviours in an environment.

Donovan and Rossiter (1982) used the Mehrabian - Russell approach to study
shop environments. They established the validity of the relationship between
store environments, emotional states, and intended shopping behaviour. Their
empirical study suggests that “emotional responses induced by in-store
environments are primary determinants of the extent the individual spends beyond
his or her original expectations” (Donovan and Rossiter 1982, p54).

In an extension of the Donovan & Rossiter (1982) study, Donovan, Rossiter,

Marcoolyn and Nesdale (1994) found that emotional responses induced by a store
environment can effect the time and money spent.

To summarise, Figure 2.1 shows the general Environment-Emotion-Behaviour

relationship.

Figure 2.1

Simplified Conceptual Model of the Environment-Emotion-Behaviour

Relationship

Environmental Emotional Behaviour

Stimuli e.g. States e.g. (Approach/
atmospherics pleasure Avoidance) e.g.
interaction with arousal • shop visitation
others • purchasing

The literature relating to impulsive and compulsive shopping behaviour is also

replete with references to emotional state influencing shopping (Rook 1987;
Weinberg & Gottwald 1982; O'Guinn & Faber 1989). Impulsive and compulsive
buying are usually a hedonic experience used to alleviate tension and anxiety or
emotional distress. This form of shopping behaviour is usually proceeded by
negative or undesirable mood states with the conduct of the behaviour then
providing a short term improvement in these negative states. Airport shopping is
usually characterised by the predominance of impulsive rather than planned
purchases.

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 3.0 PROPOSITIONS

P1 : Departing passengers who must undergo baggage and/or personal examination

when processing through an airport terminal’s security screening point
(“examined passengers”) will experience higher levels of arousal and
unpleasantness (“emotional reactions”) than those who pass through without
examination (“non-examined passengers”).

P2 : Departing passengers will experience higher levels of Arousal and Displeasure

immediately after processing at the security screening point than beforehand.

P3 : Examined passengers are more likely to visit a retail store selling impulse
merchandise than non-examined passengers.

4.0 METHODOLOGY

The methodology used in this study was comprised of two stages. The first stage
used a processing element in the terminal environment, security screening, to
explore emotional responses to that stimulus and compare those of passengers
who are subjected to personal and/or bag search to those who are not (P1). The
sample was 100 departing passengers split evenly between those who were
examined and those who were not. The Mehrabian-Russell 12 item semantic
differential scale for two emotional dimensions of Pleasure (scale items : happy,
pleased, satisfied, contented, hopeful and relaxed) and Arousal (scale items :
stimulated, excited, frenzied, jittery, wide-awake and aroused) was the
measurement instrument. Each item was on a 1 to 7 scale – for Pleasure, 1
represented the most pleasurable state and 7 the least; on the Arousal dimension
items, 1 represented the highest level of Arousal for that item and 7 the least.

Stage 2 used a Solomon 4 group design and measured emotional responses before
and after the screening point interaction, followed by observation of retail store
visitation immediately after post-measurement of emotional state (P2 and P3). The
sample size in Stage 2 was 207.

5.0 PRELIMINARY FINDINGS

5.1 Comparison of Pleasure and Arousal Responses Between Examined

and Non-Examined Passengers (P1).

T-Tests were used to determine if significant differences existed between the

Pleasure and Arousal responses of examined and non-examined passengers.
There were no significant differences on any Pleasure item between the two
groups.

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For the Arousal dimension other than for the “Excited” item (t=2.183, df=98;
p=0.031), no significant differences were found between examined and non-
examined passengers.

5.2 Stage 2 – Measurement of Emotional State and Relationship to Retail

Shop Visitation (P2 and P3)

Curiously, with the exception of “Hopeful” and “Relaxed”, all other scores on
Pleasure dimension items were higher before the screening point than after,
indicating greater levels of pleasure immediately after security screening than
before. This is in contrast to the proposition that the experience at the security
screening point would create a negative change in the Pleasure state of
passengers. However, no Pleasure dimension item showed a statistically
significant difference between pre and post security screening.

Consistent with the proposition, each Arousal dimension item registered a score
greater before screening than after indicating a higher level of overall arousal after
the screening point than before. Whilst the general direction of mean scores
supported the proposition that the experience of the screening point created
greater Arousal for passengers, only “Excited” (t=2.008; df=411; p=0.045) and
“Frenzied” (t=3.159; df=410; p=0.002) had a statistically significant difference
between pre and post screening.

It was proposed that passengers with greater levels of displeasure and arousal
would be more likely to visit a store selling impulse merchandise as a means of
increasing Pleasure and decreasing Arousal to more equalised states.

Although no statistically significant differences on Pleasure dimension items

resulted between those passengers who shopped and those who ignored the shops,
all dimension items showed greater levels of displeasure for passengers who
ignored the shops than for those who shopped. On the Arousal dimension items,
all showed greater levels of Arousal for those passengers who ignored the shops
than for those who shopped, with the “Frenzied” (t=2.876; df=204; p=0.004) and
“Jittery” (t=2.083; df=204; p=0.038) items resulting in statistically significant
differences.

5.3 The Impact of Time Availability on Emotional State

The previous section explored surveyed passengers’ shopping behaviour but took
no account of time availability. However one of the key elements distinguishing
airport retailing from general retailing is the limitation of time and the potential
impact on emotional state and store visitation that this could have. During the
progress of the research it became increasingly evident that analysis in this area
was important to further understanding shopping behaviour and emotional state.

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A critical time point in airports is when the airline announces on the public
address system that passengers should move to boarding gates for commencement
of aircraft boarding (usually no less than 30 minutes before the aircraft’s departure
time). Exploration of emotional state around this point was therefore undertaken.

To undertake further analysis based around a cut off point of 30 minutes before
departure, the time variable representing the time between interviewing and the
aircraft departure was transformed into two components, “30 minutes or less” and
“over 30 minutes”. A t-test was then used to see if there were differences in the
Pleasure and Arousal dimension item scores between passengers who spent 30
minutes or less on level 3 and those who spent over 30 minutes.

On the Pleasure dimension items passengers who had 30 minutes or less were less
"happy" and "pleased" than those who were over 30 minutes, however they were
more "satisfied", "content", "hopeful" and "relaxed". However, there were no
statistically significant differences found between the groups on any of the
Pleasure items.

On the Arousal dimension items, passengers who spent 30 minutes or less on

level 3 were more "stimulated", "excited", "frenzied", "jittery" and "awake" but
less "aroused" than those passengers who spent over 30 minutes. Significant
differences were found on the "frenzied" (t= -2.076; df=204; p=0.039), "jittery"
(t= -1.998; df=204; p=0.047) and "awake" (t= -2.166; df=204; p=0.031) items.
This is not unexpected given that anecdotal and focus group evidence suggests
there is an increase in anxiety and anticipation just before passengers are to board
the aircraft. This is usually reported as related to fear of flying, excitement at
finally embarking on a holiday and final farewells.

5.4 The Impact of Time Availability on Shopping Behaviour

At the time this paper was prepared analysis was being undertaken regarding the
impact of time availability on passengers' propensity to visit an airport retail shop
and whether there has an interaction or some other association with emotional
state. It is hoped that results will be available for presentation by the time of the
ANZMAC Conference.

REFERENCES

Bitner, Mary Jo (1992), “Servicescapes : The Impact of Physical surroundings on

Customers and Employees”, Journal of Marketing, 56 (April), 57-71.
Donovan, Robert J. and Rossiter, John R (1982), “Store Atmosphere : An
Environmental Psychology Approach”, Journal of Retailing, 58 (1), 34-57.
Donovan, Robert J., Rossiter, John R., Marcoolyn, Gilian and Nesdale, Andrew
(1994), “Store Atmosphere and Purchasing Behaviour”, Journal of Retailing, 70
(3), 283-294.

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Humphries, G (1996), The Future of Airport Retailing : Opportunities and
Threats in a Global Market. London : Pearson Professional Ltd.
Mehrabian, Albert and Russell, James A (1974), An Approach to Environmental
Psychology. Massachusetts : The MIT Press.

O’Guinn, Thomas C. and Faber, Roland J. (1989), “Compulsive Buying : A

Phenomenological Exploration”, Journal of Consumer Research, 16, 147-157.

Rook, Dennis W. (1987), “The Buying Impulse”, Journal of Consumer Research,

14 (September), 189-199.

Weinberg, Peter and Gottwald, Wolfgang (1982), “Impulsive Consumer Buying

as a Result of Emotions”, Journal of Business Research, 10 (March), 43-57.

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