Visualscape : A New Scale to Measure Visual Elements in Organized Retailing

The present study focuses on the Visual elements as sensory inputs in organized retailing and constructs and validates a new scale called VISUALSCAPE to measure visual elements in organized retailing. The methodology suggested by Churchill (1979) for scale construction was used to assess content validity, construct validity and nomological validity of the scale. The data collection was through a survey with a structured questionnaire and structural equation modelling was used as the data analysis technique. The analysis resulted in a seven factor (22 item) VISUALSCAPE scale with the factors named as The factors were named as Displayscape, Themescape, Infrascape, Designscape, Signscape, Lightscape, Transcape. The present study has contributed to the literature on store atmospherics by constructing and validating the VISUALSCAPE scale to measure the visual elements of a physical retail store. It has empirically validated the role of Visual Elements on various aspects of customer experience such as browsing and shopping excitement. The practical contribution of the study is the construction of a tool to measure the Consumer Perception on various elements related to the sense of sight. The scale would allow the retailer to understand how consumers perceive visual elements of his/her store and could also act as a quality check to assess whether the retailer is performing well on the same. The present study has contributed to retailing research and practice by providing a new scale to measure visual elements in organized retailing