Consumers process and evaluate products every day in an increasing number of diverse presentations of products and brands across shop environments. Although consumers may think to react to attributes of the products and the shop environments, there are many contextual factors that influence consumers’ responses. Both products presentation and shop environments differ in visual complexity and ease of processing. For example, products such as fragrances and eyeglasses considerably diverge depending on the visual presentation across multiple stores. Research on processing fluency (e.g., Reber et al., 2004; Winkelman et al., 2003) shows that the processing of any stimulus can be characterized by a variety of parameters that are nonspecific to its content. This stream of work suggests that any variable that facilitates fluent processing results in increased liking, and other positive evaluations. Recent work on context complexity (Orth and Crouch, 2014) suggests that people process a package more fluently when it is presented in a low rather than high complexity context. Further, research on contextual cues (Zhu and Meyers-Levy, 2009) shows that the extent of feature overlap between a context and a target object determines whether a person interprets the target related or not related to the contextual data. Accumulating research suggests that a deeper understanding of the way consumers process multiple contextual cues promises to shed light on our understanding of many areas of consumer research. Although visual appeal is itself multifaceted (Bloch, 1995), much of the current discussion with respect to visual cues does not consider the interaction of multiple shop environments. Given the importance of processing fluency and context effects, we examine the extent to which consumers positively elaborate cognitive processes in relation to product context complexity. Following research in psychology, fluency is the subjective experience of ease with which a person processes a stimulus (Reber et al. 2004). High fluency elicits a positive reaction. We predict that less complex contexts of the product will be easier to process and produce more favorable evaluations of the product. Further, research on contextual cues (Aggarwal and McGill, 2007; Meyers-Levy and Sternthal, 1993) shows that consumers better overlap contextual cues when cues are moderately congruent rather than low congruent. This suggests that consumers respond more favourably to moderate congruent shop environments. Studies Two studies tested our prediction that product context complexity across shop environments affects consumer’s processing fluency, liking, and product evaluation. In both studies, participants were provided with pictures of real products and shop environments. Images were manipulated to disguise brand names. Participants were recruited online through the platform Prolific Academic. Study 1 tested the hypothesized negative effect of product context complexity on processing fluency, and liking. The final section of the survey asked for personal information, including gender, age, and style of reasoning. These variables had no significant impact on the dependent variables of interest and were excluded from further analysis. In study 1, ninety participants (mean age = 34.20, 63 females) were randomly assigned to one of the two conditions (product context complexity: low vs. high). They viewed one randomly selected picture of cosmetics displayed on counter displays across two different stores. Cosmetics was chosen due to the large variance in products presentation across multiple retailers. In a pretest, 87 participants rated perceived complexity of the display to examine whether the display complexity differs across the two conditions. The manipulation was successful (Mlow = 2.32 vs. Mhigh = 3.68; F(1,85) =24.299, p < 0.001). Running one-way ANOVA with product context complexity as independent variable and processing fluency as dependent variable a significant main effect of the context complexity (M = 5.05 vs. M = 4.37; F (1,87) = 3.913, p < 0.05). To test our prediction that liking is mediated by processing fluency of product context complexity, a mediation analysis was conducted (PROCESS model 4: Hayes, 2014). Bootstrap estimation confirmed that processing fluency mediates the influence of product context complexity on liking (simple slope = 0.44, LLCI = 0.01, ULCI = 0.94). In study 2, our aim was to corroborate and extend study 1 findings by testing product context complexity in congruent and less congruent shop environments. One hundred seventy-seven participants (mean age = 35,31, 80 females) viewed one randomly selected combination of chocolate shop environments. As in study 1, we chose chocolate due to the large variance in products presentation across multiple retailers. Chocolate was displayed on tower displays (products context complexity: low vs. high), and matched with the overall in-store presentation of three chocolate shop environments (shop environment congruence: low vs. moderate vs. high). After processing the pictures, participants were asked to rate processing fluency, liking, and product evaluation. Similarly to Study 1, the final section of the survey asked for personal information, including gender, age, and shopping goal. Again, these variables had no significant impact on the dependent variables of interest and were excluded from further analysis. Two pretests confirmed that our manipulation of product context complexity (Mlow = 1.96 vs. Mhigh = 4.01, F(1,57) = 23.464, p < 0.001) and store processing fluency (Mlow = 3.50 vs. Mmoderate = 4.14 vs. Mhigh = 5.10, F(1,109) = 10.465, p < 0.005) were successful. Running a factorial ANOVA with processing fluency as dependent variable indicated a nonsignificant main effect of product context complexity. Shop environment congruence had a significant main effect (F(2,171) = 6.561, p < 0.005). Contrasts analysis revealed significant differences between the high congruence/context complexity condition and the low congruence/context complexity condition, and between the moderate congruence/context complexity condition and the low congruence/context complexity condition (all ps < 0.005). We then tested the prediction that processing fluency mediates the effects of shop environment congruence on liking and product evaluation through product context complexity as moderator. We used a moderated mediation analysis with the bootstrap PROCESS model 8: Hayes, 2014). There was a significant conditional indirect effect of shop environment congruence on liking though product context complexity in the high context complexity condition, b = -0.280, LLCI = -0.509, ULCI = -0.120. A similar estimation with product evaluation as the independent variable revealed that processing fluency mediated the relationship between significant shop environment congruence and product evaluation though product context complexity in the high context complexity condition, b = -0.375, LLCI = -0.631, ULCI = -0.153). Discussion Our findings demonstrated the influence of product context complexity on processing fluency and product evaluation. The results showed that less context complexity leads to an ease of processing. Study 1 confirmed the negative relationship between product context complexity and processing fluency. Further, study 1 demonstrates a mediation mechanism of processing fluency on liking. This result confirms prior work on processing fluency (Reber et al., 2004). Further. we extend previous work on visual complexity (Orth and Crouch 2014) by demonstrating that low congruence shop environments may influence consumer processing fluency. In study 2, we looked at how consumers respond to complex and less complex presentation of products in congruent and less congruent shop environments. Our results support research on contextual cues (Zhu and Meyers-Levy, 2009) by showing an interesting path of complex contextual cues. Complex contexts may affect consumer’s evaluation of products. This pattern is more pronounced in low congruent shop environments. Consumers may evaluate much less favorably visually complex contexts in low congruence shop environments than in congruent shop environment. Such behavior is due to the extent to which consumers overlap the shop environment and the target product. This research shed light on how consumers combine retail and product cues. By integrating research on processing fluency and contextual cues, our work allows a better crafting product design and retail strategies. Apart from the theoretical contributions, this research provides marketing manager with insights into how to develop easier to process shop environment for consumers. The results suggest that when products are presented with complex contexts, consumers respond less favorably to the visual appearance of their products. For retail managers, the results provide insight into why it might be especially difficult to process more complex settings of the products. The results suggest that to make a shop environment more favorable, managers have to find solutions to reallocate complex contextual cues of the products. This could be done through developing more congruent areas within the store. Given the growing importance of visual strategies in retailing, our research gives managers suitable solutions to allocate in-store resources.

Over the past decades, researchers devoted considerable attention to the impact of store environments on shopping behavior (e.g. Baker et al., 2002; Kotler, 1973; Turley & Milliman, 2000). More recent, practitioners and academics alike have argued that a greater challenge for brands is the creation and enhancement of compelling shopping experiences along, and beyond, the entire path-to-purchase (Interbrand, 2014; Shankar et al., 2011). In a luxury brand context, where the shopping experience is a significant motivator for purchases (Yoon, 2013), the interaction of multiple retail environments greatly affect consumer behavior towards the brands. Accordingly, brand experiences is created at both ends of the marketing supply chain, by brand manufacturers and retailers. Yet, although research has developed fruitful areas for new perspectives on the relationships between manufacturers and retailers (Ganesan et al., 2009), the vast majority of existing research predominantly focuses on consumer response to brand experiences with respect to manufacturer cues (Dolbec & Chebat, 2013; Tynan et al., 2010), store cues (Baker et al., 2002), or retail settings (Möller & Herm, 2013). The evolving business world needs to implement more comprehensive and holistic approaches (Choi et al., 2014), where integrated strategies must emerge. The objective of this study is to present an explanation of luxury brand experiences across manufacturer and retailer’s settings. By overviewing the literature on the interaction between brand management, store atmospherics, and consumer behavior, and applying qualitative methods, the authors provide relevant insights for academics and practitioners toward a more comprehensive understanding of the luxury brand experience. Customer experience and luxury brands In the field of contemporary marketing, customer experience has been defined as a construct which “encompasses the total experience and may involve multiple retail channels” (Verhoef et al., 2009, p. 32). It includes the search, purchase, consumption, and after-sale phases of the experience. In a holistic brand perspective, this definition enlightens the key role of luxury brands in delivering the same brand promise and brand message across each connection between the consumer and the brand. Among the characteristics of luxury brands, consumers are willing to pursue luxury products as these products provide psychological benefits rather than functional benefits (Kapferer, 1997). Further, luxury brands are associated with status, wealth, exclusion, and pride (McFerran et al., 2014). As result, strong experiences with luxury brands derive when consumers develop deep emotional bonds with brands (Grisaffe & Nguyen, 2011). From a marketing perspective, consumers that develop deep emotional relationships with a brand have a lot of positive and strong associations (Yoo et al., 2000), such as the perception of the brand uniqueness and inimitability, and loyalty to the brand. However, when it comes to analyze the brand experience, research confers a conceptually different meaning from other brand constructs. According to Brakus et al. (2009), brand experience has distinct dimensions from evaluative, affective, and associative brand constructs, such as brand attachment, brand attitudes, customer delight, and brand personality. The concept of brand experience encompasses multiple dimensions, which refer to the sensorial, affective, intellectual, and behavioral sphere (Zarantonello & Schmitt, 2009). More specifically, the intrinsic concept of luxury brands as hedonic products with high symbolic value, holistically incorporate manufactures and retailers in fulfilling these various dimensions of brand experience. By assuring consistency across the manufacturer and retailer’s settings of the luxury brand, customer experiences evoke the exclusivity of the brand and transfer the authenticity of the brand message. From a consumer’s perspective, consumers reach brand authenticity when they perceive both the internal consistency, which focuses on maintaining the luxury brand standard and style, honoring its heritage, preserving its essence, and avoiding its exploitation, and the external consistency, which pertains to appearances and claims of the brand (Choi et al., 2014). Similarly, consumers tend to perceive the exclusivity of the luxury brand when they encounter consistent experiences across multiple brand touch points. Accordingly, in the experiential view, the principle of consistency and contiguity proposes that sensations, imagery, feelings, pleasures, and other symbolic or hedonic components are paired together to create mutually evocative consumer response (Holbrook & Hirschmann, 1982). The integration between the marketing and consumer’s perspectives suggests that luxury brands create and maintain powerful customer experiences when there is consistency across the manufacturer and retailer’s environments. However, in the landscape of luxury brand management, the conceptualization of customer experience requires the understanding of how consumers respond to luxury brand messages. This investigation is particularly important when examining brand experiences emerged in the manufacturer versus retailer physical environment. Existing literature on brand experiences, retail atmospherics, and luxury brands cannot fill the gap we address. Prior studies aiming to investigate the brand experience have analyzed the phenomenon of this construct from a theoretical perspective (Verhoef et al., 2009), case study analysis (Payne et al., 2009), or focused only on the direct relationship between manufacturer and consumer (e.g. Dolbec et al., 2013; Kim, 2009). For example, Dolbec et al. (2013) have studied in-store brand experiences on consumer response to flaghship vs. brand stores, and highlighted how their study suffers from not considering the continuity between current, previous and future experiences. Regarding the impact of store atmospherics and retailer’s settings on customer experiences (e.g. Baker et al. 2002; Bloch, 1995), research has found that specific combinations of atmospherics elements influences consumers’ perceptions about merchandise, service quality, and the overall store image. More recently, Möller & Herm (2013) showed how retail settings may shape consumers interpretation and evaluation of the brand, and in-store bodily experiences transfer a metaphoric message to customers’ perceptions of the brand. However, the authors empirically tested a mono-brand fashion retail store, and stressed the importance of examining the interaction between brand and store personalities in transferring meaning “from the product to the retailer and the other way around” (Möller & Herm, 2013, p. 8). The retail landscape has dramatically changed the dynamics of consumer-brand interactions in the physical encounter. The main challenge of these interactions concerns the effective integration of multichannel brand experiences into an exciting, emotionally engaging, and coherent brand experience. However, in-depth studies on consumer perceptions to these multi-environment experiences have not yet emerged. In this paper, we aim to fill that gap. By addressing the attention to the customer’s sphere, we specifically investigate how consumers perceive luxury brands in relation to brand experiences across various retail settings. Method and studies Owing to the lack of relevant research, this study applies a direct qualitative and exploratory approach to develop deep insights of consumers response to luxury brand experiences in different retail settings (Creswell, 2012). Two sequential studies investigate consumer cues of brand experiences across various environments. Study 1 provides the identification of luxury brand elements that are pivotal in the creation of exciting shopping experiences. In study 1, respondents named a luxury brand which they had frequently experienced in the last year, and to which they felt being in a deep relationship across multiple retail touch points of the brand. Respondents were asked about what elements of the brand they were more engaged to. The authors imposed no constraints on the elicitation. Following the categorization of luxury brands (Jackson, 2004) which comprehends fashion, perfumes and cosmetics, wines and spirits, and watches and luxury, respondents chose whatever brand they wanted. One of the authors provided the instructions to respondents. This study includes in the first sample a variety of 35 consumers from various age (20 to 65 years old consumers), as well as various education levels. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and evaluated with content analysis, following quality criteria of Kassarjian (1977). The luxury brand elements emerged from Study 1 were used in Study 2 as thematic basis for investigating how these elements provide exciting experiences across multiple retail setting of the luxury brand. The same interviewer of Study 1 undertook in-depth interviews with eight of the above respondents, two from each consumer profile identified in line with the hedonic profiles of Arnold & Reynolds (2003). Each interview discussion lasted between 30 and 45 minutes, was audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. The text was analyzed by the authors following the generalized sequence of steps of data reduction and transformation, data display and conclusion drawing/verification (Miles & Huberman, 1994). The code development followed thematic analysis (Boyatzis, 1998), and coding was multivariate within subjects. With multiple ideas per respondent, we extracted a large list of properties. We sorted thematic elements into logically related clusters and assigned representative headers. The authors now describe results regarding respondents’ perceptions of luxury brand experiences in multiple retail environments. Results and discussion Consumers identified a wide range of experience factors that they seek in luxury brands, and highlighted how the brand and retail environment fulfill these expectations. They considered the brand evocation to exclusivity and authenticity as the primary reason for purchasing luxury brands. One of the respondents stated: “I buy brand X because it is a nice and deeply authentic brand to have. When I use the brand X I feel I am wearing something very exclusive. And I feel exclusive”. Regarding experiencing luxury brands in the stores, respondents stressed the importance of “finding the same brand appealing in the monobrand store as well across retailers’ stores”, and added that when they did not perceive this coherence of message they often switched to other brands in the purchasing stage. Another determinant element of holistic experiences concerns the products presentation of the brand in various settings, which has to be very similar and related across the brand touch points. Respondents explained to feel confused when they visit one store and encounter “colorful display with a charming presentation of the brand Y in the store of retailer 1”, while finding in store of retailer 2 “black and white displays and an awful presentation for the brand Y”. Concerning the specific impact of the retailer’s environment on luxury experiences, we identified that the overall store setting of the retailer influences the luxury brand even when consumers do not experience the brand in the specific. For example, one respondent highlighted that “If I have to buy brand Z, I never go to retailer 3. I know that brand Z does not feel luxury at all in retailer 3 because of its very old fashioned store”. This study shows how consumers respond to luxury brand strategies across manufacturer and retailer’s brand setting. By providing deep insights on their relationship with luxury brands, consumers contributed to understand key elements for living consistent luxury brand experiences. They stresses the pivotal role of a coherent brand exclusivity. This is an evident implication to motivate consumers in purchasing the luxury brands. Retailers can also make important considerations from our study. They must create more appealing and overall exciting store images. By enhancing luxury experiences in the store, retailers can leverage opportunities of stronger connection with consumers. Simultaneously, brand manufacturers can build upon retailers enhanced in-store experience to magnify the holistic luxury brand experience. Finally, this study is one of the first explorations concerning the cross-effect of brand experiences and store atmospherics. In an empirical context, the authors investigate the conceptualization of consumer experiences in a multichannel view, and provide relevant contributions to analyze the brand and the environment as interdependent elements. Further research may test empirically our findings on the interaction between luxury brands and multi-retail experiences.

Today’s consumers experience the brands within numerous in-store and out-of-store contexts, and tend to focus on their holistic experience with the brands across various retail scenarios. Companies, especially in the luxury industry where multiple retail settings contribute to the formation of the brand image, invest considerable funds to create entertaining, exciting, and emotionally engaging experiences. However, researchers have not yet examined how traditional luxury brand factors interplay with experiential factors across multiple retail settings of the brand. In marketing literature, researchers have devoted considerable attention to the effect of store environments on consumer behavior (e.g. Baker et al., 2002; Donovan & Rossitier, 1982; Kotler, 1973). At the same time, academic research has also been conscious of the central role of brand image in the consumer-buying process (e.g. Keller, 1993; Kwon & Lennon, 2009). More recently, these two streams are coming together. Practitioners and academics have argued that creating compelling shopping experiences across multiple environments, and along, and beyond, the entire path-to-purchase is a key challenge for maintaining a certain brand image (Interbrand, 2014; Verhoef et al., 2009). In a luxury brand context, whereas brand managers design most of the strategic implementations of the brand, retailers can increasingly craft value to the brand via the creation of multisensory retail experiences (Spence et al., 2014). Luxury brands, such as Chanel, are continuously growing their retail presence, and identifying ways to cultivate the tradition of the brand and create distinctive and unique brand experiences. However, the academic perspective of investigating luxury brand images in contemporary business contexts has been underdeveloped (Berthon et al., 2009; Miller & Mills, 2012). While this call for more comprehensive and holistic approaches to luxury brand experiences has been raised (Atwal & Williams, 2009), current research predominantly focuses on single aspects of the luxury brand experience, such as in-store multisensory factors (Möller & Herm, 2013), brand owner cues (Tynan et al., 2010), in-store environment cues (Baker et al., 2002), or luxury brand specific factors (Beverland, 2005). The evolving business world needs to implement more holistic and contemporary approaches. By employing the approach of three dimensions store atmospherics (Baker et al., 2002) to luxury brand experiences, this study investigates how consumers integrate traditional brand factors with new factors of consumption. The objective of this article is to understand how various retail settings affect emotional states, which, in turn, affect behavior toward luxury brands. This study addresses the relationship of luxury brand experiences in tight and less controlled retail scenarios, and the ways in which luxury experiences trigger effective successful brand experiences. Utilizing two qualitative studies, the authors consider the interaction between luxury brand experiences and store atmospherics. The paper concludes with relevant implications for academics and practitioners to enable new perspectives on luxury brand strategies, and consumer response to the luxury brand image in the challenging retail landscape.