A Meta-Analysis Of Crowding Affects Consumers' Emotion And Shopping Responses

Nowadays,consumers live in a crowded environment,the issue of how consumers behave in such an environment is a hot topic.In the recent years,marketing researchers have conducted a large amount of empirical studies on crowding.However,these published articles reported inconsistent findings.For example,some studies have found that social and spatial crowding could significantly reduce consumers' positive emotions and purchasing behaviors,such as causing anxiety and pressure,and reducing their willingness to buy and patronize.Other studies have found that crowding could enhance positive emotions and buying behaviors,such as increased pleasure and consumer satisfaction.The current paper therefore aims to find out the reasons why the results of previous studies showed heterogeneity via conducting meta-analysis.In total,our meta-analysis was based on 131 effect sizes from 38 Eastern and Western empirical studies and 79 samples with 38,945 teams.Each author independently coded the data and resolved discrepancies through discussion.In our coding system,we coded crowding as social crowding and spatial crowding based on the measures of crowding used in each empirical paper.We first analyzed the influence of social crowding and spatial crowding on consumers' emotional responses and shopping responses.Further,we collected data to examine the potential moderating effects of contextual and methodological factors,such as shopping environment type,nation,research designs and sampling frames.We found that from the perspective of emotion,social crowding had significantly positive effects on consumers' negative emotions;while spatial crowding had significantly negative effects on consumers' positive emotions and positive effects on consumers' negative emotions.However,from the perspective of shopping responses,social crowding was positively correlated with the approachrelated shopping responses(?=0.208,N=28624)and negatively correlated with consumer attitudes and willingness to shop(?=–0.135,N=10094).We also found that spatial crowding which had a significant negative effect on the avoidance-related shopping responses(?=–0.409,N=3223),however,had no significant impact on the approach-related shopping responses.Further moderation analysis showed that both shopping environment type,research designs,sampling frames and nation could significantly moderate some relationships between crowding and shopping response.Overall,the current meta-analysis paper has significant theoretical contributions and practical implications.First,we examine the effects of social crowding and spatial crowding on consumers' emotional and shopping-related behavioral responses,and correct the effects of different relationships.By doing so,we contribute to existing crowding research.Second,we test the moderation effects of situational factors and method factors on the relationship between crowding and consumers' emotional and shopping-related responses.This moderation analysis is able to explain why existing crowding research report inconsistent findings.Third,through conducting a metaanalysis of crowding effects,this paper provides a clearer research direction for future research on crowding.This paper also provides practical implications for companies and managers on how to handle with consumers' felt crowding.