A study on the mediator role of customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and store affect to the relationship between store atmosphere and recommendation behavior

The market dynamics accelerated by the driving forces of technological developments not only led to a more intense competition, but also led to the formation of structural transformations in the retail sector and made consumer behavior difficult to predict. In this new world, the strategies, paths, methods and tools of the past have become insufficient. Especially in the retail sector, companies have introduced new strategies, new presentation formats, new channels and store atmosphere applications within the framework of establishing long-term relationships with customers. The fact that globalization and technological developments have more place in human life has led to the emerge of different sales channels in the retail sector. Therefore, it is expected that retailers may find a place for themselves in the future if the customer-focused perspective is centered on this new trade environment. It is almost imperative that ready-made clothing stores, which is one of the important area of the retail sector, create and maintain a suitable store atmosphere for their customers, to differentiate from their competitors and to impress consumers. In this study, it is aimed to examine the medition role of customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and store affect in the relationship between store atmosphere and recommendation behavior and the interactions between the relevant concepts. In order to test the model established in the context of the research, a final questionnaire was conducted on 445 store customers who participated in the study on a voluntary basis selected by convenience sampling method. Various interviews, focus group studies and various scales from the literature were used to form the questionnaire, which is a data collection tool. SPSS 20.0 and PROCESS programs were used in the analysis of the data obtained from the field research. In the context of analysis, descriptive statistics, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyzes and various comparison tests were implemented. As a result, the proposed hypotheses in the research model were confirmed and it is also confirmed that the concepts of store atmosphere, customer satisfaction, store affect, customer loyalty and recommendation behavior are interrelated. It was revealed that the store atmosphere directly affects the customer satisfaction and store affect, while satisfaction and store affect are the determinants of the recommending behavior, but we see that loyalty has no effect. Therefore, it is important to emphasize that store affect plays a significant role, as much as customer satisfaction,in the recommendation behavior of customers in the future.