Aesthetics: Luxury or Necessity? Patronage Decisions in Conditions of Severe Economic Crisis

The aim of this paper is to examine the influence of store’s aesthetics on consumers’ emotions and how these emotions, in turn, influence patronage intention through the moderating effect of crisis and store’s familiarity, by comparing this impact on privileged and under-privileged area. The research took place in six supermarkets from which three of them are located in up market area and the other three in down market area. The findings showed that the aesthetics have an almost equal positive effect on the customer’s emotional state and on their patronage intention for both areas. The store familiarity is indicated as moderator between emotions and patronage intentions for under-privileged area and as determinant indicator for privileged area. It should be noted though, that even if the privileged area were not much affected by crisis, they would like to go for shopping in a pleasant environment like the consumers from the underprivileged area, who regard it as a necessity.