IMPACT OF PERSONALITY DIFFERENCES IN EVALUATION OF VISUAL MERCHANDISING ELEMENTS AMONG WOMEN

Most of the researches on visual merchandising are concerned in defining and measuring its impact on impulse buying. Studies have proved that majority of the customers decide their purchases inside the store due to the in store stimuli, and sometimes because of customer's personality traits. Personality is the set of characteristics or traits which differentiateindividuals among them and elicit certain reactions to the stimuli coming from the environment. The individual traits of a customer influences his/her perception of visual merchandising elements this can arouse customer in-store merchandise explorationor interaction with products/environment which encourages their purchase intentions. However, the combination of topics, visual merchandising and personality traits remains relatively unexplored. Hence, the present study aims to explore the relationship between big five personality traits extraversion, Openness, conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism and specific impulse buying cues (Visual merchandising) namely Window display, Product display and signage display.A Survey was administered using a structured questionnaire among 250 women shoppers visiting retail outlets at various shopping malls in different parts of Bangalore.The results of the study indicatedthat there is significant difference in impact of personality traits on evaluation of store/mall in terms of visual merchandising.