Fashion product display: An experiment with Mockshop investigating colour, visual texture, and style coordination

Purpose: The purpose of this research was to investigate the effect of three virtual fashion stores using product display methods dominant by colour, visual texture and style coordination on consumers' retailer interest, retail pleasure, perception of merchandise quality, patronage intention, and purchase behaviour to provide empirically tested, actionable product display methods to visual merchandising researchers and practitioners. Design/methodology/approach: The authors used mixed methods for this exploratory study, combining experimental and focus group methods to gather data. For the experiment, data were collected via a between-subjects design reflecting manipulation of three variables (i.e. colour, style coordination, visual texture). After the experiment, participants completed a self-administered online questionnaire. A segment of the participants also participated in focus group discussions of the virtual stores. Findings: Participants who shopped in the style coordination store spent significantly more money than those who shopped in colour or visual texture stores. Participants who shopped in the colour store experienced significantly more retail pleasure and showed significantly higher patronage intention than those who shopped in the visual texture and style coordination stores; and they showed more retailer interest than subjects in the visual texture store. Retail pleasure and interest were found to mediate the link between methods of product display and patronage intention. Participants' fashion involvement moderated the relationship between fashion product display methods and retail interest. Originality/value: This research is one of the first to create three virtual stores featuring product display methods dominant by colour, visual texture, and style coordination using 3D technology - a Mockshop software package. The effect of these different display methods on shoppers' reactions and responses was tested, which provided actionable results for visual merchandising practitioners, not only in the physical but also in the virtual store environment.