Brand Ambiance & consumer behaviour

Ambience changes behaviour. Yes it's true.
Ambience is so powerful and defining, that even without a gate, it can allow or disallow certain types of people from accessing it.

A mall is accessible to all but you never find all types of people there. Even though a mall is nothing but a modern mela. Just think about it. The food court offers the mela type of eats. The playpen is the mela form of entertainment. So is the Ferris wheel. The knick knacks are the same as those in the haat. So what sells and what doesn't sell in a mall is actually a function of the mood of the people there. And this mood is a function of the mall ambience and not the product!

Surprised? Then consider this.

Century Textiles, the shop with reams of cloth that a tailor must subsequently stitch, fails to sell in a mall, even though it sells loads to the same customer in the open market. That's because the mall is meant to be a mela and no more than that. Fine dining restaurants are known to have closed down in a mall. But the corn cup sells (incidentally pays the highest rental and is still profitable); the guriye ke baal sells.
All because of the ambience.
One simple truth about peoples’ behaviour is evident from their walk. They just don't walk purposefully in the mall - they amble, they loiter.
But the one place they shop (though mindlessly) is the hypermarket or the superstore. They get into this colourful world of unlimited merchandise, ambling with their shopping carts, browsing and filling the cart. They come with no fixed shopping list in mind. Maybe they enter to buy just one dozen eggs and a loaf of bread, but leave with a cart full of stuff - items they bought by looking at a bar code! And then they claim they went there for a 'sale'.
So they buy much more than they wanted to. They buy stuff they hadn’t planned.
They come in to try the experience. They return because (they rationalize) there is a sale. Then they return again and again because by now they have become shopaholics! What has caused it?
The experience and the ambience. Not the products. Because the same products are available elsewhere.

Now consider this: when the same person goes to a Kirana store to buy eggs and bread, he returns only with eggs and bread. And precisely of the same quality as the ones available in the mall. Moreover, the kirana shop is more conveniently located. And parking is also not a problem.
A kirana store doesn’t even let you in. Moreover it is purely transactional. Thus it is limited in its ability to appeal.
Now, can ambience be of different types and does it make a difference? On that, later!