(Salle F104)
Clark, Colin S
(ESC Dijon-Bourgogne, Dijon)
The role of contact implicative sounds, actions
and involvements on retail shoppers’
pre-verbal encounter conduct
This presentation reports the fi ndings from a study, based on reallife
video recordings, of the ‘nonverbal’ conduct via which shoppers
routinely occasioned or avoided verbal encounters with salespersons
in a showroom retail store.
Typically, shoppers entering this store would fi nd all the sales staff
either involved in encounters with other shoppers or on their own
but engaged in some task. For those shoppers seeking verbal contact
with a salesperson, one option was to wait near a salesperson until
the latter had ended his/her current involvement. Another option
was to look at display goods. Such shoppers tended to project high
levels of involvement with respect to the display goods they looked
at via the manner of their gaze and their body confi guration, alignment
and proximity to those goods. Verbal contact was often occasioned
on this basis.
However, most verbal encounters were occasioned as a result of these
shoppers reacting to sounds and actions in the store (cash register
noises, encounter ending utterances etc.) that projected a salesperson
coming to the end of his/her current involvement. At these
junctures such shoppers often heightened their level of involvement
in display goods and/or oriented to the salesperson ending his/her
current involvement, doing so to solicit attention from and contact
with that soon to be free to serve salesperson.
In contrast, shoppers avoiding contact with the sales staff often
reacted to contact implicative sounds/actions in the exact opposite
manner - changing their bodily conduct etc. in a way which discouraged
contact by lowering their level of involvement in display goods
just before a salesperson both ended his/her current involvement
and could thus more easily witness that conduct. Interesting differences
in such conduct were also evident between those persons
shopping on their own and those shopping in groups.
