Decades of research in marketing has established that crowding (human and spatial) in retail contexts significantly affects shopping satisfaction. Prompted by the profound changes in retail supply and demand due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this study expands knowledge in two ways: uncovering new relationships and replicating some of the critical findings previously demonstrated in the pre-pandemic context. Two studies (Study 1 scenario and Study 2 actual shopping trip) show that higher levels of human crowding results in lower levels of shopping satisfaction, and this effect is mediated by a new construct introduced into the crowding literature, namely, customer rapport with employees, emerging as a significant factor in the pandemic era. Importantly, the results show that these relationships differ according to customers’: a) perceptions about the appropriateness of retailer precautions, b) beliefs about the severity of threat that the pandemic presents, and c) perceived vulnerability to Covid-19, all of them new to crowding dynamics during the time of Covid. Finally, with Study 2, we replicate and extend selected findings from prior research on crowding. Overall, the results expand our understanding of crowding effects and provide novel insights in the “new normal” retail context.

数十年的营销研究表明，零售环境中的拥挤（人和空间）会显着影响购物满意度。在 Covid-19 大流行导致零售供需发生深刻变化的推动下，这项研究以两种方式扩展了知识：揭示新的关系和复制先前在大流行前背景下展示的一些关键发现。两项研究（研究 1 情景和研究 2 实际购物旅行）表明，较高水平的人群拥挤会导致较低水平的购物满意度，这种影响是通过引入拥挤文献的一个新结构来调节的，即客户与员工的关系，成为大流行时代的重要因素。重要的是，结果表明这些关系因客户而异：a) 对零售商预防措施适当性的看法，b) 对大流行所带来威胁严重性的看法，以及 c) 对 Covid-19 的感知脆弱性，所有这些都是 Covid 时期拥挤动态的新手。最后，在研究 2 中，我们复制并扩展了先前关于拥挤的研究的选定结果。总体而言，结果扩展了我们对拥挤效应的理解，并在“新常态”零售环境中提供了新的见解。