Aspects of the customers themselves may also increase or inhibit in-store need recognition. We examine the role of four customer characteristics: gender, household size, store familiarity, and shopping alone versus with others.2 These characteristics are related to the extent to which they affect exposure to store stimuli and influence the affective response thereto. Two of these characteristics are relatively stable for a given customer (i.e., gender and household size), while the other two characteristics are transitory (i.e., store familiarity and shopping alone versus with others) and can vary across shopping trips