Kristina Bäckström
Senior lecturer
An exploration of consumers’ experiences in physical stores : comparing consumers’ and retailers’ perspectives in past and present time
Author
Summary, in English
In this paper, we explore consumers’ in-store experiences and their components, from both a consumer and retailer perspective. This is a replication of a study we performed in 2006 and thus we also examine how the role of the physical store has changed over the last decade. We use the Critical Incident Technique (CIT) to improve our understanding of consumers’ in-store experiences. Moreover, we conduct in-depth interviews with Swedish retailers to achieve an understanding of how retailers use aspects of the store environment to enhance the consumer experience. Interestingly, our results suggest that consumers’ in-store experiences to a large extent are created by the same aspects today as ten years ago (e.g. personnel, layout, atmosphere). Furthermore, while retailers today emphasize the importance of fulfilling new and more advanced consumer demands, they often still accentuate the weight and use of traditional values (e.g. personnel and layout) ahead of advanced technology.
Department/s
- Department of Service Studies
- Department of Business Administration
- Institute of Economic Research
Publishing year
2017-05-27
Language
English
Pages
241-259
Publication/Series
International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research
Volume
27
Issue
3
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Topic
- Business Administration
Keywords
- consumer behavior
- Customer experience
- retailing
- store environment
- the physical store
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 0959-3969