The COVID-19 pandemic (that started in early 2020) is causing several disruptions in the short- and mid-term, to which businesses have to adapt. Some retailers have reacted to the emergency ...immediately, displaying a plethora of different intervention types. The authors aim to synthesize the challenges that retailers are facing during the COVID-19 emergency. We do this from the perspective of both consumers and managers, with the goal of providing guidelines on and examples of how retailers can handle this unprecedented situation.
Virtual Reality (VR) is largely associated with a positive potential in terms of both higher efficiency and higher escapism for the consumer. Whereas previous research demonstrated the importance of ...consumers' hedonic and utilitarian shopping orientations in traditional channels, this study examines the potential of a VR store to elicit hedonism and utilitarianism. Combining literature on VR, shopping orientation, and retailing, we develop a multiple moderated mediation model. Then, in a quasi-experimental between-subjects design, we measure levels of hedonism, utilitarianism, store satisfaction, and perceived assortment size. Participants were exposed to the same shelf in a VRbased and a physical store. We found that VR has a negative impact on satisfaction that is moderated by perceived assortment size, and that VR elicits both utilitarianism and hedonism, which mediate the impact of the channel on store satisfaction differently but equally. Overall, consumers reported high levels of all measured outcome variables after being exposed to the VR experience. In addition, behaviors in the VR-based and physical stores compare quite well.
•VR is a reliable tool for estimating consumers' in-store perceptions and behaviors.•VR-stores elicit both utilitarianism via efficiency and hedonism via escapism.•Hedonism and utilitarianism impact satisfaction toward VR-stores differently but equally.•VR has a negative impact on satisfaction moderated by perceived assortment size.
•VR environments lead to higher levels of presence than physical store environments.•Presence in the store environment positively affects shopping experience.•Shopping experience determines positive ...changes in the store’s perceived value.•Inattentional blindness for the store brand does not affect store perceptions.•Changes in value perceptions ultimately affect patronage and WOM intentions.
This research investigates whether consumers display similar brand perceptions between physical and virtual store environments. Specifically, it explores the set of causal relationships through which the virtual store experience affects consumers’ perceptions and intentions toward the retailer’s brand. The results from an experimental study manipulating the store environment (virtual vs. physical) reveal that individuals exposed to a virtual-reality-based retail environment perceive higher levels of presence than those exposed to a more traditional, physical store environment; moreover, this positive effect does not depend on individuals’ technological self-efficacy perceptions. Higher levels of presence positively affect the shopping experience, which then produces a positive change in value perceptions, which ultimately lead to higher patronage intentions and WOM referral. Despite the presence of inattentional blindness found in the virtual environment, the results show that such an image transfer from the store environment to patronage intention holds even when individuals cannot correctly recall the store brand.
The main goal of this research is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the actual progresses in artificial intelligence, with emphasis on chatbots as emerging forms of customer assistance in ...online retailing. Drawing upon an analysis of the chatbot patents in the past 20 years, our findings show the increasing technology push towards the adoption of new conversational agents based on natural language. Findings also highlight the extent to which the research and development efforts are attempting to improve artificial intelligence systems that characterize chatbots. To this end, technology advancements are mainly focusing on: (i) improving chatbot ability to automatically draw inferences on users starting from multiple data sources, and (ii) using consumers’ knowledge adaptively to provide more customized solutions. Finally, results show the tight relationship between the digital assistants’ analytical skills and their ability to automatically interact with the users.
The Temporal Construal of Customer Satisfaction Pizzi, Gabriele; Marzocchi, Gian Luca; Orsingher, Chiara ...
Journal of service research : JSR,
11/2015, Volume:
18, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Traditional customer satisfaction research considers satisfaction judgments invariant to temporal distance. We conduct two experiments and a field study to show that the amount of time elapsed ...between a service consumption experience and its evaluation influences satisfaction judgments. We show that consumers rely on concrete attributes to represent near-past (NP) experiences and on abstract attributes to represent distant-past (DP) experiences (i.e., different construal levels). The findings indicate that construal mechanisms generate intertemporal shifts in the importance of the attributes driving satisfaction over time (Study 1), in the weights assigned to abstract and concrete attributes of a past service experience (Study 2), and in overall satisfaction judgments when abstract and concrete attributes perform differently (Study 3). Overall, the results provide support for the idea that satisfaction judgments shift over time as a result of the different psychological mechanisms that are activated as a function of the time elapsing between the service experience and its evaluation. Managers are advised to adopt longitudinal approaches to customer satisfaction measurement: An immediate assessment to capture customers’ evaluations of the performance of the concrete details of the experience and a delayed assessment to measure customer satisfaction with more abstract and goal-related features of the experience.
This paper focuses on new retail technologies that acquire information from consumers, advancing that such devices represent privacy management concerns. Specifically, we propose that privacy ...perceptions in a retail environment are driven by retailer- and technology-related factors as well as consumers' personality traits. By running a moderated serial mediation analysis, we address the technologies' fairness and hedonism as antecedents of consumer privacy perceptions, technology acceptance and perceived value, and account for consumers' trust in the retailer. We find that privacy perceptions are directly affected by distributive fairness, while the technology's hedonism affects acceptance. Further, the effects extend to patronage intention and word-of-mouth.
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•We compare technologies' impact on shoppers' privacy concerns, WOM and patronage.•We develop a moderated mediation model for consumers reactions to four technologies.•We address personality traits, retailer trust, technology's hedonism and fairness.•Fairness impacts consumers' privacy concerns regardless of retailers' trustworthiness.•Privacy concerns and technology's hedonism impact technology acceptance.
•We compare digital assistants’ effect on choice satisfaction and user experience.•We implement two experiments and run two moderated mediation models.•We address the role of digital assistants’ ...anthropomorphism and initiation.•Anthropomorphic assistants lower reactance, but ultimately decrease satisfaction.•Reactance is minimized when a human-like assistant is activated by the consumer.
Advances in artificial intelligence provide new tools of digital assistance that retailers can use to support consumers while shopping. The aim of this research is to examine how consumers react as a function of assistants’ appearance (human- vs. not human-like) and activation (automatic vs. human-initiated). We advance a model of sequential mediation whose empirical validation on 400 participants in two studies shows that non-anthropomorphic digital assistants lead to higher psychological reactance. In turn, reactance affects perceived choice difficulty, which positively reflects on choice certainty, perceived performance and—ultimately—satisfaction. Thus, although reactance might appear as a negative outcome, it eventually leads to higher satisfaction. Furthermore, initiation (system vs. user initiation) does not activate the chain of effects, but significantly interacts with anthropomorphism so that individuals exhibit lower reactance when confronted with human-like digital assistants activated by the consumer. Overall, reactance is highest for non-human like digital assistants that are computer-initiated.
The presence of fake news via Internet media compels researchers and practitioners to understand the consequences of this phenomenon on marketing activities. Surprisingly, no marketing study to date ...has analyzed the effect of fake news on consumers' evaluations of a brand advertised on the same webpage. To fill this gap, this study empirically investigated whether individuals' perceptions of fake news transfer to an adjacent brand advertisement. Specifically, we manipulated news truthfulness and source credibility, observing the change in individuals' responses while distinguishing between objective truthfulness and the perceived credibility of the news.
The results confirmed that the news' objective truthfulness exerts no direct effect on behavioral intentions toward the brand (i.e., intention to purchase, spread word-of-mouth, or visit the brand's store). However, we did uncover a chain of effects whereby the impact of fake news on behavioral intentions was fully mediated by people's perceptions of the news' credibility, which affected the perceived credibility of the sources, which then influenced brand trust, which finally translated into brand attitudes. From a managerial perspective, this study's results can partially reassure brand managers that their brand advertisements will not suffer from appearing next to fake news when the source itself is credible.
•The presence of fake news indirectly affects behavioral intentions toward a brand advertised on the same webpage.•This mechanism holds when the source is not reliable per se (intrinsic source credibility is low).•However, the results no longer hold when the source is reliable a priori (intrinsic source credibility is high).•The causal path is not affected by individuals' perceived ability to discern real from fake news.
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate whether and how the inclusion of the year of establishment (YOE) in the brand logotype affects consumers’ perceptions of brand heritage and attitudes toward the ...brand.
Design/methodology/approach
Two studies are conducted, one on 12 service brands (universities) and the other on 12 product brands (beers), with 250 and 200 respondents, respectively, testing a model of moderated mediation to estimate the effect of YOE on brand attitude through brand heritage as moderated by brand familiarity.
Findings
Reporting YOE on the brand logo invokes heritage that in turn increases attitudes. Older YOEs are more effective than recent YOEs. YOE effects are stronger for less-known brands. The findings support full mediation of heritage and moderation of familiarity.
Research limitations/implications
YOE invokes heritage, especially when YOE is old and the brand, less known. Additional research should examine the YOE effect among product categories where old means “outdated,” as in the hi-tech industry.
Practical implications
Managers have been using YOE since long: the findings provide guidelines for leveraging heritage. YOE works but must be signaled in the logotype to be effective and is particularly helpful for less-known brands. Thus, YOE effect gives less-known brands an additional counterbalance to the market power of their known competitors.
Originality/value
Previous research showed that companies can exploit their past heritage in the present times. Nonetheless, previous studies highlighted the complexity and paucity of tools to induce heritage. This is the first study to address the YOE effect. Empirical evidence also answers recent calls for easily implementable ways to induce heritage.
Digital technologies have transformed every aspect of marketing and have brought consumer privacy front and center of research and discourse over the last two decades. Whereas companies and consumers ...have arguably benefited through the availability and use of data made possible by digitalization, consumer privacy‐related concerns raise compelling questions that researchers, companies, and policymakers are addressing. In this review paper, we review privacy related to digital technologies in marketing, highlighting the constantly evolving nature of the field. We provide an overview of the rich contributions made by the articles in the special issue on digital technologies and privacy, and the original insights they provide for researchers and practitioners in four domains—communication, retailing, pricing, and product personalization. We identify and outline future research directions in each of these four domains to expand our understanding of privacy at the intersection of psychology and marketing by motivating new scholarly research and providing actionable insights to managers and policymakers.
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