Several models of the in-store search process exist in the fields of retailing, marketing, and consumer-based research. The present article presents a new conceptualization of this search process, which captures customers' visual attention at three distinct levels of analysis: Stock, Shelf, and Store. We refer to this conceptualization as the 3S Model and illustrate its usefulness through three eye-tracking studies, one from each level of analysis. Our experimental examples, which range from manipulating certain stimuli on a single product (e.g., the placement of textual and pictorial packaging elements) to manipulating the entire shopping trip for customers during their stay in a store (e.g., through more or less specific shopping tasks), highlight the broad applicability of this alternative approach for understanding customers' in-store search behavior. Thus, our model can be seen as a helpful tool for researchers interested in how to conduct experimental eye-tracking studies that shed light on the perceptual processes preceding product choices and purchase decisions. The 3S Model is equally suitable in controlled lab conditions and under ecologically valid settings in the real retail environment. Furthermore, it can be used from the micro level, with a focus on the meaningful metrics on a particular product, through the intermediate level, with the emphasis on the area surrounding products in shelves and other in-store spaces, all the way to the macro level, examining customers' navigational paths throughout a store as a function of their shopping tasks, cognitive capacity, or ability to acquire in-store information.

This aim of this study is to enhance the understanding of customer behavior and customer experience in the context of city centers and peripheral shopping centers and how the use of digitalized services affects this experience. In this paper we adopt a qualitative approach to explore consumers´ activities when visiting a city and/or a shopping center and the experiences connected to the visit. The study is based on data from 832 (55% female) with a M age = 48 years (range 17-91 years) consumers.

When visiting a city center and/or a shopping center, customers engage with a variety of different touchpoints (Socchi, Hart and Haji, 2016). From a customer perspective these touchpoints create experiences that generates many types of values. In recent years, the mass media has warned for the demise of city and shopping centers commerce. This purported demise is mainly due to the strong growth of e-commerce. To meet this competition, the retail and hospitality industry has developed strategies to create new customer experiences and thus attract customers back to the city center’s physical places. As a consequence of the technical development, companies frequently try to influence customers’ experiences through various digitalized services, where these digitalized service have the potential to improve customer experience by providing superior and personalized services (Roy et al. 2016). The question is what impact such services have on customers’ experiences and how this, in turn, affects the profitability of the retail and hospitality industry as a whole.

In order to shed light on the activities and experiences of visitors to city and shopping centers regular consumers were approach during a regular visit to such an area and asked to answer a few open ended questions.  The data was analyzed using thematic analysis. Thematic analysis aims to identify and report on thematic patterns across the sample, which allows researchers to make interpretations of the data that reflect the reported reality of participants (Braun and Clarke, 2006; Hayes, 2000; Ruane and Wallace, 2013).

The preliminary analysis of the data shows a variety of activities and touchpoints when visiting the city and shopping center. Seven themes emerged in our analysis of the participants´ responses: Relationship, Goal fulfillment, Experiences, Physical venue, Milieu, Practical usability and Non-intrusive.

In order to make more sense of the seven themes a model were developed. In this model three of the themes were connected to the customer, two connected to the service provider and the last two connected to digital technology. These three clusters interact in different ways.

The customer cluster contains the themes relationships, goal fulfilment and experiences. The themes in this cluster describe and vivifies the customer. The customer is not just a “shopping robot” jumping from touchpoint to touchpoint along a customer journey. The customer instead is a person with goals to fulfil but at the same time someone who has a great need of relationships on different levels and a person who will and want to experience things.

The service provider cluster contains two themes. One were named physical venue and this is where the service provider, be it a storeowner or a restaurant owner for example, has the most direct control. It is also where the customer will go to fulfil his or her goals. Here the direct contact between customer and service provider can and will take place. The second theme in this cluster were named “milieu”. The milieu can be the space the customer needs to pass in order to get to the physical venue or other factors that the service provider do not have control over (e.g. public spaces and weather)

The third and most interesting cluster concerns the digital technology, named practical usability and non-intrusive. Digitalization is highly interesting when it comes to the relationship between the customer and the service provider. The first theme described the importance of the usefulness of digital technology, and  in regards to digitalization the results indicates that digitalized services mostly fulfill utilitarian needs and works best in functional touchpoints. The theme called non-intrusive describes the relation between the customer and the digital technology. It may be somewhat drastic to talk about a two edged sword but on the one hand digital technology makes life easier and sometimes more joyful and at the same time the technology may disturb goal activities which leads to negative experiences.

These findings is important because it offers help to those managing city and shopping centers in identify touchpoints that need to be digitalized and those who need to be reinforced through social activities This knowledge could also help managers develop strategies to create new customer experience, i.e. create good valuescapes, and thus tease customer back to the city and shopping center´s physical places.

REFERENCES

Braun, V. and Clarke, V., (2006), 'Using thematic analysis in psychology’, Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3 (2) 77-101

Hayes, N. (2000), Doing Psychological Research, Open University Press, Buckinghamshire.

Ruane, L. and Wallace, E., (2013), 'Generation Y females online: insight from brand narratives', Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 16 (3) 315-335

Roy, S. K., Balaji, M. S., Sadeque, S., Nguyen, B., and Mlewar, T. C., (2016), 'Constituents and consequences of smart customer experience in retailing', Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 124 257-270

Stocchi, L., Hart, C., and Haji, I., (2016), 'Understanding the town centre customer experience (TCCE) ', Journal of Marketing Management, 32 (17-18) 1562-1587

his research aims to revive the applicability of the exchange concept in the marketing domain. The authors draw on current exchange theories to show how members of an aquatic center receive relational, social support, and restorative resources from other center members and employees. They then empirically demonstrate that members’ loyalty to the center is fueled by the resources they receive from others in the center and that their experience in the center mediates the relationship between exchanged resources and member loyalty. This research reveals that service organizations may foster person-place bonds by providing customers with resources over and above goods and services. Customers appreciate resources that transform their well-being, such as social support and natural, restorative resources, and they demonstrate loyalty to places where they can obtain therapeutic resources. From a theoretical standpoint, this work shows support for the notion that the exchange concept is a foundational aspect of a general theory of marketing and explains how the exchange and value concepts in marketing are linked together.

Few studies have examined how customers respond to the mere presence of others in the shopping environment, and only one article (Söderlund, 2017) has investigated the unique impact that employee presence has on key customer outcomes. Söderlund (2017) found that customers entering a store with an employee present (vs. absent) reported significantly higher levels of customer satisfaction, with their increased levels of pleasurable feelings mediating this effect. However, similar to the majority of theorizing on customer satisfaction, that article was restricted to data collected in a Western society. Given the rapid economic growth in many Asian regions, there is a need to examine the applicability of such Western-based findings from an Asian perspective, and hence include participants from Eastern societies. Accordingly, the present research investigated whether Söderlund's (2017) results could be replicated among Asian customers. The current work also sought to extend prior findings beyond pleasure and customer satisfaction while simultaneously documenting a boundary condition for the hitherto positive employee mere presence effects. To this end, two between-subjects experiments with a total sample of 498 Chinese customers were conducted. Study 1, which involved a shopping situation in a clothing store, replicated Söderlund's (2017) main results and further found that employee mere presence (vs. absence) had a significant positive impact on customers' loyalty intentions. These results were reversed in Study 2, in which the shopping situation involved the purchase of an embarrassing product. Under such circumstances, employee presence (vs. absence) consistently produced negative effects on customers' levels of pleasure, satisfaction, and loyalty intentions.

Purpose: Researchers have hypothesized that products located at the decompression zone of a store (the entrance area where customers adjust to the retail environment) do not influence sales of these particular products, because customers do not register things that are too close to store entrances. The purpose of this paper is to examine the validity of such a decompression zone account in actual field settings, and hence investigate whether or not placing products at the store entrance would increase customers’ likelihood to purchase these products. Design/methodology/approach: Two field studies with a total sample of 715 customers were conducted, in which the entrance area of a home goods store was manipulated using a two-group quasi-experimental design. In Study 1, customers were (vs were not) exposed to candles and candle holders at the store entrance. In Study 2, an employee greeted customers at the store entrance with (vs without) the store’s products nearby. Findings: Study 1 found that customers who were (vs were not) exposed to candles and candle holders at the store entrance purchased a significantly larger number of both these products. Study 2 replicated and generalized these findings. Although customers in the employee + products condition spent less money than customers in the employee-alone condition, the former group still purchased a significantly larger number of candles and candle holders. These findings go directly against a decompression zone account, but are consistent with research on exposure effects. Originality/value: This paper is the first to empirically examine the validity of the decompression zone account in real retail settings. The paper also fills a more general gap in the store atmospherics literature, as only a very limited number of studies have dealt with the external parts of the retail environment, such as the store entrance area.

Research shows that the mere presence of others and their physical appearance can influence people's meal choices and food intake. Studies also suggest that such effects are sex-specific and depend on whether the eating occasion includes same-sex or opposite-sex individuals. In five experiments (N = 530; 49% female), the author investigates whether mate attraction, induced by exposure to attractive opposite-sex individuals, has a differential effect on the foods and beverages that men and women prefer to consume. The results revealed that prior exposure to attractive (versus less attractive) men decreased women's willingness to spend money on unhealthy foods, and increased their inclination to spend money on healthy foods. Restrained eating moderated this effect, which means that women who scored high (versus low) on restrained eating were particularly motivated to spend money on healthy foods after exposure to an attractive male individual. On the contrary, exposure to attractive (versus less attractive) women did not influence men's consumption preferences for healthy or unhealthy foods. However, men were more motivated to spend money on expensive drinking and dining options after exposure to an attractive female individual, and their desire to display status mediated this effect. Importantly, none of these effects occurred after exposure to attractive same-sex individuals, which provides converging evidence that mate attraction is the fundamental motive underlying these findings. Taken together, this research reveals how, why, and when appearance-induced mate attraction leads to sex-specific consumption preferences for various foods and beverages.