This mixed methods study investigated how value is created in the physical retail space and how the customer experience is influenced by digital technology. A cross-sectional survey, with both qualitative and quantitative components, was distributed across a heterogeneous sample of 832 customers. The results revealed an overarching model comprised of three interrelated clusters: customer, service provider, and digital technology. We propose that this model can be understood as a valuescape, where customers' specific goals, needs, and desires drive them to interact and co-create value with service providers in the physical retail space, with digital technology either enhancing or disrupting this value co-creation process. The results also show that the importance of aligning digital solutions with customers’ drives increases at the same pace as reliance on technology. The findings offer guidelines on how to utilize digitalization to leverage customer experiences and thus strengthen the attractiveness of physical retail spaces.

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

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate and understand the effect of a servicescape’s ambient and social conditions on consumers’ service encounter experience and their approach/avoidance behavior in a retail context. In three papers, with a total sample of over 1600 participants (including 550 actual consumers) and seven experiments, the author investigates the effect of music (ambient stimuli), employees’ self-disclosure (verbal social stimuli) and employees’ gazing behavior (nonverbal social stimuli) on consumers’ service encounter experience and approach/avoidance behavior in a retail store.

Paper I comprised two experiments, and the aim was to investigate the influence of music on emotions, approach/avoidance behavior. Paper II comprised two experiments, and the aim was to investigate the effect of frontline employees’ personal self-disclosure on consumers’ reciprocal behavior. Paper III comprised three experiments, and the aim was to investigate the influence of employee’s direct eye gaze/ averted eye gaze on consumer emotions, social impression of the frontline employee and encounter satisfaction in different purchase situations.

The results in this thesis show that music affects consumers in both positive and negative ways (Paper I). Self-disclosure affects consumers negatively, in such a way that it decreases encounter satisfaction  (Paper II) and, finally, eye gaze affects consumers by regulating both positively – and in some cases also negatively – consumers’ social impression of the frontline employee and their encounter satisfaction (Paper III).

The conclusions of this thesis are that both ambient and social stimuli in a servicescape affect consumers’ internal responses, which in turn affect their behavior. Depending on the purchase situation, type of retail, and stimuli, the internal and behavioral responses are different.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate and understand the effect of a servicescape’s ambient and social conditions on consumers’ service encounter experience and their approach/avoidance behavior in a retail context. In three papers, with a total sample of over 1600 participants (including 550 actual consumers) and seven experiments, the author investigates the effect of music, employees’ self-disclosure and employees’ gazing behavior on consumers’ service encounter experience and approach/avoidance behavior in a retail store.

The results in this thesis show that music affects consumers in both positive and negative ways (Paper I). Self-disclosure affects consumers negatively, in such a way that it decreases encounter satisfaction (Paper II) and, finally, eye gaze affects consumers by regulating both positively – and in some cases also negatively – consumers’ social impression of the frontline employee and their encounter satisfaction (Paper III).

The conclusions of this thesis are that both ambient and social stimuli in a servicescape affect consumers’ internal responses, which in turn affect their behavior. Depending on the purchase situation, type of retail, and stimuli, the internal and behavioral responses are different.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how frontline employee self-disclosure influences consumers’ reciprocal behavior. To investigate the effects of frontline employee self-disclosure, two experiments were conducted with a total sample of 475 participants. The results show that when frontline employees disclose personal information in one-time encounters, they are perceived as less competent and more superficial. The results also show that self-disclosure negatively affects reciprocal behavior, but that this is mediated through liking, competence, superficiality, and satisfaction. These findings suggest that it is not always beneficial for employees to use self-disclosure as a strategy for garnering a consumer's trust or satisfaction, which counters previous research that suggest that disclosure of personal information is a good way to positively influence consumers in the retail environment.

Purpose – The research concerns the effect of frontline employees’ averted or direct gaze on consumers’ evaluation of the encounter. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that in normal interactions, a direct or averted gaze affects people’s evaluation of others. The question was whether this finding would hold true in commercial interactions.

Design/methodology/approach – The authors conducted three experiments using a written scenario with a photograph among a total sample of 612 participants.

Findings – This research showed that consumers’ social impression of the frontline employees mediated the effect of the employees’ gazing behaviour on consumers’ emotions and satisfaction with the encounters. The findings also showed that averting gaze had a negative effect on consumers’ first impression of the frontline employee, which affected consumers’ satisfaction with the encounter. The findings also showed that a direct gaze had a negative effect on encounter satisfaction when consumers sought to purchase embarrassing products.

Originality/value – The research demonstrated that the effect of gaze on encounter satisfaction was mediated by the social impression and moderated by consumers’ approach/avoidance motivation.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate and understand the effect of a servicescape’s ambient and social conditions on consumers’ Approach/Avoidance behavior in a retail context. More specifically, this thesis investigates the effect of music (ambient stimuli) and employees’ self-disclosure (social stimuli) on consumers’ Approach/Avoidance behavior in a retail store. Paper I comprised two experiments. Experiment 1 investigated the influence of the independent variable No music/Music. Likewise, experiment 2 studied the influence of the independent variable No music/Slow-tempo music/Fast-tempo music. The dependent variables in both experiments were pleasure, arousal, and the resulting Approach/Avoidance behavior. Paper II investigated the influence of the independent variable self-disclosure. The dependent variables were Approach/Avoidance behavior, measured by pleasure, arousal, liking, satisfaction, and reciprocity. The conclusions of this thesis are that both ambient and social stimuli in a servicescape affect consumers’ internal responses, which in turn affect their behavior. Depending on the situation (type of purchase), retail (bank, supermarket, or electronic retail store), and stimuli (ambient or social), the internal and behavioral responses are different.

Populärvetenskaplig sammanfattning

Människor påverkas hela tiden av det eller de som är närvarande runt omkring oss när vi ska fatta beslut. Så är även fallet när vi agerar som konsumenter. Speciellt något som benämns butikers upplevelserum (servicescape) har visat sig påverka konsumenter. Upplevelserummet delas in i två dimensioner, fysisk och social. Inom dessa två dimensioner finns en mängd olika påverkansstimuli. Fysiska stimuli är den fysiska miljön så som doft, möblering, skyltar eller musik som spelas i butik.  De sociala stimuli är den sociala miljön så som antal kunder i butiken och deras agerande, antal butikspersonal och deras agerande. Miljöpsykologer har studerat sambandet mellan fysisk miljö och mänskligt beteende under flera decennier. Mehrabian och Russell (1974) presenterade en värdefull teoretisk modell för att visa effekterna av fysisk miljö på människors beteende. Genom en stimuli-organism-respons (S-O-R) paradigm, förklarar modellen att externa miljöstimuli (S) kan generera känslomässiga reaktioner i en individ (O). Dessa känslomässiga reaktioner påverkar i sin tur individens närmande eller undvikande beteende gentemot miljön (R). Även om M-R-modellen inte ursprungligen utvecklats för att studera butikers upplevelserum, har det konstaterats vara lämplig för att förklara effekten av upplevelserummets dimensioner på konsumenternas beteende. Syftet med licentiatuppsatsen är att undersöka och förstå effekterna av stimuli i butikers upplevelserum på konsumenters känslor och beteende. I licentiatuppsatsen undersöks därför två stimuli i upplevelserummet, nämligen fysiska (musik) och sociala (butikpersonalens verbala beteende).

Ett flertal vetenskapliga studier angående musiks påverkan på konsumenters känslor och köpbeteende har bevisat att musik påverkar våra känslor gällande framför allt upprymdhet och aktivering, vilket i sin tur påverkar vårt köpbeteende. Dock har flertalet av dessa studier utförts i laboratoriemiljö där försökspersonerna ofta varit studenter. Detta stärker den interna validiteten men försvagar den ekologiska validiteten. För att komma tillrätta med detta problem undersöks i den första studien (Paper I) musiks påverkan på kunders känslor och beteende genom två kvasiexperiment. Första experimentet genomfördes i en elektronikbutik där musik och ingen musik varierades under fyra dagar. Experiment två genomfördes i en dagligvaruhandelsbutik där ingen musik och tempo (lågt, högt) på musiken varierades under tre dagar.  I båda experimenten så tillfrågades kunderna, direkt efter de betalat sina varor, om de kunde fylla i en enkät angående sin butiksupplevelse Resultatet från dessa två experiment visar att musik påverkar vissa delar av kundbeteendet positivt, nämligen köp, kunder köper mer när musik spelas i butik. Dock visar resultatet även på negativa effekter så som lägre grad av glädje, interaktion med andra och upplevelse av köptillfället blir mer negativ när musik spelas i butik. Resultat visar också på att effekterna av musik modereras av kön där kvinnor och män påverkas olika av musik.

Det blir allt mer vanligt att butikspersonal interagerar med kunder så som om det var en interaktion mellan vänner och ett generellt säljtips är att säljaren bör agera som en kompis och hitta något gemensamt med kunden för att på så sätt kunna påverka hans eller hennes köpbeteende i önskvärd riktning. I den andra studien (Paper II) undersöks, med hjälp av text baserade scenarier, hur bankpersonals verbala beteende, i form av att delge personlig information, påverkar kundens känslor och beteende. En konceptuell modell med tillhörande hypoteser testades. Modellen beskriver hur kundbeteendet (i detta fall grad av reciprocitet) påverkas av att bankpersonalen delger personlig information och hur detta medieras av dimensionerna gillande, glädje och tillfredställelse. Resultatet av modellen visar att effekten av att ge personlig information för reciprocitet medieras till fullo av dimensionerna gillande, glädje och tillfredställelse. Resultatet från denna studie visar också att det inte är fördelaktigt att delge personlig information om sig själv för att vinna fördelar, då effekten av detta är negativt för graden av gillande, glädje, tillfredställelse och reciprocitet.

Slutsatserna av denna licentiatuppsats är dels att både fysiska stimuli (musik) och sociala stimuli (verbal interaktion) i butikens upplevelserum påverkar kunders känslor och beteende. Dock är det viktigt att uppmärksamma att påverkan av olika stimuli genererar olika effekter, som i sin tur påverkas av kön och vilken sorts butik/tjänst som konsumeras.

This study concerns the effect that music has on consumer behavior in two different retail contexts during regular opening hours. Two studies were conducted in a field setting with consumers (N=550). Consumers were recruited to answer questions regarding behavioral measures, attitudes, and mood during days when background music was played. The conclusions from the two studies are that music affects consumer behavior, but also that the type of retail store and gender influences both the strength and direction of the effect