Exploring an in-store customer journey for customers shopping for outdoor apparel
Introduction
Traditional shopping visits to brick-and-mortar stores have been under threat from various other shopping channels for some time. Competition, especially from online retailers using technological innovations, has had devastating effects on the traditional retail store. Additionally, the Covid19 pandemic has led to more customers doing away with physical visits to retail stores. The prescribed Covid19 conditions that customers must adhere to such as social distancing, limited numbers allowed in-store, hand sanitizing and temperature screening will most likely lead to further changes in store layout arrangements and communications with staff and other customers. Customers also have more shopping channel options to choose from compared to yesteryear (Wolny and Charoensuksai, 2014).
To remain competitive, retailers must offer their customers journeys with in-store experiences that are difficult or unfeasible for competitors to emulate. This study ascertained the customer journey activated by the experiences causing value and resulting in intentions to revisit a retailer specializing in outdoor apparel. Retailers have a variety of elements at their disposal to create in-store experiences that can be combined to result in a customer journey that provides exceptional customer experiences (Kumar et al., 2018; Creusen et al., 2018; Lemon and Verhoef, 2016). Customers nowadays seek multi-sensory, interactive, and holistic shopping experiences that simultaneously entertain, stimulate, emotionally affect and creatively challenge them (Van Rompay et al., 2012; Foster and McLelland, 2015). Customers' experiences, however, may vary depending on their different levels of rational, emotional, sensory, physical and spiritual involvement – the experience is essentially a compromise between a customer's expectations and their interactions with the physical and virtual touchpoints of a firm (Hamilton and Price, 2019; Kuehnl et al., 2019; Dalmoro et al., 2019). Customer experience is thus based on all the physical and virtual touchpoints starting from the initial product search to post-consumption. A well-designed customer journey will ensure that in-store shopping experiences are linked so that all activities, interactions and offerings merge seamlessly to produce a unique, holistic, and emotional customer experience. A customer journey should engage a customer's cognitive, affective, emotional, social and physical responses to a retailer's offer (Hamilton and Price, 2019; Kuehnl et al., 2019; Verhoef et al., 2009; De Keyser et al., 2015; Berman, 2019). A customer journey also enables value creation considerably that can lead to favorable outcomes such as customer loyalty, positive word-of-mouth, and intention to repatronise (Bairrada et al., 2018; Dai et al., 2015).
Section snippets
Objectives and research questions
The research reported here is of an exploratory nature and should be regarded as a preliminary investigation of the customer journey construct for retailers that specialize in outdoor apparel. The primary objective of this research was to identify the components constituting a customer journey that results in intentions to repatronage an outdoor apparel retailer. To address the primary objective, two research questions were formulated to guide our endeavours: 1) Which elements cause customers
Theoretical foundation of the study
The study is guided by various theories that developed over time and contributed to our understanding of customers' in-shop behavior. Two theories overarch the current study. The first theory on in-shop behavior is environmental psychology theory, which focuses on the interaction between the physical environment and human behavior in these environments. In the current study, the focus is on the influence of the value experienced in the in-shop environment that result in certain perceptions and
Outdoor apparel retailer
The general growth in awareness of the health benefits emanating from a physical outdoor activity such as walking is likely to result in the growth of apparel sales for outdoor recreational activities. According to Zion Market Research (2019), the global outdoor apparel market was worth US$ 12.72 billion in 2018 with an expected growth to around US$ 19.45 billion by 2026, that is, at a compounded annual growth rate of around 5.45 % between 2019 and 2026. The research for this study was carried
Literature review and conceptual framework
In this section, the focus group conducted and the literature on the processes and activities of a customer journey will be considered. More specifically, the section will be subdivided and discussed under the following subheadings:
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The focus group
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The customer journey
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The elements that constitute the customer in-shop experience
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The value experienced during the shopping trip
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Repatronage intentions of customers
The in-shop experience construct, value for customers and repatronage intention
The literature review and insights gained from the focus group in this study resulted in the identification of four customers in-shop experience factors (Interaction with frontline staff; Interaction and communication with other customers; In-shop layout and environment and Variety of merchandise on display) that constitute the customer in-shop experience construct. These factors served as antecedents for the value obtained from the in-shop experience at the outdoor apparel retailer studied.
Methodology
The study consisted of a mixed-method approach comprising qualitative and quantitative research. The qualitative research, which has already been addressed in this paper, consisted of the focus group accompanied by a literature overview relevant to the objective and research questions of the current study. The remaining paragraphs about methodology focus on the quantitative research consisting of the questionnaire development, sampling, data collection and the statistical analyses of the data.
Discussion
Both retailers and academics are increasingly paying attention to customer journeys as a means to prolong relationships with customers. This study focused on the in-store activities of the customer journey and its relationship with the future repatronage intentions of respondents. Ideally the in-store customer journey should consist of an uninterrupted flow of sequential in-store experiences with all the in-store elements that constitute the customer journey. The study contributes to both
Conclusion
Although the activity of a customer journey has already been undertaken by customers for some time, interest from academics and the publication of academic papers on customer journeys is, however, a more recent phenomenon. The work of Norton and Pine 2013 appears to be the first peer reviewed academic publication on a customer journey. It is imperative to consult with customers to ascertain essential input and to avoid retailers limiting and designing their customer journey efforts around
Limitations and suggestions for future research
The main limitation of this research is that the findings cannot be generalised widely as only customers of one type of retailer, namely an outdoor apparel retailer, was investigated. It is highly likely that the customer journey in a different retail type would focus on and result in different outcomes. The strong R2 values were limited to the predictive ability of the sample and thus cannot be inferred to the population. However, the procedure followed in this study is considered suitable to
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