How is social capital formed across the digital-physical servicescape?

Abstract

This paper examines how consumers create social capital in their interactions with other customers and service personnel while shopping in retail stores with both physical and digital locations. We draw on the servicescape literature to explore the role of social capital in determining the social realm in digital-physical servicescapes using data obtained from focus group discussions. Servicescapes encompass digital and physical store spaces and the interactions that occur within them. We demonstrate how customers utilise both the digital and physical servicescapes in a convergent manner to form the social realm of servicescapes with the other people in their service encounters. The implications of our findings provide guidelines on how the integration of the digital and physical channels facilitates trust, human contact, interpersonal relationships and networks of social exchange, which are collectively termed ‘social capital’.