Abstract
We draw insights from Activity Theory within the field of human-computer interaction to quantitatively measure a mobile in-store experience (MIX), which includes the suite of shopping activities and retail services that a consumer can engage in when using their mobile device in brick-and-mortar stores. We developed and validated a nine-item, formative MIX index using survey data collected from fashion consumers in the United States (n = 1,267), United Kingdom (n = 370), Germany (n = 362), and France (n = 219). As survey measures of consumer engagement in omnichannel retailing using a mobile device, the index items with stronger factor loadings described in-store shopping activities whereas those with weaker factor loadings described activities related to behavioral targeting and social networking. These results suggest that retailers should give consumers the autonomy to independently find, evaluate and purchase merchandise in brick-and-mortar stores, thereby enabling them to co-create personalized shopping experiences as active participants within an omnichannel retail servicescape. Our findings also suggest that retailers should provide consumers with more authentic ways to build community and brand affiliations than mobile marketing and social media promotions. In-store activities should not simply be a migration of pre-existing e-commerce capabilities onto mobile devices. An engaging mobile in-store experience should be an amalgam of physical and digital activities that produce a seamless shopping journey and leverage the unique properties of mobile devices – ultra-portability, location sensitivity, untetheredness, and personalization. Retail executives can use the validated MIX index to prepare strategic investments in mobile technology applications and capabilities for retail stores within their omnichannel operations. The nine-item MIX index is also well-suited for consumer surveys, which also makes it an attractive measure of consumer engagement in omnichannel retailing for future academic research.
Highlights
In retailing today, consumers expect a seamless shopping experience across different retail channels (Blázquez, 2014; Lemon and Verhoef, 2016)
To facilitate academic research and strategic investment in omnichannel retailing, we draw insights from Activity Theory (AT) within the field of human-computer interaction to quantitatively measure a mobile in-store experience (MIX), which includes the suite of shopping activities and retail services that a consumer can engage in when using their mobile device in brick-and-mortar stores
The six MIX index items that were strong indicators of consumer engagement in omnichannel retailing measured whether they would use a mobile device to enact the following in-store shopping activities: 1. Review special coupons/promotions sent to their email or phone account
Summary
Consumers expect a seamless shopping experience across different retail channels (Blázquez, 2014; Lemon and Verhoef, 2016). One way that retailers can deliver this omnichannel experience is to engage consumers with mobile devices in activities that connect them to retailers’ digital commerce platforms, especially while consumers are shopping in their brick-and-mortar stores (Saarijärvi et al, 2014; Hatter, 2015). 46% of all digital retail orders and 65% of all traffic to retail websites during the first quarter of 2019 were generated from a mobile device (Salesforce Commerce Cloud, 2019; Charlton, 2020), which represented a new record for global m-commerce. These robust figures suggest that retailers need to understand their target customers’ preferences for using a mobile device when shopping in order to make the best strategic investments in mobile services and mobile marketing campaigns. No quantitative studies to date have tested consumers’ assessment of a mobile in-store experience, which includes the suite of shopping activities and retail services that a consumer can engage with when using their mobile device in brick-and-mortar stores
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