Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of WeChat mobile-payment (m-payment)-based smart technologies in improving the retail customer experience and to develop an integrated framework of the smart retail customer experience including antecedents, consequences, and moderators. Based on the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) paradigm, we investigated the relationships among socio-technical stimuli, the smart retail customer experience, and relationship quality. We also developed hypotheses regarding the moderating role of customer lifetime value (CLV), which is considered an important customer characteristic. The proposed framework was empirically tested based on transaction and survey data of 462 WeChat m-payment retail customers. The results showed the following. (1) WeChat m-payment-based smart retail technology can enhance the customer experience by improving customer-perceived relationship orientation, employee-customer interaction, and communication effectiveness. (2) CLV has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between socio-technical stimuli and the customer experience. (3) The customer experience has a positive influence on relationship quality in the retail industry. Retail managers should make full use of smart retail technologies to improve the customer experience. In addition, they should emphasize the increase in CLV, as this increase enhances the positive relationship between socio-technical stimuli and the customer experience, making customer experience management more efficient.
Highlights
The customer experience is a growing priority for both practice and research
We explore the antecedents of the smart retail customer experience in the context of new technologies from a new research perspective, i.e., a socio-technical system (STS) perspective, to help us understand the role of smart technologies and their working mechanism in the retail customer experience
Discriminant validity was tested according to the Fornell-Larcker criterion, which compares the square root of average variance extracted (AVE) values with latent variable correlations
Summary
The customer experience is a growing priority for both practice and research. An increasing number of retail firms view the customer experience as a strategic differentiator that can give them sustainable competitive advantages. Customers make purchase decisions based on their experiences. According to a Forbes survey, 86% of customers will pay more for a better customer experience [1]. Significant disparities exist between what firms believe they offer their customers and what customers experience during their customer journey [2]. Improving the customer experience is a challenge for practitioners and academic researchers [3]
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