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This study aims to detect the dimensions of the in-store customer shopping experience from the sports retailer perspective and to investigate how the role of sports equipment stores is changing.

This exploratory study performs semi-structured interviews with retail managers of sports equipment stores.

This research reveals the importance of the dimensions of immersive design, sensorial ambient elements, social relationships, trialability and real experience sharing in designing a memorable in-store shopping experience in sports stores, and it highlights that the store's role in the sports context is transitioning from sales space to an interactive, immersive, engaging and convivial place. It proposes a model to design the in-store customer shopping experience effectively.

Sports equipment managers can make their physical stores as experiential as possible by investing in expert, passionate personnel and technology in order to create a real in-store experience of the product and the sports practice.

While sports equipment retailers acknowledge the importance of providing customers with a memorable shopping experience by creating an evocative environment and placing multiple touchpoints in stores, management scholars have paid limited attention to sports stores. This study explores the ways in which sports retail managers can design their stores effectively in experiential terms.

This study focuses on memorable customer shopping experience design in the sporting goods retail setting. It aims to identify the phygital customers' needs and expectations that are satisfied through in-store technologies and to detect the in-store strategies that use these technologies to make the store attractive and experiential.

This exploratory study adopted a qualitative research methodology, specifically a multiple-case study, by performing semi-structured interviews with sporting goods store managers.

Sporting goods retailers use various in-store technologies to create a phygital customer shopping experience, including devices, mobile apps, wireless communication technologies, in-store activations, support devices, intelligent stations, and sensors. To improve the phygital customer journey and the phygital shopping experience, retailers meet customers' needs for utilitarian, hedonic, social, and playfulness experiences. Purely physical or digital strategies, as well as phygital strategies, are identified. This research also proposes a model of in-store phygital customer shopping experience design for sporting goods retailers.

Sporting goods managers can invest in multiple technologies by designing a physical environment according to the customers' needs for utilitarian, hedonic, social, and playful experiences. In addition, they can improve the phygital customer shopping experience with specific push strategies that increase customer engagement and, in turn, brand and store loyalty.

This study highlights how the phygital customer experiential journey can be created through new technologies and improved with specific reference to the sporting goods stores.

This study aims to understand customer’s assessments of neighborhood stores during the COVID-19 pandemic through the influence of in-store environmental factors on patronage intention.

Online survey with 528 participants about the last shopping trip in neighborhood retail. The authors performed data analysis using structural equation modeling techniques.

High-perceived spatial crowding negatively influences shopping experience value perceptions, while human crowding influences patronage intentions through increased perceived hedonic value.

Results suggest that purchase experience at well-known neighborhood stores during a sanitary crisis is becoming less convenience-oriented and a substitute for leisure activities due to social distancing.

The findings elucidate the social function of neighborhood convenience retailing during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results emphasize that a pleasant shopping experience arising from a good relationship with shopkeepers and other customers is more influential on patronage intention than a good product assortment and store layout.

This paper contributes to the survival of small neighborhood businesses during the financial crisis installed due to Covid-19 by helping businesses become more attractive to their consumers and competitive in the new context.

The combined context of the health crisis due to COVID-19 and neighborhood retail of an emerging country raises the need for tests to better understand established marketing theories. Based on this rationale, this work intends to replicate and extend selected previous findings to the new environment dictated by the pandemic.

Offline retail stores have been working on improving their in-store customer experience; they have begun to realise the physical advantage they have over online channels. Especially sports products have a number of unique features, such as high emotional involvement or a sense of community; additionally, sports customers put emphasis on multisensory brand experience at the point of sale. This study examines the in-store customer experience (ISCX) in offline sports retail stores, taking into account the commercial uniqueness of sport.

A qualitative study (focus groups; n = 16) and quantitative survey (cross-sectional survey design; n = 238) were conducted to measure ISCX in sports retail stores.

The results suggest that the customers' in-store experience has a significant influence on customers' satisfaction with the sports retailer and their likeliness to recommend the store to friends, which, in turn, is significantly affected by customers' satisfaction with the retailer. Moreover, social responses to actors involved in the service encounter, for example, the interaction with employees, play a significant role for the customer in-store experience. Accordingly, sports customers strive not only for functional benefits inherent in the interaction with customers and employees but also for social benefits.

This study extends the knowledge by (1) replicating the ISCX scale, (2) analysing ISCX in a sports retail environment and (3) examining the influence of ISCX on the Net Promoter Score. Moreover, the findings support managers' know-how about in-store setting and help to maintain the customer relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a comprehensive model of impulse-buying that considers the impact of mobile device use on shopping behaviour as a tool for shopping preparation or as a tool for self-regulation.

Data were obtained through a single-stage mall intercept survey method using a structured questionnaire involving 406 respondents interviewed after checkout. Data analysis was conducted using a structural equation modelling approach with LISREL 8.8.

The results support most elements of the hypothesis of the proposed conceptual framework. Specifically, findings show the impact of mobile usage on shopping behaviour, which results in fewer impulse purchases.

The research demonstrates how shoppers using mobile devices in-store felt less of an urge to purchase during shopping, resulting in fewer unplanned purchases. The effects of mobile device use on in-store purchasing decisions are designed to create a new scenario for the practice of shopper marketing, and retailers and manufacturers will have to seek new ways to capture consumers’ attention in-store and to influence shoppers’ perceptions early in the shopping cycle without diminishing the role of in-store marketing levers.

Prior research found the antecedents of impulse-buying in individual characteristics, situational variables and endogenous variables. However, it did not consider mobile pre-shopping factors or mobile usage. Filling the gap in the existing literature, this work sets out to develop a comprehensive model of impulse-buying that considers the impact of mobile usage on shopping behaviour.

This study aims to propose a theoretical framework and provide empirical evidence on the most successful marketing strategies for obtaining behavioural loyalty in small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The data are based on 475 telephone surveys conducted among Spanish hairdressers. The authors have used ordinary least squares to estimate the empirical model.

Pricing, services and communication (Web page and in-store communication) are the main drivers of customer loyalty. SMEs have to be cautious with the use of social networks to avoid damaging loyalty. In addition, those positioned at high-price segments should pay more attention to communication on the Web, and all companies should find a balance between in-store communication and the sale of products for use at home.

Further research should try to replicate the findings with data from consumers and firms.

Service managers need to understand the optimal strategy to succeed in the market. The key insights of this study could also apply to other sectors, such as health, personal care and wellness services.

Previous research focussed mainly on large companies, while the role of loyalty in the success of SMEs has been poorly studied, with focus only on the antecedents and the measurement of loyalty. This study contributes to the previous research by analysing the effect of the strategy (price, range of services, communication, size and location) in the achievement of loyalty in SMEs.

Este trabajo propone un marco teórico y aporta evidencia empírica sobre las estrategias de marketing más exitosas en la consecución de lealtad comportamental en PYMEs.

Se ha realizado una encuesta telefónica a 475 peluqueros españoles. El modelo utilizado para la estimación es el de mínimos cuadros ordinarios.

Precio, servicios, y comunicación (página web y comunicación en la tienda) son los principales generadores de lealtad. Las PYMEs tienen que ser cautelosas con el uso de las redes sociales para evitar dañar la lealtad. Además, aquellas posicionados en altos precios deben prestar más atención a la comunicación en la web y todas deben encontrar un equilibrio entre la comunicación en el tienda y la venta de productos para su uso en casa.

Investigaciones futuras podrían replicar este estudio usando datos de consumidores y de empresa.

Los gerentes necesitan entender la estrategia óptima para tener éxito en el mercado. Las ideas claves de este trabajo podrían aplicarse a otros servicios personalizados de salud y bienestar.

La investigación previa se centra principalmente en grandes empresas mientras que el papel de la lealtad en el éxito de las pymes ha sido escasamente investigado y se ha centrado en los antecedentes y la medición de la lealtad. Este estudio realiza una contribución al analizar el efecto de la estrategia (precio, surtido de servicios, comunicación, tamaño y localización) en la consecución de la lealtad en las pymes.

Lealtad; pequeñas y medianas empresas; Pymes; peluqueros; estrategia de marketing; salon

Artículo de investigación

This paper aims to deepen understanding of the role played by new technological tools used in customer–travel agency (TA) interactions by analysing the TA owner/managers' perceptions, pre- and post-Covid-19, regarding the effectiveness of in-store traditional and innovative tools.

This exploratory study is based on a questionnaire-based survey conducted among Italian TAs and distributed via email from September 2020 to January 2021.

The study highlights how, even among TAs, the role of in-store technology is gradually taking on greater importance, and it delves into the specific business and socio-demographic factors that seem to cause differences among agencies.

The study focuses on the Italian context, which does not allow for any generalisations. Furthermore, it is only the travel agent perspective that is observed and not the consumer's.

In addition to helping to bridge the literature gap, this study on in-store technologies focuses on the TAs sector, where human resources and human relationships play a decisive role in customer experience and interaction. The paper investigates the travel agents' point of view regarding the introduction of new in-store technologies; it also highlights their growing adoption and use, overall, despite the travel catalogue still remaining the main tool for interacting with customers. The study also shows how the advent of Covid-19 has increased travel agents' propensity to use digital technologies.

This study aims to, first, propose a valid and reliable scale to document the COVID-19 Pandemic Shopping Experience (CPSE) and, second, determine the impact of its variables on the postpurchase shopping experience (PPSE).

For scale development, published studies were scanned and the variables were shortlisted. These shortlisted variables were validated by 52 faculties from four universities in Saudi Arabia. Data were collected from 318 respondents to purify the CPSE Scale. In Study 2, a path analysis was performed on a sample of 354 respondents to determine the individual impact of each variable on PPSE.

A total of 14 items were found to be aligned under four variables, social distance (SD), shop hygiene, operational time and entertainment venues. SD was found to have the greatest influence on PPSE, followed by operational time and shop hygiene.

This research has important implications for retailers to initiate changes in store layout so that they can implement social distancing by physically marking stickers on the floors and by placing barricading on billing counters. Store hygiene can be ensured by making sanitizers and hand gloves available at the entry points, periodically cleaning the floor and sanitizing the premises. Rationing the operating time proved to be an effective tool to minimize the exposure time, thereby limiting consumers' time inside the store.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to propose a full-scale measure of the customer shopping experience (SE) during a pandemic. This scale can be generalized to measure SE in similar situations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of users’ simulated experience in a virtual store and to show the subsequent impact of that experience on engagement. The outcome of that engagement is examined in relation to enjoyment, satisfaction and purchase intentions.

The method comprised an experiment comparing users’ perceptions of a standard 2D online clothing store with an enhanced, immersive one that aimed to provide shopping value approaching that of a traditional store by using a 3D experience where participants wore special glasses and a data glove.

Results demonstrate the major role of telepresence components in simulated experience and the critical role of that experience, along with hedonic and utilitarian values, in engagement. Purchase intention is influenced by satisfaction, which is in turn influenced by enjoyment and engagement. Engagement in turn is influenced by utilitarian and hedonic value and the experience of product simulation or telepresence, which is composed of control, colour and graphics vividness, and 3D authenticity. In the immersive, 3D environment, experience is more associated with engagement and enjoyment, leading to greater purchase intention. The immersive, 3D environment, thus, has the potential to rival traditional shopping in terms of experience, resulting in higher sales for retailers and satisfaction for consumers.

This work has evaluated a robust model of purchase intention and demonstrated it to hold not only in a 3D environment on a conventional computer platform, but also in an immersive one, where participants wear special glasses and a data glove.