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The pandemic impacted consumers' shopping processes, leading them to approach the online channel for grocery shopping for the first time. The paper contributes to the retailing literature by identifying different grocery shopper segments willing to switch online moved by heterogeneous motivations. Integrating the technology acceptance model 2 (TAM-2) and the protection motivation theory (PMT), this study identifies technology-related and Covid-related motivations jointly impacting channel switching.

A mixture regression model was estimated on the 370 valid questionnaires, filled out by Italian shoppers, delivering four internally consistent segments.

The results reveal the existence of four segments willing to switch towards the online channel for grocery shopping in the aftermath of the pandemic. Utilitarian shoppers would switch online as they consider the online channel useful and easy to use. Responsive shoppers will prefer the online channel driven by the fear of being infected in-store. Novel enthusiasts show interest in the online channel to not catch the virus and cope with emotional fear, although they consider online shopping as an enjoyable and useful activity as well. Smart shoppers consider online shopping as an easy-to-use alternative for their grocery purchases.

This paper identifies technology-related and Covid-related motivations jointly impacting shoppers' channel switching to online and presents a novel method – i.e. mixture regression – allowing for the identification of shopper segments motivated by different reasons, both emotional and utilitarian, to switch towards the online channel for their grocery shopping. Among other motivations, the fear of Covid-19 is identified as a relevant motivation to switch to online.

This paper analyses how the purchase channel and customer complaint goals affect the sequential choice of post–purchase complaint channels when customers experience a service failure followed by a service recovery failure (double deviation).

An online survey involving a scenario manipulation was conducted with 577 apparel shoppers. The study employs multi-group latent class analysis to estimate latent customer segments within both online and offline groups of shoppers and compare latent classes between the two groups.

The results show that the purchase channel has a lock-in effect on the complaint channel, which is stronger for offline buyers. Moreover, there is evidence of channel synergy effects in the case of having to complain twice: shoppers who complain in store in the first attempt turn to online channels in the second complaint attempt, and vice versa. Complaint goals shape the choice of complaint channels and define different shopper segments.

The present study is the first to adopt a cross-stage approach that analyses the dependencies between the purchase channel and the complaint channel used on two subsequent occasions: the first complaint after a service failure and the second following a service recovery failure.

Online shopping around the world is growing exponentially, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aims to examine how an online customer's purchasing experience influences his/her buying intention and willingness to believe in fraud news, as well as the ripple impact of satisfaction and trust, with gender as a moderator in an emerging economy during COVID-19.

Based on the underpinning of the stimulus-organism-behavior-consequence (SOBC) theory, the research model was developed, and collected data from 259 respondents using convenience samples technique. Next, the data were analyzed using partial least squares-based structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) and Hayes Process Macro.

The study results confirmed that the online shopping experience (OSE) has positive impact on customers' satisfaction (CS), purchase intention (PI) and customer trust (CT); CS has positive effects on trust toward online shopping and their future product PI; future product PI significantly affects customers' propensity to believe and act on fraud news (PBAFN). The finding also states that gender moderates the relationships of CS to PI, OSE to PI and PI to PBAFN, but doesn't moderate the CT to PI relationship.

The study findings will assist policymakers and online vendors to win customers' hearts and minds' through confirming satisfaction, trust and a negative attitude toward fake news, which will lead to customer loyalty and the sustainable development of the industry. Finally, the limitations and future research directions are discussed.

This study aims to investigate consumer behaviour towards online shopping, which further examines various factors limiting consumers for online shopping behaviour. The purpose of the research was to find out the problems that consumers face during their shopping through online stores.

A quantitative research method was adopted for this research in which a survey was conducted among the users of online shopping sites.

As per the results total six factors came out from the study that restrains consumers to buy from online sites – fear of bank transaction and faith, traditional shopping more convenient than online shopping, reputation and services provided, experience, insecurity and insufficient product information and lack of trust.

This study is beneficial for e-tailers involved in e-commerce activities that may be customer-to-customer or customer-to-the business. Managerial implications are suggested for improving marketing strategies for generating consumer trust in online shopping.

In contrast to previous research, this study aims to focus on identifying those factors that restrict consumers from online shopping.

Customer journey is more omnichannel than ever. Currently, one of the most influential omnichannel behaviors is research shopping in its two predominant forms: webrooming and showrooming. The purpose of this study is to determine the possible moderating effect of each of these behaviors from a cognitive-affective perspective.

The proposed theoretical framework was applied to a sample of 636 mobile phone users.

The results indicated that research shopping moderated the intensity of the relationship between emotions and perceived value and between emotions and satisfaction. The analysis of the moderating effect of each concrete type of research shopping behavior indicated that negative emotions had a more intense negative effect on perceived value and satisfaction in the case of webrooming than in the case of showrooming.

This study focused on determining the possible moderating effect of research shopping vs one-stop shopping and webrooming vs showrooming on the intensity of the relationship between emotions, perceived value and satisfaction, considering determining factors of customer engagement to retailers (Han and Jeong, 2013). To achieve this objective, the authors performed a quantitative research in the Spanish market, choosing mobile phones as a reference product. The results will contribute to the current state of omnichannel retailing research by the analysis – through a cognitive-affective approach – of the consequences that research shopping and each of its two basic types (webrooming and showrooming) have on retailers.

El proceso de compra de los clientes es más omnicanal que nunca. En la actualidad, uno de los comportamientos de compra omnicanal más influyentes es el denominado research shopping en sus dos formas predominantes: el webrooming y el showrooming. El objetivo principal de este estudio es determinar el posible efecto moderador de cada uno de estos comportamientos desde una perspectiva cognitivo-afectiva.

El marco teórico propuesto se aplicó a una muestra de 636 usuarios de teléfonos móviles. Asimismo, se realizó un análisis multigrupo para comparar si existen diferencias entre los consumidores que realizan research shopping y los compradores unicanal, así como entre los webroomers frente a los showroomers.

Los resultados muestran que la conducta research shopping modera la intensidad de la relación entre las emociones y el valor percibido, y entre las emociones y la satisfacción. El análisis del efecto moderador de cada tipología concreta de research shopping evidencia que, en el caso del webrooming, las emociones negativas tienen un efecto negativo sobre el valor percibido y sobre la satisfacción más intenso que en el caso del showrooming.

Este estudio contribuye al estado actual de la investigación sobre la estrategia omnicanal mediante el análisis −a través de un enfoque cognitivo-afectivo− de las consecuencias que el research shopping y cada una de sus dos tipologías básicas (webrooming y showrooming) tienen para los minoristas.

Research shopping, Webrooming, Showrooming, Emociones, Valor percibido, Satisfacción

Trabajo de investigación

Understanding customers is critical for service researchers and practitioners. Today, customers are increasingly active online, and valuable information about their opinions, experiences and behaviors can be retrieved from a variety of online platforms. Online customer information creates new opportunities to design personalized and high-quality service. This paper aims to review how netnography as a method can help service researchers and practitioners to better use such data.

A systematic review and analysis were conducted on 321 netnography studies published in marketing journals between 1997 and 2017.

The systematic review reveals that netnography has been applied in a variety of ways across different marketing fields and topics. Based on the analysis of existing netnography literature, empirical, theoretical and methodological recommendations for future netnographic service research are presented.

This paper shows how netnography can offer service researchers unprecedented opportunities to access naturalistic online data about customers and, hence, why it is an important method for future service research.

Netnographic research can help service firms with, for example, service innovation, advertising and environmental scanning. This paper provides guidelines for service managers who want to use netnography as a market research tool.

Netnography has seen limited use in service research despite many promising applications in this field. This paper is the first to encourage and support service researchers in their use of the method and aims to stimulate interesting future netnographic service research.

Young consumers are increasingly using online reviews and celebrity influence to make purchase decisions. The purpose of this study is to ascertain the influence of online customer reviews, celebrity influencer’s attractiveness, celebrity influencer’s credibility on female millennials’ purchase intention of beauty products.

To validate the research questions and hypotheses, data were obtained from young female consumers using an electronic self-administered survey questionnaire that was close ended. A total of 203 valid responses were obtained from which data were analysed by making use of structural equation modelling Mplus and the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 28.

The obtained results showed that the seven hypotheses of the study were positive. However, two hypotheses were negative, namely, celebrity influencer attractiveness did not have a significant influence on the attitude of consumers; and brand loyalty was not significantly correlating with young female consumers’ purchase intention of beauty products.

Given that millennials are known to be active users of social media and often consult online peer product reviews, marketers and practitioners of beauty industry should improve the effectiveness and usability of beauty influencers and online reviews to attract female millennial consumers.

This research contributes to understanding young female consumers’ attitudes towards purchasing beauty products, especially the combined influence of group influence (online reviews) and media influence (celebrity beauty influencers) on such attitudes.

The transition to omnichannel retail is the recognized future of retail, which uses digital technologies (e.g. augmented reality shopping assistants) to enhance the customer shopping experience. However, retailers struggle with the implementation of such technologies in brick-and-mortar stores. Against this background, the present study investigates the impact of a smartphone-based augmented reality shopping assistant application, which uses personalized recommendations and explainable artificial intelligence features on customer shopping experiences.

The authors follow a design science research approach to develop a shopping assistant application artifact, evaluated by means of an online experiment (n = 252), providing both qualitative and quantitative data.

Results indicate a positive impact of the augmented reality shopping assistant application on customers' perception of brick-and-mortar shopping experiences. Based on the empirical insights this study also identifies possible improvements of the artifact.

This study's assessment is limited to an online evaluation approach. Therefore, future studies should test actual usage of the technology in brick-and-mortar stores. Contrary to the suggestions of established theories (i.e. technology acceptance model, uses and gratification theory), this study shows that an increase of shopping experience does not always convert into an increase in the intention to purchase or to visit a brick-and-mortar store. Additionally, this study provides novel design principles and ideas for crafting augmented reality shopping assistant applications that can be used by future researchers to create advanced versions of such applications.

This paper demonstrates that a shopping assistant artifact provides a good opportunity to enhance users' shopping experience on their path-to-purchase, as it can support customers by providing rich information (e.g. explainable recommendations) for decision-making along the customer shopping journey.

This paper shows that smartphone-based augmented reality shopping assistant applications have the potential to increase the competitive power of brick-and-mortar retailers.

Physical stores are increasingly dependent on impulse visits and the impulse purchases of passers-by. Interactive advertising screens in store windows could help retailers increase impulse-visit urges and impulse-buying urges. However, the effects of interactive screens in physical surroundings have not been studied before. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the effect of interactive screens on impulse urges and gain insight into the underlying mechanism that explains the possible effect.

An interactive screen was placed in a store window. Using three field experiments, we studied the effect of interactivity-level (high vs low) on the impulse-visit and impulse-buying urges of passers-by, and the mediating role of self-agency in these effects.

Highly interactive (compared to less interactive) advertising screens in store windows positively affect impulse-visit and impulse-buying urges through self-agency. Retailers can therefore use interactive advertising screens to increase the number of impulse purchases if feelings of self-agency are activated.

This is the first study to examine the extent to which interactive screens in a store window enhance the impulse-visit and impulse-buying urges of passers-by and the mediating factor of these effects. By conducting three field experiments, we achieved a high external validity and managed to share very reliable results owing to the replication of the findings.

In the rapidly growing e-grocery segment, unattended delivery is an emerging practice with the potential to offer a superior delivery experience. The purpose of this study is to contribute to the body of knowledge for unattended grocery delivery services by empirically identifying and describing the forms and determinants of customer expectations.

A multiple case study of potential early adopters was conducted to explore customer expectations of unattended grocery delivery services. Empirical data collected from direct observations and semi-structured interviews with ten Swedish households were coded and put through a single-case as well as a cross-case analysis revealing emerging patterns from which propositions were formed.

The iteration of theory and data in the case study resulted in a conceptual model of service expectations and determinants, containing six propositions. The study reveals a clear pattern that consumers expect to save time, gain flexibility and benefit from the ease of use of the service, while they predict sufficient security. Moreover, consumers’ desire open access features from retailers and service providers, integrated product returns service and nondescript hardware designs. The findings suggest that these service expectations are determined by personal needs, technology literacy and situational factors. The identified personal needs are stress reduction, limiting social interaction and increasing spare time.

To support further theory development, this study presents six propositions for the types, forms and determinants of customer expectations of unattended grocery delivery.

This study provides managers with up-to-date insights into customer expectations and offers guidance in designing and developing unattended grocery delivery services.

This study contains the first in-depth analysis of customer expectations of unattended grocery delivery services, which are increasingly used for last mile e-grocery delivery.