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This study investigates shifts in luxury consumers' perceptions regarding luxury consumption, subsequent changes in the meaning of luxury and antecedents of luxury observed amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

Overall, 145, one-to-one qualitative interviews were conducted online with luxury consumers and the data acquired was analysed using NVivo.

Phygital connectedness and access-based consumption are the future of luxury for luxury consumers' well-being, social connectedness, living experience and rational and thoughtful luxury consumption. Moreover, distinct luxury symbols (e.g. conciseness towards societal connotation of luxury goods and consumption, empathy, wisdom and maturity) and transformation expectations (for the self, others in society and luxury brands) govern luxury consumption behaviour.

The meaning of luxury amidst the pandemic is explained along a continuum, from luxury transforming consumers' inner selves to influencing other consumers' lives to transforming society.

Luxury professionals should include phygital experience, sustainability, social–cultural sensitivity, empathy, symbolism, mindfulness and thoughtfulness in marketing strategies.

New perspectives have enriched the realm of luxury.

Because new-age technologies are gaining a broader interest among service scholars and practitioners, it is critical to identify these technologies and examine the roles they play. The examination needs to be conducted to design engaging customer and service experiences in new phygital settings that connect physical and digital environments. This review article aims to provide researchers with a new comprehensive and integrative extended reality technology (ERT) framework. The framework serves as the basis for an all-inclusive view of ERT types in order to explore the different types of technology used to design phygital customer and service experiences.

This article reviews prior works on the role technology plays in terms of customer experiences across various fields of research, including consumer, marketing and service literature. Adopting an experiential and phygital perspective as well as considering a consumer standpoint, this article defines the scope of the ERT framework by identifying categories of new-age technologies and their effects related to the design of phygital customer and service experiences.

The ERT framework proposed in this article offers directions for future research by adopting an experiential approach to technologies in order to categorize additional technological devices, platforms and tools that can be considered in the design of phygital experiences following several extension processes. These processes can enhance the cognitive, social, sensory and contextual dimensions of the phygital experience and thus create a continuum in terms of customer value from physical to digital settings and vice versa.

Companies and service providers may benefit from a new, comprehensive, focused framework that assembles different types of technology. The technologies can be utilized to design engaging customer and service experiences that deliver customer value from physical to digital spaces and inversely.

No prior works have proposed a comprehensive ERT framework for service research following an experiential perspective and a consumer view of the experience occurring in a new setting: phygital. By embracing the ERT framework provided in this article, future service scholars can examine the dynamics and types of technologies that can positively or negatively affect the design of consumption and service experiences in phygital settings.

The purpose of this research is twofold: (1) to identify and understand consumer motivations to use interactive technologies in stores through the lens of the uses and gratifications (UGT) approach and (2) to understand how these gratifications differ between different interactive technologies (interactive kiosks and self-checkouts).

This research presents a dual qualitative study based on 32 in-depth interviews with 20 consumers, eight salespersons and four phygital experts.

The data analysis identified three specific gratifications sought in using interactive kiosks (information-seeking, hedonic and social interaction) and two gratifications common to both interactive kiosks and self-checkouts (control and time-saving).

From a media perspective (UGT), this research provides a deeper understanding of gratifications sought in using interactive technologies in a phygital store. It also contributes significantly to previous research by highlighting that gratifications differ between different technology types.

The wider possibility of connectivity offers additional opportunities for customers to experience value propositions. The online world is only one side of the customer experience. The integration of digital technologies, social presence and physical elements increases the complexity of customer journey. This paper aims to map the phygital customer journey by focusing on millennials.

The study adopted a qualitative methodology to investigate 50 millennials from Italy. Millennials had to describe, in two phases, a journey they had recently made. First, they used sticky notes with no restrictions on expressing their feelings and structuring their CJ. Second, customers transferred the sticky notes’ contents, consider the information provided and map the journey with additional details using the Uxpressia software.

This paper frames the Millennials customer journey as a cycle of four moments: connect, explore, buy and use. Each moment enacts the customer experience as a mixture of emotional, behavioural and social responses. Online and offline interactions blur the boundaries between the physical and digital world (i.e. phygital): millennials move back-and-forth or jump from one action to another according to the evolving path of emotions and interactions.

The phygital customer journey provides an alternative understanding of customer journey occurring as a fuzzy process or loop. A phygital map develops as a circular path of moments seen as phenomenological microworlds of events, interactions, relationships and emotions.

How can the situation of shoppers staying at home and being unable to experience malls prepare retailers for the new marketplace? The COVID-19 lockdown provides a unique opportunity to examine the value of mall experiences to shoppers. This study aims to suggest a new mall experiences loss (MEXLOSS) model for assessing the importance of mall experiences as the foundation of any future strategy for attracting shoppers back to the mall.

A total of 498 British shoppers completed an online survey during the May 2020 COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.

When the exchanges of resources manifested in mall experiences are absent, the perceived difficulty of substituting an experience increases shoppers’ longing for the experience, which in turn increases both willingness to pay and mall loyalty but decreases well-being. Using a conceptualization of four types of mall experiences, i.e. functional, seductive, recreational and social, the functional and recreational experiences are shown to be the most valuable.

In the new more careful service marketplace, shoppers’ preferences are increasingly oriented toward health, safety, sustainability, collaboration and digitalization. To improve their resilience and attractiveness, malls need to adjust their layout, retail mix, digitalization, activities and connectivity according to these trends and to the characteristics of each mall experience.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to place a financial value on mall experiences and to use the absence of those experiences to assess their general and relative importance. The findings challenge previous assumptions about the superiority of online shopping and the decreasing attractiveness of malls.

Drawing on social exchange theory, this study clarifies the roles of authenticity, interactivity and involvement in predicting customer engagement (CE) and, ultimately, customer loyalty towards an online peer-to-peer accommodation platform. In addition, the study explores the effect of interactivity in increasing authenticity.

Data were collected through an online questionnaire of a sample of Italian tourists who had previously booked a service on Airbnb. The analyses were conducted by adopting partial least squares structural equation modelling.

The model has high power in predicting customer loyalty to an online peer-to-peer accommodation platform. Specifically, involvement is the primary predictor of CE and customer loyalty. Authenticity and interactivity also have a significant and positive effect both on CE and customer loyalty. In addition, CE partially mediates the relationship between authenticity, interactivity and involvement and customer loyalty. Finally, interactivity has a significant positive effect on authenticity.

The results encourage hospitality service providers to invest in the creation (and co-creation) of authentic experiences to increase CE and customer loyalty. Hospitality managers can also enhance CE by increasing involvement and interaction with customers through various touchpoints (online and offline) in different moments of the customer journey.

This study proposes an original model to predict customer loyalty to peer-to-peer hospitality platforms. The findings shed new light on the drivers of CE and provide empirical support for the mediating effect of CE. The study also contributes to the literature on authenticity by demonstrating the positive effect of interactivity on authenticity.

The research carried out a bibliometric analysis of the literature on environmental sustainability from a demand perspective by analyzing the scientific contributions published in the last twenty years.

A bibliometric analysis was carried out to outline the scientific studies development, identifying the most discussed topics and those that would require future research. In total, 274 articles published between 1999 and 2021 were collected through the Web of Science database and analyzed with the SciMAT software.

By systematizing the literature results, the study revealed a steady growth in the number of publications and in the research areas, highlighting a substantial evolution of the research topic.

The study contribute for conceptual, methodological and thematic development of the topic, systematizing the results of existing studies and providing useful indications for the promotion of sustainable consumer habits.

The study attempts to bridge the gap in current literature by offering a holistic view on the role of consumer behavior in pursuing sustainability goals, identifying both the most treated areas and the emerging ones that can represent opportunities for future research.

The post-purchase behavioral responses of omnichannel shoppers, who mainly rely on physical stores (acknowledged as a crucial channel in providing a seamless shopping experience and fulfilling the dynamic needs of the shoppers), are still understudied. The purpose of this paper is to examine how integrated store service quality (ISSQ) can contribute to a more optimal shopping experience (cognitive, affective and relational) and have a subsequent impact on shoppers’ psychological ownership toward the store, resulting in the generation of (face-to-face, online and social media) word of mouth (WOM).

The research is descriptive, quantitative and cross-sectional investigation. A purposive sampling technique was used for selecting the study respondents. The data were collected from 786 Indian omnichannel shoppers using a validated self-administered questionnaire. The proposed conceptual model was tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that all three dimensions of omnichannel customer experience (cognitive, affective and relational) positively mediate the relationship between ISSQ and psychological ownership, subsequently impacting all three WOM behaviors of omnichannel shoppers (face-to-face, online store and social media). The customer’s perceived value with the store and their perceived retailer relationship investment significantly moderated the relationship between ISSQ and different WOM behaviors (face-to-face, online store and social media). This research also demonstrated the direct impact of ISSQ on WOM and the indirect impact through different customer experience dimensions and psychological ownership.

The sample used in the study was not probabilistic and, therefore, presents limitations for the possibility of generalizing the results. The study was performed in a cross-sectional methodology in the Indian context; there is a need for longitudinal investigation.

This study addresses the need to investigate different dimensions of omnichannel customer experience that might influence various post-purchase behavioral responses. This study is the first to show that ISSQ might affect omnichannel shoppers' online, offline and social media word-of-mouth behaviors through different customer experience dimensions and the customer’s sense of belongingness to the store. The moderating effect of customer perceived value with the retailer and their perception of retailers’ investment in a relationship on proposed hypotheses was also tested to give managerial recommendations.