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The purpose of this study is to investigate consumers' post–purchase experience when buying fresh food online. It examines the key dimensions of post–purchase online customer experience (post–purchase OCE) that impact customer satisfaction and repurchase intention. It also explores the role of corporate image as a moderator.

An online survey was conducted in China to capture participants' post–purchase OCE, satisfaction, repurchase intention and perceived corporate image. Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was utilized to analyse data collected from 317 Chinese fresh food online shoppers. Moderated mediation analysis was conducted to analyse the moderating effect of corporate image.

Four post–purchase OCE dimensions “product-in-hand”, “customer support”, “benefits” and “packaging” significantly drive customers' repurchase intention by enhancing customer satisfaction. “Delivery” is not influential. Additionally, for firms with a good corporate image, customer repurchase intention is more easily affected by post–purchase OCE than firms with a lower level of corporate image.

The findings inform fresh food e-commerce firms of the critical post–purchase OCE dimensions that mostly drive customer satisfaction and help retain customers. Furthermore, it implies that firms with a good corporate image must provide high-quality post–purchase OCE that matches the image because the consequences associated with a poor post–purchase OCE can be severe.

This research is among the first to investigate fresh food post–purchase OCE. It also introduces the previously underexplored moderating role of corporate image.

Delivering superior customer experiences through experiential marketing strategies has become increasingly important in food retailing. While retailers seek new sources of competitive advantage, the perspective to customer experiences should be extended from the in‐store activities to post‐purchase where the value‐in‐use of the groceries eventually actualises. In this quest for an enhanced customer experience, the possibilities provided by Internet‐based service applications have been an underexplored area of research. Towards that end, the purpose of this paper is to explore and analyse how such service applications can facilitate customers' post‐purchase experiences in the context of food retailing.

A case study research setting was applied focusing on an internet‐based service application that provides customers with detailed information about the healthfulness of their groceries. Altogether 456 submissions of customer feedback data and 16 customer interviews were generated and analysed. Subsequently, a typology of facilitating customers' post‐purchase food retail experiences was constructed to uncover and illustrate how the service succeeds in extending the customer food retail experience towards the customer's context.

The authors identified four types of the typology, including “Playing”, “Check‐pointing”, “Learning”, and “Goal‐orientation”. These four types can be conceptualised through the utilitarian versus hedonic dimensions and the degree of customer transformation.

The paper introduces internet‐based service applications as a suitable experiential marketing strategy. It offers a fresh perspective and new insight into leveraging on the capabilities of the Internet in facilitating customers' post‐purchase food retail experiences.

The advent of e-retailing has created multiple options for customers. Hence, most important concern is to identify the experience which entices customers for repurchase from the one particular e-retailer. This paper tries to identify the customer experience with reference to activities happening post-purchase. The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate online post-purchase customer experience (OPPCE).

The methodology of this scale development study starts with skimming of relevant literature to identify the knowledge gap and prepare a theoretical background for the study. Then scientific method is applied for scale creation. First, items of the scale been identified through interviews of online shoppers and marketing experts. Then the major dimensions were identified through exploratory factor analysis applied on the data collected from active shoppers, who transacted online in last six months, with the help of a structured questionnaire survey. These data are analyzed through structural equation modeling to validate the scale.

The study yields that the scale for measuring OPPCE is multi-dimensional. It has six dimensions, i.e. delivery, product-in-hand, return and exchange, customer support, benefits and feel-good factors. The proper focus on the items of these dimensions can help e-retailers improve customer experience and increase repeat purchase.

Post-purchase activities have a significant impact on customer and their repeat purchase intensions. But it has not received its due attention particularly in the online context. Hence, this paper fills this knowledge gap and gives e-retailers a tool to enhance their customers’ experience.

The purpose of this study is to discover the extent to which consumers are aware of air filling in food packaging, the extent to which deceptive packaging and slack filling – which often result from package downsizing – lead to cognitive dissonance and the extent to which feelings of cognitive dissonance and being deceived lead consumers to engage in negative post-purchase behaviours.

The study analysed respondents’ reactions to a series of images of a specific product. The sample consisted of consumers of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) in the UK. Five photographs served as the stimulus material. The first picture showed a well-known brand of premium chocolate in its packaging and then four further pictures each showed a plate with a different amount of chocolate on it, which represented different possible levels of package fill.

Consumer expectations of pack fill were positively related to consumers’ post-purchase dissonance, and higher dissonance was negatively related to repurchase intentions and positively related to both intended visible and non-visible negative post-purchase behaviours, such as switching brand and telling friends to avoid the product. Furthermore, consumers with low product involvement were less likely to repurchase the brand, and were more willing to engage in visible and non-visible negative behaviours.

The key message from this study is that consumers’ post-purchase dissonance is likely to damage the firm. Although firms may initially achieve increased sales through deceptive packaging and slack filling, these practices risk damaging a brand’s reputation and consumer loyalty to the brand. Firms need to strike a balance between packaging size and content, and as consumer expectations are likely to vary across different products, individual companies should engage in market research and substantive market testing.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that investigates antecedents and consequences of cognitive dissonance experienced by consumers which was caused by perceived deceptive packaging and/or slack filling.

This study aims to investigate customers' personal innovativeness (PI) as an influencing factor of omni-channel customer experience throughout pre-purchase, purchase and post–purchase stages of the customer journey, and their subsequent influences on customers' reuse intention.

Data were collected from customers who had experience with omni-channel shopping in South Korea through a questionnaire made with Naver Forms, both online and offline from 15 June to 15 July 2022. Out of the received responses, only valid and consistent questionnaires were considered for statistical analysis. In total, 272 valid samples were utilised for the final analysis. Analyses included reliability, validity, path, structural equation modelling and mediation effects, using SPSS and AMOS software.

The results revealed a significant influence of personal innovativeness on the omni-channel customer experience across all purchase stages. Personal innovativeness was found to influence the customer experience in the pre- and post–purchase stages, thus affecting reuse intention. However, it did not have the same effect in the purchase stage. The omni-channel experience customer experience also played an indirect mediating role in the relationship between personal innovativeness and reuse intention.

First, personal innovativeness in the IT domain may be very prominent in studies examining innovative behaviours related to computing technology. Second, this study provides further understanding of customers' intentions to reuse omni-channel shopping. Third, the path analysis showed that personal innovativeness significantly affects customer experience at all pre-purchase, purchase and post–purchase stages of the customer journey. However, except for the purchase experience, both pre- and post–purchase experiences significantly impact customers' intention to reuse omni-channels and play a mediating role.

First, omni-channel retailers should launch new products, innovative promotional activities and explore new channels or new service modes to stimulate the need recognition of customers with high personal innovativeness. Second, omni-channel retailers should pay attention to the users' reviews of each channel because they play a key role in potential customers' purchase decisions. Third, offering customers a seamless shopping experience is essential as a marketing strategy for omni-channel retailing.

This study elucidates the causal relationship between personal characteristics and behaviour by dividing the omni-channel customer journey. In particular, personal innovativeness is identified as an important predictor of the intention to reuse omni-channels during the pre- and post–purchase stages. This suggests that omni-channel retailers need to strategically manage these stages to boost customers' reuse intention.

Service scholars have questioned the usefulness of the concept of tangibility/intangibility as a characteristic of services for two reasons: first, it is ambiguous and does not differentiate between services and goods; and second, because all offerings, despite their characteristics, render service to customers. Consequently, scholars have suggested discarding the concept altogether. The purpose of this paper is to subject the concept to critical evaluation and argue that tangibility/intangibility is useful, because it influences consumers' experiences with offerings. In this paper, the authors argue that it is necessary to re‐conceptualise tangibility/intangibility to overcome the previous critique.

The authors draw upon empirical research from the service marketing and psychology literature in order to advance knowledge on the nature of tangibility/intangibility and its influence on the formation of consumer experiences.

It is proposed that tangibility/intangibility should be investigated from a consumer perspective, rather than an inherent characteristic in offerings. Also, it is shown that the concept is relevant for understanding consumer experience formation at different stages of the purchase process.

The paper provides propositions on the conceptualization of tangibility/intangibility and its relationship with pre‐, ongoing use and post‐purchase consumer experiences. The authors call for caution in dismissing tangibility/intangibility as a concept in the service marketing literature.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate post-purchase regret and its relationships with complaint and risk aversion in a four-dimensional framework.

Using 548 effective samples, this study employed structural equation modeling to test proposed hypotheses.

Based on levels of perceived self-responsibility, post-purchase regret due to forgone alternatives, under consideration and over consideration was positively associated with customer complaining, whereas post-purchase regret due to significance change exhibited no such correlation. Moreover, a higher level of risk aversion increased the effect of utilitarian motivation on post-purchase regret due to over consideration but decreased this effect on post-purchase regret due to under consideration.

First, regret can positively influence consumer complaints. Next, consumers are unlikely to complain to third parties unless they experience strong action regret. Finally, risk aversion can alleviate or reinforce the effect of utilitarian motivation on regret. Future research could examine the customer group who feel less or no regret of their purchases to contribute to regret theory.

To reduce regret among such consumers, marketers are advised to apply precision marketing techniques to reach their target consumers. Second, to forestall customer regret due to forgone alternatives, sellers should proactively provide target buyers with information regarding their products and those of competing brands. Third, another method of minimizing regret is to ensure that consumers’ risk-aversion activities are effective.

This study empirically demonstrated a multidimensional scale of regret to illuminate the multicausal role of regret in relation to consumers’ complaining and risk-aversion behaviors.

The purpose of this paper is to model customer experience (CE) as a “continuum”, labelled customer experience continuum (CEC). The paper adopts a CE quality construct and scale (EXQ) to determine the effect of CE on a bank's marketing outcomes. The paper discusses the study's theoretical and managerial implications, focusing on CE strategy design.

The paper empirically test a scale to measure customer experience quality (EXQ) for a retail bank. The paper interviews customers using a means-end-chain approach and soft-laddering to explore their CE perceptions with the bank. The paper classifies their perceptions into the categories of “brand experience” (pre-purchase), “service experience” (during purchase), and “post-purchase experience”. After a confirmatory factor analysis, the paper conducts a survey on a representative customer sample. The paper analyses the survey results with a statistical model based on the partial least squares method. The paper tests three hypotheses first, Customers’ perceptions of brand, service provider, and post-purchase experiences have a significant and positive effect on their EXQ, second, EXQ has a significant and positive effect on the marketing outcomes, namely share of wallet, satisfaction, and word-of-mouth, and third, the overall effect of EXQ on marketing outcomes is greater than that of EXQ's individual dimensions.

The results of the statistical analysis support the three hypotheses.

Banks should focus their CE strategies on the CEC and not on single encounters, tailoring marketing actions to specific stages in a customer's CE process. Different organisational units interacting with customers should be integrated into CE strategies, and marketing and communication budgets should be allocated according to CEC analysis. The model proposed in this paper enables the measurement of the quality of CE and its impact on marketing outcomes, thus enabling continuous improvement in CE.

The research proposes a different view of CE by modelling the interaction between company and customer as a continuum (CEC). It provides further empirical validation of the EXQ scale as a means of measuring CE. It also measures the impact of CE on a bank's marketing outcomes. It discusses the guidelines for designing an effective CE strategy in the banking industry.

This paper aims to investigate whether the consumers who return a product and those who end up keeping a product after experiencing post-purchase dissonance (PPD) possess distinct underlying characteristics.

Field survey study consisting of two separate surveys conducted with consumers of New York City and neighboring areas of New York and New Jersey.

Product returners and keepers exhibited disparate demographic profiles regarding gender and household income, along with ethnicity to some extent. The two groups also exhibited different predispositions with regard to confidence in the purchase decision and expectations about their purchase. Finally, returners and keepers were engaged in divergent thoughts, feelings and activities to cope with PPD.

The findings of this study offer marketing practitioners new knowledge and insight into understanding product returners and keepers and will assist them in developing strategies to reduce and manage increasing product returns by consumers more effectively.

This study is the first to present empirical evidence that product returners and keepers have distinct profiles of demographic characteristics and predispositions toward purchase. The study also has found divergent PPD coping strategies used by the two types of consumers, which exposes an obsolete understanding of PPD in the marketing literature.

The experience of safety as perceived by customers is a central issue in retailing, and its importance has increased because of the pandemic. Substantial literature exists addressing different factors related to safety/security experience in different types of retail channels. However, what is missing is a unified framework to guide safe customer experience initiatives across all channels. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the safety elements in omnichannel retailing as perceived by customers and how these safety elements affect customer experience (CX) judgments and consumer behavior in a post-pandemic context.

A systematic literature review on safety/security studies in a retail context is conducted, followed by a qualitative study driven by a means-end-chain laddering technique collecting data from 62 retail customers in Australia, the USA and UK.

Fourteen distinct safety elements in omnichannel retailing are identified. Four elements are relevant to the CX at the pre-purchase stage of the customer journey: social inclusiveness, role readiness, employment policy and safety policy enforcement. Six elements are relevant to the during-purchase stage: physical safety, personal hygiene, spatial distancing, fraud prevention, security surveillance and safety signal. The remaining four elements are relevant to the post-purchase stage: delivery safety, safety recall, mental health and data usage.

This study presents a new unified framework addressing safety and security in post-pandemic retail service settings. The SafeCX framework offers researchers and managers a holistic understanding of the distinct safety elements that shape customers’ perceptions across each customer journey stage of the retail CX.