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The purpose of the paper is to analyse the evolution of e‐customer purchasing behaviour. Certain perceptions of electronic commerce (EC) may differ according to the purchasing experience of customers. Three groups of e‐customers are differentiated: potential, new and experienced.

First of all, the socio‐demographic characteristics of each group were analysed using the Chi‐squared test. Then, using ANOVA and post hoc analysis (Scheffe's test), the differences that exist in their perceptions were analysed.

Data analyses show that level of experience with Internet and the perceptions about EC differ according to the e‐customer. Some variables, like perceived usefulness or attitude, increase significantly as the number of interchanges grows, while others, such as perceived ease of use, tend to stabilise. It can be affirmed that there is an evolving cycle of purchasing that will continue to develop as the individual acquires experience.

This research enables the companies that want to compete in the e‐market to know the type of customer they are addressing. Moreover, the results obtained show what perceptions must be concentrated on if these companies want to capture new customers (potential e‐customers) or if they want to maintain existing customers (new and experienced). The evolution of this behaviour means that the strategies oriented to fomenting EC should stress one or another aspect depending on the target customer.

While most research indistinctly analyses the behaviour of any e‐customer, this study has considered it necessary to differentiate at least three types of e‐customers in function of their purchasing experience. Thus, this is one of the few studies that allows us to know the evolution of the perceptions related to e‐commerce.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the relationship between the sub-components of network externalities (NE), investigates the mediating role of the perception of innovation characteristics and explores the potential moderating effects of technology anxiety within an integrative framework using the theories of diffusion of innovation (DOI) and NE on the behavioural intention of mobile banking services. NE theory explains the impact of an increase in number of users and complementary services on perceived value of product innovation.

This study clarifies the relationship between the sub-components of NE, investigates the mediating role of the perception of innovation characteristics and explores the potential moderating effects of technology anxiety within an integrative framework using the theories of DOI and NE on the behavioural intention of mobile banking services. NE theory explains the impact of an increase in number of users and complementary services on perceived value of product innovation.

Empirical results support the positive relationship between perceived number of users and availability of complementary services. The results lend support to the hypothesized mediating role of perceived compatibility and perceived complexity on the influence of indirect NE on the intention to use mobile banking. Finally, technology anxiety did not moderate any of the paths postulated in the hypothesized model.

The findings suggest that the willingness to adopt mobile banking may be increased by providing and promoting a wide range of complementary services because the availability of complementary services gives the impression that mobile banking is easy to use and is compatible with their lifestyles.

This study contributes to the literature on DOI by using NE theory, a theory borrowed from Economics to explain an underlying motivation to adopt an innovation. This is an original study which tests the proposition that NE may influence the perception of innovation characteristics and intention to adopt an innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the new construct online shopper confusion and to identify online confusion causes and consequences.

Data obtained from a projective technique and a quantitative study were analyzed to identify online shopper confusion causes. Two experiments employing different stimulus materials tested the conceptualized consequences of online shopper confusion.

Confusing online store elements are classified into three online confusion causes. Data yielded from two experiments using fictitious and real shopping scenarios as stimulus material show that a confusing internet retail process leads to negative consumer reactions.

The resulting taxonomy of confusing online store elements offers guidance on the creation of non-confusing online shopping trips, and highlights the relevance of a non-confusing internet retail process. Online shopper confusion is linked to negative behavioral reactions. Consequently, this research offers an explanation for undesirable consumer reactions in internet retailing.

The findings provide practitioners with concrete insights into how the internet retail process confuses shoppers which help to assess the confusion potential of their existing online stores and consider confusion issues in the development of new online stores.

This research is the first to explore confusion during the internet retail process. The multi-method approach offers highly valid insights into the causes and consequences of online shopper confusion.

Retail networks present new challenges in the business-to-business (B2B) collaboration between technology-based spinoffs and traditional businesses. This study aims to explore a public–private partnership (PPP) that leverages advanced digital technologies via spinoffs to tackle the key challenge of showrooming that retail shops are facing. Showrooming is the phenomenon in which shoppers go to the physical stores to gather in-depth product information, and later on, decide to buy the product from online retail competitors.

This research draws on a longitudinal qualitative study of a social context in which digital entrepreneurs are embedded. The empirical setting is a retail network in Italy, Germany and Finland with a particular focus on the process in which a PPP delivers innovation via spinoffs in the context of brick and mortar shops (B&M). The research design enables an understanding of the complexity of the phenomenon from a business and a social perspective.

New technology to tackle showrooming enables the creation of substantial hybrid value in retail partnerships. Spinoffs are key actors in leveraging digital technologies to create value faster and more tailored compared with large software companies. Spinoff entrepreneurs leverage on specific technologies (e.g. virtual reality and artificial intelligence) available inside organizations’ network (i.e. PPPs). Spinoffs are found to be a fundamental actor in the process of dealing with showrooming because of their time to market. Large software companies usually are not interested in approaching B&M shops because of the high operational costs of product customization for B&M shops.

Managers could use the success factors of the spinoffs in helping their B&M shops to improve both shopper experience and salesperson performance. For managers of B2B retail network, the results are useful towards increasing the involvement of shoppers while they are visiting physical stores, and it also improves salesperson performance. It also leads to the observation that cross-selling is one of the most effective responses to the phenomenon of showrooming. As practical implications for policymakers, the current research supports the view that PPPs should support the creation of spinoffs as a result of longitudinal innovation projects.

Retail technologies leveraged from a PPP and commercialized by spinoffs are powerful tools to enable a better quality of salespeople’s life in the working place. At the same time, these new technologies help shop owners increase the retention rates, conversion rates and reduce short-term loss, increasing the likelihood of B&M shops to survive in the condition of extreme competition caused by the showrooming phenomenon.

This research proposes a model of hybrid value creation from networks in digital retail. The model indicates that PPPs create spinoffs to explore showrooming and deliver substantial hybrid value (i.e. business and social) for physical retail shops, mainly because it influences the companies’ growth, employee performance and customer satisfaction. This model expands the field of B2B marketing by identifying factors that enable spinoff creation from retail networks and proposes success factors and research propositions in retail networks.

This study is the first to examine consumer’s neural reaction to different merchandising communication strategies at the point-of-sale (PoS) by applying functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). By doing so, the purpose of this study is to extend consumer neuroscience to retail and shopper research.

Two experiments were conducted in which 36 shoppers were exposed to a realistic grocery shopping scenario while their brain haemodynamics were measured using mobile fNIRS.

Results revealed that mobile fNIRS appears a valid method to study neural activation of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in the field of “shopper neuroscience”. More precisely, results demonstrated that the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) might be crucial for processing and predicting merchandising communication strategy effectiveness.

This research gives evidence that certain regions of the PFC, in particular the OFC and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), are crucial to process and evaluate merchandising communication strategies.

The current work opens a promising new avenue for studying and understanding shopper’s behaviour. Mobile fNIRS enables marketing management to collect neural data from shoppers and analyse neural activity associated with real-life settings. Furthermore, based on a better understanding of shoppers’ perceptual processes of communication strategies, marketers can design more effective merchandising communication strategies.

The study is the first to implement the innovative, mobile neuroimaging method of fNIRS to a PoS setting. It, therefore, opens up the promising field of “shopper neuroscience”.

In order to cope with the challenge of developing successful fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) innovations, market research vendors offer several methodologies to test concepts. The purpose of this article is to examine the discrepancy between the well-established experimental real store methodology and the most recent of these alternative methodologies that is the virtual store.

A parallel testing of a new adult cereal was conducted in France with 200 shoppers in each store.

Results show that all attitudinal measurements are similar in terms of cognition and conation, but affect and behavior cannot be compared across both methodologies. In conclusion, virtual store testing is a new method that does not exactly fit with one of the previous.

The study is limited to a single product and should be generalized to more product categories.

Virtual store should be used carefully in order to take capital expenditure decisions. It generates different attitudes and behaviors, but more research is needed in order to debate on predictability.

With the emergence of virtual stores to test FMCG innovations, this paper is of high value for practitioners who have to proceed to several tests, with different objectives, before a product launch.

Consumer behavior is the behavior of people – at home, in the store, on the street – just about everywhere people are thinking about, purchasing, using and being satisfied or dissatisfied with their products. Consumer researchers have captured the experiences and perceptions of such real people in the study of decision processes, feelings, and reactions as individuals and as part of families and other groups. Some of those everyday shoppers, however, may be challenged by disabilities, affecting the products which are purchased and where these purchases take place. The study of consumer behavior can be further enriched by developing a program for conceptual evaluation and actual research focussing on the special and everyday needs of such challenged shoppers. Such a perspective leads to the possibility for uncovering product, advertising, and retail opportunities which better meet the needs and wants of such customers.

To explore and evaluate the evidence about the effectiveness of “mystery shopping” as a technique for service evaluation in the public library system of one country.

A critical summary and review of the literature in this field. Interviews with public librarians in New Zealand who have used mystery shopping.

Demonstrates that there were three major reasons for using this method of customer service evaluation in the libraries under consideration: improving process, improving staff behaviours, and benchmarking with similar organisations. In practice, objectives were mixed, with some data being used for process improvement, and other elements of the mystery shopping used to assess library staff performance. Staff reactions were initially negative, but changed after they saw that the assessment was positive.

This examination of a particular form of service evaluation shows that it offers a narrow, very specific description of customer service that can be used in conjunction with broader forms of assessment such as customer satisfaction surveys. Offers insights into the value of this particular form of research methodology at the same time as showing the need for it to be used in conjunction with broader research techniques.

The paper can be used for thoughtful and practical guidance on the use of a specialised but powerful tool for library and information service evaluation.

This paper acts as a useful source of information for practitioners with a commitment to using research techniques for real‐life service enhancement, while also establishing that there is a sound academic basis for this research method, if implemented appropriately. The suggestions for how mystery shopping can be used to best advantage by the profession in future are of particular worth.

Drawing on virtual liminoid theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine factors that induce a multisensory flow experience in an e-shopping context through the use of augmented-reality interactive technology (ARIT).

To validate the research framework, a task-based laboratory study was performed. Participants were recruited through a snowball e-mail method and requested to freely and independently use ARIT for clothes fitting in the laboratory, after which they completed a questionnaire; 336 valid responses were received.

Empirical results revealed that three decorating psychological states (sense of body ownership, sense of ownership control, and self-explorative engagement) directly induced a multisensory flow experience. Furthermore, two multisensory factors (sense of self-location and haptic imagery) mediated the multisensory flow experience through these three decorating psychological states.

Consumers not only rely on generating self-display for optimal fitting in virtual avatar decoration in an e-shopping context but also concentrate more on expression and control of self-body. As consumers’ decorating psychological states require an ideal form of self-expression, a high degree of autonomy in exploring self-decoration options will create more value for consumers. Considering that expressing and controlling the self-body in addition to self-explorative engagement in virtual avatar decoration will trigger the flow experience in an e-shopping context, increasing the use of multisensory ARIT to trigger decorating psychological states in e-shopping contexts is highly recommended.

In this study, a relationship was constructed among virtual liminoid theory, flow theory, and multisensory technology, and an integrated conceptual framework was developed for the relationship between decorating psychological states and multisensory flow experience.

The shopper journey can cross a number of channels leading up to the point of a possible purchase, which may be unseen by the retailer or brand for the targeted purchase. The purpose of this paper is to gain a greater understanding of the decision making and purchase intention activity for online Millennial shoppers in deciding what fashion garments to buy in the digital retail environment. The paper also investigates the use of technology and social media involvement in the shopper journey leading up to the point of purchase.

In line with other studies that investigated online shopper behaviour (Balabanis and Reynolds, 2001; Pavlou et al., 2007), the authors have undertaken an exploratory investigation using an online survey conducted with respondents sourced through using Survey Monkey Audience. The survey was conducted with over 580 respondents (49.7 per cent female and 50.3 per cent male) between 16 and 34 years old living in England.

The findings highlight a picture of shoppers going on very different shopper journeys with different lengths, influenced by different touch points and using different media and devices. Each customer has their own individual experience and expectation. They can move through extremely diverse, long and complicated journeys in the buying process before they purchase a product. Most striking is their willingness to reach out and be influenced by other people beyond the control of any retailer – using platforms that are not necessarily specifically related with any retailer. Shoppers can undertake numerous activities before they make their final purchase decision, seeking content from different retailers, asking for social validation of their decision from their social networks both online and offline which is often out of sight of the retailer or brand.

The findings show how retailers and brands can understand the shopper decision journey and their behaviours across all the devices and channels that are used. Moreover, for some or part of the digital journey the shopper can often be unseen by the retailer or brand.

Consumers actively seek out novelty, knowledge and inspiration but shoppers employ a variety of interactions over a much greater period of time to arrive at the moment of purchase. This research provides an insight into the range of complex views and positions held by each individual to get a much more complete picture of where shoppers are looking to buy and what are their interests.