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The purpose of this paper is to investigate which dimension of salespersons' service quality is of most importance for customer loyalty in a fashion chain stores setting. It also aims to assess the effects of two retail environmental factors (price level and customers' demographic variables) on the customer loyalty of salespersons service quality.

The study uses the SERVQUAL service quality instrument with modification in measuring the salespersons' service quality in the Hong Kong fashion retail environment. In order to measure customer loyalty in fashion chain stores, multi‐item measures were used to collect data on repatronage intentions, word‐of‐mouth intentions, and satisfaction. A total of 232 surveys were administrated to shoppers who were leaving a fashion chain store in Hong Kong.

The results showed that the empathy dimension of salesperson service quality is the most important for customer loyalty in Hong Kong's fashion chain stores but the empathy dimension of salespersons' service quality in fashion retail stores could not be affected by these two retail environmental factors. Furthermore, the salespersons' service quality in the reliability dimension is significantly impacted by the customers' demographic characteristics, but not by price level set by fashion chain stores.

The study was carried out in four popular retail districts of Hong Kong and the results obtained may not be generalized to the country as a whole. The findings that are relevant in a fashion retail setting may not applicable in other retail environments.

The findings can direct fashion retailers to improve the specific service dimensions and work to provide customers with more value through services which will consequently improve internal and external standards of quality and performances in fashion retail settings, thus bringing about repeat customers and increased profitability.

Discount grocery stores (DGSs) are attractive food supply chain (FSC) channels because many cost-conscious Indians use them for monthly needs. Despite capacity, DGSs must address customer concerns about store crowd densities and improve their COVID-19 preparedness. The purpose of this study is to learn how retail operations strategies can improve customer experience and how stores can benefit.

The study looked at a case study where retail operations are run more efficiently, and the customer experience is enhanced by standardizing and customizing customer transactions. The potential benefits that customers and retailers might anticipate are then statistically verified. Next, the potential benefits were examined to determine which ones from customers’ and retailers’ views should be prioritized to increase satisfaction.

The case situation analysis in the study demonstrates how DGSs can improve their retail operations to reduce customer wait times and provide greater convenience. The study also provides practitioners with potential benefits to pursue from the perspectives of retailers, customers and both retailers and customers.

This study requires many past transactions and can be considered an extension of the current study, so it does not capture floor space and capacity improvements.

This research can help FSC retailers compete with upstream supply chain partners and customers in omnichannel retailing. By improving DGS retailer capacity and customer experience, this study can benefit all FSC stakeholders.

Although there are numerous potential benefits that practitioners can pursue, the current study suggests that practitioners focus on those that can improve retailer and customer satisfaction.

As the world moves toward globalization, new trends and applications are on the rise as an attempt to meet the ever-changing needs of consumers. In this sense, new technologies have been introduced as a means to differentiate the product and service offerings along with some emerging retailing perspectives. It is obvious that omnichannel retailing is cited as one of the emerging trends in marketing. In this globe, customer experience management plays a crucial role in establishing sustainable omnichannel retailing strategies. Considering all the variables in the business environment, it is seen that effective tools of omnichannel operations should well be implemented as a response to effectively compete in the business environment. This chapter reveals some of the major literature and applications in the context of omnichannel retailing whereby the most concern of interest is given to the importance of customer experience and its formation.

Omnichannel retailing emphasises the interplay between channels to provide seamless customer experiences across shopping journeys but is challenging for retailers to implement. This research explores the necessary actions and dynamic capabilities needed of retailers to create, extend and modify the organisational resource base required for realising omnichannel retailing.

A qualitative exploratory design with in-depth interviews of Generation Z customers and retail firms was used to provide insights into the dynamic capabilities necessary for obtaining omnichannel retailing.

This research elaborates on the dynamic capabilities needed for omnichannel solutions related to (1) the underlying technology (i.e. develop an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and online store), (2) customer experience optimisation (i.e. develop product delivery, return routines, supply chain management, curated exhibitions, showrooms and pop-up stores), (3) internal and external collaboration (i.e. collaborate across business units, strengthening the core leadership team and collaborate and align with service ecosystem partners and (4) overall omnichannel functionality (i.e. establish a customer-oriented retail culture, and integrate marketing communication and customisation through data exploration).

This research enriches the retailing literature on omnichannel solutions and responds to the need for theoretical anchoring by applying the dynamic capability perspective to address actions useful for realising omnichannel retailing.

Unethically behaving customers deviating from morally acceptable norms have posed an additional challenge to retailers, frontline employees (FLEs) and other customers in recent crisis-dominant environments. While research concerning customer behaviour ethicality focusses on purchasing modes and consumption behaviour, unethicality in all its facets receives limited attention, leaving dimensions of unethical customer behaviour (UCB) and effective managerial strategies unexplored. The purpose of this paper is to describe dimensions of UCB, investigate its causes, explore its consequences for customers and FLEs and infer practical implications for retail management by collecting customers' and FLEs' views in collaboration of each other.

Due to the explorative nature of this research, qualitative semi-structured interviews with 45 customers and 51 FLEs were conducted, following a content analytical approach and the establishment of inter-rater reliability coefficients.

The findings reveal multiple UCB dimensions operating on situational and individual behavioural levels, targeting mainly employees, followed by customers. The reasons for UCB arising correspond to customers' attitudes, social influences and egoistic motives. UCB imposes risks of financial losses for retailers, due to the wasting of resources as a consequence of employees' stress and emotional exhaustion, demanding managerial boundary-spanning activities. Further, it negatively impacts customers' shopping behaviours, provoking online shopping and shopping avoidance.

The study fills the research gap regarding perceived unethicality of customer behaviour by describing and explaining differing forms of UCB, considering customers' and FLEs' views in retail stores. It develops a UCB framework, identifies UCB dimensions beyond current academic research and derives specific practical implications to make the phenomenon manageable for retailers. The originality of this paper lies in the synthesis of the three UCB dimensions, consisting of antecedents, forms of UCB and consequences for customers and FLEs.

Previous studies have considered customers' psychological responses to intelligent retail technology adoption, but have not considered how technology integration systems could promote the relationship between retailers and consumers. Based on the Stimulus–Organism–Response framework, this paper proposes a customer engagement model in a fully intelligent retail environment. The concept of the quality of intelligent experience is constructed from the perspective of customer experience, and the effect of the mechanism of smart retail on the customer engagement relationship is discussed.

Using two surveys, this study analyzes 201 (in study 1) and 321 (in study 2) questionnaires by using structural equation model in partial least square software.

The analysis shows that the human–machine interaction, intelligent systems and the product content of the quality intelligent experience significantly impact customer engagement on smart retail.

This research was designed for general retail products, without distinguishing between different product types. Thus, it did not consider the moderating effect of product types.

The findings enrich the intelligent retail technology field and provide operable guidance to help smart retailers improve customer relations.

This paper proposes a customer engagement model to describe how technology integration systems promote the relationship between retailers and consumers.

This paper aims to investigate the differences in patronage factors influencing “retail customers” and “institutional clients” to bank Islamically and to identify the reasons bankers perceive that their customers’ bank with them in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

A total of 237; 416; and 70 balanced responses were collected from Islamic bankers, retail customers and institutional clients of UAE, respectively. Weighted average scores were computed for ranking the selection criteria factors across the data set and paired comparison analysis was conducted to analyse the variation of selection criteria between the data sets.

Empirical results indicate that Islamic banking practitioners maintain an identical perception with retail customers in relation to the selection criteria of Islamic banking products and services, with the “Sharīʿah-compliance” factor dominating other factors under examination. With respect to the perception regarding institutional/corporate clients, Islamic bankers exhibited a divergent perception in connection with selection criteria of Islamic banking products and services and the factor “cost and affordability” and “rates and return” are prioritized above factor “Sharīʿah-compliance”.

The scope of the study is limited to a single country. Hence, the finding of this study cannot be generalized to the other regions. Although the study covers a considerable sample from each segment, still there is an avenue for improvement by covering more respondents into the survey. Consequently, the results of this study should be read with these limitations. Further, analysis of the variation among intra divisions of each segment such as Muslim and non-Muslim with respect to retail customers; the different level of management at the banks and focusing the specific sector of the industry is beyond the scope of this study. These directions provide avenues for future research.

The study provides useful insights for bankers to revisit their marketing strategies to attract and retain more clients. Hence, the findings also suggest policy recommendations for nascent Islamic banking markets to move to the next stages of maturity. The findings of this study have implications for firms’ strategic directions and future investments of organizations, especially when the competition in the industry is intense. Future studies are recommended in other countries where the Islamic financial market share is significant.

While ample perception studies have carried out in the Islamic banking industry of the UAE, studies that focus on institutional clients, especially with reference to the factors that determine the selection criteria; studies examining banker’s perception towards Islamic banks and their clients (retail and institutional); studies that reconcile the perception of bankers and customers (retail and institutional) are all inadequately covered in existing literatures. This study attempts to fill some of these significant gaps.

As structural changes, new market entrants, new technologies and increasing customer demands gather momentum, retail banks are under pressure to reduce their cost structures so that they can remain competitive. The banks are in danger of over reacting to these new pressures by neglecting the strategic value of their own institutional stature. Even though there is growing evidence that retail customers are not very happy with the services that banks deliver, customers still trust their banks as a safe and secure place to keep their money. They do so because of the bank’s institutional stature rather than their sophistication in customer service. The implications of this paper for both academics and practitioners are that many banks may be overlooking the importance of institutional stature as an important service differentiator and industry entry barrier.

The customer retail experience is frequently interrupted by disturbances such as ringing phones and other people. Employees must be able to respond to retail disturbances effectively to ensure that customers have a satisfactory experience in the retailer. Using Affective Events Theory as a framework, the purpose of this paper is to develop and test a model for understanding how retail disturbances affect customers outcomes and how retail employee response mitigates the negative impact of retail disturbances.

The model was tested using a pre-study of retail managers and consumers, a survey study and four experimental studies.

Retail disturbances reduce interactional justice and customer positive emotions. Customers pay attention to how employees address retail disturbances, even when they are not directly involved.

The research experiments focus on sound-based disturbances. Other stimuli (e.g. olfactory or visual) should be examined in more detail.

Employees can mitigate the negative effects of retail disturbances on customers with a positive response to the disturbance and to customers. Employee responses influence customers currently receiving service and nearby shoppers.

The findings demonstrate the deleterious effect of solicitation calls on small retailers and provide recommendations for reducing solicitation calls.

This research shows that retail disturbances reduce customer outcomes, employee response becomes part of the disturbance event, and that it is possible for employees to address a group of nearby customers indirectly through unintentional observation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate if retail services have a transformative potential to improve the well-being of customers in a Latin American market. Transformative studies have been conducted mostly in developed countries, and consumer well-being in a Latin American supermarket context has not been addressed previously. Specifically, this study aims to understand if customer satisfaction with a supermarket experience in Chile leads to positive customer well-being. Additionally, it is examined if customer well-being influences firm outcomes, such as customer loyalty, word-of-mouth (WOM) communication or retailer equity.

A conceptual model was developed, and data was collected through an online survey from 866 customers of a large supermarket chain in Chile. Hypotheses were tested with structural equation modeling.

The findings of this study support all the hypotheses of the model and confirm that customer satisfaction has direct and indirect effects on customer loyalty and other firm outcomes through customer well-being.

This research is among the few studies in the academic literature that considers retail experience and well-being outcomes for supermarket customers in a Latin American context. Limitations derive from the cross-sectional nature of this study.

There are implications from this study contributing to the literature on customer retail experience, in terms of the potential to transform supermarket shopping in a Latin American country. This is particularly relevant in Latin America as the extent to which for-profit organizations acknowledge their relevancy of the individuals’ well-being is still at its infancy.

This research provides empirical support to the importance of not only looking at traditional measures such as WOM, equity and loyalty but looking into the impact services have for customers’ life and well-being.

This study contributes to the services literature and addresses a gap in it by exploring the transformative potential of supermarket shopping on customer well-being and in turn the role of customer well-being in retail firm outcomes. The findings also contribute in considering Chile, a Latin American context that has been overlooked in the transformative services studies. This provides managerial implications for domestic and global companies that offer grocery retailing for consumers in this region.