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The purpose of this research is to analyse the influence of mobile word of mouth (m-WOM), received at the physical store, which “challenges” the consumer's preferences in a webrooming experience. The impacts of the social relationship between the sender and the receiver of the m-WOM and product category (electronics versus fashion accessories) are examined.

An online experiment was carried out which manipulated the presence and type of challenging m-WOM, and product category, in a 3 × 2 between-subjects factorial design. The participants were 204 consumers recruited through a market research agency. Their perceptions about the helpfulness of the m-WOM, and their product preferences and choices, were analysed.

Receiving in-store m-WOM was perceived as helpful by webroomers and affected their preferences and choices. For electronics online reviews posted by anonymous customers were more influential than friends' opinions, whereas the opposite was the case with fashion accessories. The trustworthiness and expertise of the m-WOM source may explain the effects of m-WOM.

m-WOM entails challenges and opportunities for retailers in the omnichannel era. The findings suggest that allowing customers to access m-WOM may be beneficial; however, retailers must consider the type of m-WOM that may be most suitable for their businesses. Recommendations for referral and review sites are also offered.

This study examines the impact of challenging m-WOM on shopping experiences, combining online, mobile and physical channels. The results revealed the importance of the information source and product category in the determination of consumers' perceptions of helpfulness, preferences and choice.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of the following variables: brand fan page dependency; parasocial interaction; attitude towards brand fan pages in enhancing users’ participation in Facebook as a mobile social network (m-WOM).

An empirical study was carried out by means of online interviews with structured questionnaires. To analyse the data, and estimate the hypothesised relationships in the theoretical model, the partial least squares equation modelling was used.

The results of the study indicate that accessing brands’ mobile Facebook fan pages can satisfy the needs of understanding, orientation and play. These needs, in turn, influence users’ attitude, as well as their active and passive participation. Besides, users’ active participation in brands’ fan pages is enhanced by the direct and positive influence of attitude and passive participation.

This research enables brands to know which aspects to highlight in their communication strategies in order to increase the user’s active participation and generate m-WOM. Brands need to post information which is not only relevant, but also entertaining and visually attractive. Furthermore, they should foster the user-brand interaction to achieve users’ engagement with the brand.

The contribution of the present research is threefold. First, it offers a new perspective in explaining eWOM participation in mobile settings based on social networks. Second, it is argued that dependency is a key driver in explaining m-WOM. Lastly, integrating parasocial integration in the authors’ model highlights the communication nature of the word-of-mouth process.

Consumers subscribe to different mindsets or implicit theories of personality malleability, namely, fixed and growth mindsets. This study aims to investigate how and why consumers’ mindsets can influence their word-of-mouth (WOM) intentions toward a brand and the consequent implications for a brand’s personality.

Three mall-intercept studies and one online study demonstrate the influence of consumers’ fixed and growth mindsets on their WOM intentions. The first two mall-intercept studies identify motivations underlying consumers’ WOM intentions as a function of their mindset orientations. The third mall-intercept study examines the implications of such mindset-oriented WOM intentions for a brand’s personality dimension and the underlying psychological mechanism. The fourth study tests the link between WOM intent and behavior.

Results show that fixed (growth) mindset individuals exhibit greater WOM intentions than growth (fixed) mindset individuals for motives of “impression management” (“learning and information acquisition”). Findings further demonstrate that brands that exhibit dual personality dimensions simultaneously, one salient and the other non-salient at any instant, garner equivalent WOM intentions from both fixed and growth mindset individuals, contingent on the fit between the salient brand personality dimension and the dominant consumer mindset. Finally, using a real brand, it can be seen that WOM intentions actually translate into behavior.

The study measures offline WOM intent but not offline WOM behavior.

This study sheds new light on branding strategy by demonstrating how and why dual-brand personalities may attract consumers with both kinds of implicit self-theory orientations. Relatedly, it also demonstrates a technique of framing ad-appeals that support the dual-brand personality effect.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to propose and demonstrate the use of simultaneous dual-brand personalities as an optimal branding strategy.

This study aims to embark on a bibliometric journey through the International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management (IJR&DM) to delve into its rich repository of applied retailing research.

626 publications in IJR&DM between 2015 and 2023 have been retrieved from Scopus for performance analysis of the journal’s publication (productivity) and citation (impact) trends as well as a science mapping of the journal’s collaborators (contributors) and major themes (contributions).

The performance analysis highlights the growth in the productivity and impact of IJR&DM alongside its most cited publications, most prolific contributors, most relied-on journals, as well as the authors, institutions, countries, and journals that the journal has impacted the most. The co-authorship analysis reveals the collaboration (i.e., international with a high concentration in Europe and North America along with an emerging presence in Asia) of IJR&DM. Keyword co-occurrence analysis and bibliographic coupling reveal eight themes. Our exploration revealed close interconnections among various domains including retailing and adaptive strategies, channel strategies, customer experience, market innovations, operations management, relationship marketing, shopping motivation, and sustainability.

Although this study delivers a state-of-the-art overview of the retail industry through the scientific contributions from IJR&DM, it remains limited to the insights from a single authoritative source of knowledge on retailing.

No review, to date, has been conducted for IJR&DM. This study provides the inaugural retrospective of the scientific contributions of IJR&DM, outlining publication and citation trends alongside the intellectual structure of its body of knowledge on retailing. Theoretically, this retrospective is pivotal in charting the intellectual growth and thematic nuances inherent in retail research. Practically, this study serves as a guide for practitioners, enabling them to make strategically informed decisions and craft forward-looking strategies in sync with current realities.

The study applied the stimulus–organism–response (S–O–R) framework to investigate the influence of flow elements (e.g. perceived control, concentration and cognitive enjoyment) on artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled e-tail services in evoking awe experience in online fashion apparel context.

Data of 739 active users of online fashion retail shoppers were collected using Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Partial least square-structural equation modeling was used for analysis.

This study suggested the relevance of AI-enabled services in evoking flow and stimulating the customers' awe experience in online fashion shopping.

The use of AI could help online fashion retailers to improve the experiential elements by using stimuli that evoke feelings of vastness, novelty and mysticism.

The study offers insights about the relevance and applicability of AI in enhancing the flow elements and awe experience on online fashion apparel shopping in an emerging economy.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether people’s intuitions regarding the social consequences of word of mouth (WOM) match the actual consequences. The authors investigate the expectations people have about how sharing WOM (positive or negative) will change others’ perceptions of them and then compare these expectations to the actual impact of WOM.

Six studies were conducted. Study 1 predicted how sharing their experiences with various products or services would change others’ opinion of them. Studies 2a/2b contrasted participants’ intuitions about the potential social consequences of sharing WOM with the consequences. Studies 3a/3b and 4a/4b tested for the hypothesized mediating mechanism. Studies 5a/5b focused on negative WOM and used participants’ own reviews to compare intuitions with impact. Study 6 explored whether considering one’s own consumption experience mitigates the negative social impact of WOM.

Consumers expect positive WOM to improve perceptions as it conveys only positive cues about the communicator (i.e. helping intentions and a positive personality). Negative WOM is expected to have neutral impact, as it conveys mixed cues (i.e. helping intentions but a negative personality). In contrast, the authors show that sharing negative WOM tends to be quite detrimental, whereas sharing positive WOM has little impact. People are largely unaware of these effects.

The research contributes to the literature on WOM and social transmission by comparing people’s intuitions about the social consequences of WOM with its actual consequences. The authors acknowledge that they used mostly WOM messages that were pre-written (vs spontaneously generated by participants). This may have constrained the generalizability of the results. Several potential moderators remain to be investigated, such as the role of message extremity, the interpersonal closeness between communicator and receiver, whether the WOM was solicited vs spontaneous, online vs offline, etc.

Greater effort is needed to raise consumers’ awareness about the gap between their expectations and the actual social consequences of WOM. Furthermore, marketers responsible for designing product review opportunities should be encouraged to provide consumers with more flexible options, such as the ability to easily remove an online review. Finally, consumers transmitting negative WOM in particular should be aware that their negative tone may compromise the persuasiveness of their message by making the receiver more vigilant and thus less receptive.

The authors are the first to directly contrast people’s intuitions about the social consequences of WOM with its consequences. Unlike the previous literature, the authors investigate people’s intuitions directly, and investigate the consequences of positive and negative WOM by comparing them to a neutral no-WOM condition. They also shed light on the specific personality traits people infer from WOM.

The purpose of this paper is to understand antecedents of app-based shopping in an Indian context. The paper has used unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) 2 model for examining the impact of various constructs on behavioral intention and usage behavior of smart phone users toward the mobile shopping apps.

The constructs were tested and validated by means of a structured questionnaire which was administered on a sample of 350 mobile app shoppers in Delhi. AMOS 20 was used to analyze the collected data.

The study revealed that hedonic and habit are the strongest predictors of users’ behavioral intention to use mobile apps for shopping. Respondents are also influenced by the deals that are being offered by the marketers. The research also suggests that facilitating conditions help in usage of mobile apps for shopping.

Managerial implications simplifying the interface which would encourage the less technologically advanced individuals to use mobile apps. Hedonic element of shopping through mobile apps should also be enhanced.

This study contributes to the research on intentions and usage behavior of consumer technologies by adopting UTAUT 2 model to explain the intentions and usage behavior toward mobile apps for shopping. The paper also measured the role of deals in influencing the consumers.

This study aims to explore the effects of the omni-channel experience on customer commitment and word-of-mouth (WOM) intention within the context of fashion retailing in an emerging country, Türkiye.

In the study, data was collected online from 346 consumers. The hypothesised relationships were tested using SEM via AMOS.

Three sub-dimensions of the omni-channel experience are validated, namely consistency, connectivity, and personalisation, and while consistency and personalisation positively affected customer commitment, they did not indicate any direct influence on WOM intention. On the other hand, connectivity affected WOM intention but not customer commitment. In conclusion, even though consistency, connectivity, and personalisation constitute the omni-channel experience, they have differing behavioural outcomes. Furthermore, fashion retail customers’ commitment positively influenced WOM intentions.

This study contributes to the literature in four main areas: First, this study validates the omni-channel experience scale. Secondly, it extends social exchange theory in omni-channel retailing research. Thirdly, it develops a micro-perspective on the omni-channel experience. Lastly, it puts forth that the effects of consistency, connectivity, and personalisation on customer commitment and WOM intention differ.

The omni-channel experience is a multi-dimensional concept. Retail managers should invest in consistency, connectivity, and personalisation to amplify customer commitment and WOM intention.

This study explores how customer commitment and WOM intention are enhanced through an omni-channel experience.

This research aims to examine the integral elements of omnichannel retailing, an evolving approach that blends online and offline shopping experiences. It focuses on how various factors – merchandise variety, monetary saving, personal interaction, complaint handling, social influence, perceived crowd and skepticism – affect relative advantage, consumer satisfaction and word-of-mouth (WOM) advocacy in an omnichannel context.

A comprehensive survey was conducted with 258 participants, and the data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). This methodology provided insights into the complex relationships between different omnichannel retailing factors and their impact on customer satisfaction and WOM.

The study found that monetary saving influences both relative advantage and satisfaction. Personal interaction was observed to affect complaint handling and relative advantage. Importantly, relative advantage was found to impact both satisfaction and WOM. Additionally, the study highlighted the roles of social influence and satisfaction in enhancing WOM.

This research adds to the existing literature by providing a nuanced understanding of the dynamics of consumer engagement in omnichannel retailing. It bridges a gap in existing research by concurrently examining the impact of online and offline retail factors on consumer satisfaction and WOM in an omnichannel setting.