Antecedents and Consequences of Customer Experience in E Retail

Abstract

Rapid adoption and growth of online retail in India in the last few years has drastically altered the retail landscape. Present scenario poses both opportunities and challenges to retailers. On the one hand, both the pure-play online players as well as omnichannel retailers are starting at an newlineuntapped business-to-consumer market with great growth and profit potential, while on the other hand, they are facing the tough challenge of how to maintain the customer stickiness to their particular website in a highly competitive market where customers are largely driven by deep discounts and offers. In the context of this particular challenge, customer experience is widely perceived by practitioners as a strategic differentiator which can deliver the much needed newlinecompetitive edge. However, literature shows that although customer experience, a newlinemultidimensional construct, has attracted attention from academic researchers in developed economies, there is a paucity of empirical research in emerging economies, particularly India. Based on this finding, present study proposes an integrated model of online customer experience with antecedents, components, and outcome variables. Antecedents of online customer experience for this model are selected based on relevant literature review and focus group discussions output analysis. Cognitive and affect are considered as two components of online newlinecustomer experience. Also, this study tries to understand how shopper personality influences the proposed online customer experience model. For this purpose, the Big Five personality traits are considered as the moderating variable. In order to test the research hypotheses, this study adopts a mixed-method research approach by newlinecombining elements of quantitative and qualitative approaches. For quantitative research, the research instrument was developed from established and validated scales; in some cases scale items were modified based on the feedbacks of the pilot study. Data collection was done using an newlineonline data collection link.