Modelling and Forecasting Customer Navigation in Intelligent Retail Environments

Understanding shopper behaviour is one of the keys to success for retailers. In particular, it is necessary that managers know which retail attributes are important to which shoppers and their main goal is to improve the consumer shopping experience. In this work, we present sCREEN (Consumer REtail ExperieNce), an intelligent mechatronic system for indoor navigation assistance in retail environments that minimizes the need for active tagging and does not require metrics maps. The tracking system is based on Ultra-wideband technology. The digital devices are installed in the shopping carts and baskets and sCREEN allows modelling and forecasting customer navigation in retail environments. This paper contributes the design of an intelligent mechatronic system with the use of a novel Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) for the representation of shoppers’ shelf/category attraction and usual retail scenarios such as product out of stock or changes on store layout. Observations are viewed as a perceived intelligent system performance. By forecasting consumers next shelf/category attraction, the system can present the item location information to the consumer, including a walking route map to a location of the product in the retail store, and/or the number of an aisle in which the product is located. Effective and efficient design processes for mechatronic systems are a prerequisite for competitiveness in an intelligent retail environment. Experiments are performed in a real retail environment that is a German supermarket, during business hours. A dataset, with consumers trajectories, timestamps and the corresponding ground truth for training as well as evaluating the HMM, have been built and made publicly available. The results in terms of Precision, Recall and F1-score demonstrate the effectiveness and suitability of our approach, with a precision value that exceeds the 76% in all test cases.     

Understanding consumers’ continuance intention towards mobile purchase: A theoretical framework and empirical study – A case of China

Although mobile purchase is convenient in the age of mobile commerce, many consumers still do not utilize mobile purchase to its full potential. From the mobile vendor’s perspective, retaining current customers and facilitating their continued purchase are crucial to create profitability and achieve a sustainable development. An understanding of the continuance intention towards mobile purchase can provide insights into mobile vendors’ marketing campaigns. Therefore, it is important to examine the determinants that impact continuance intentions of consumers for mobile purchase. Drawing upon information success model, flow theory and trust, this study proposed and empirically tested an integrated model to better understand the determinants of consumers’ continued intention to purchase on mobile sites. Empirical data from 462 users who had experience with mobile purchase were tested against the proposed research model by using structural equation modelling (SEM). The results indicated that information quality, and privacy and security concerns are the main factors affecting trust, whereas service quality is the main factor affecting flow. System quality, and privacy and security concerns affect satisfaction. Trust affects flow, which in turn affects satisfaction. These three factors together affect continued intention towards mobile purchase. The findings of this study provide several important implications for mobile commerce research and practice.     

Teleshopping or going shopping? An information acquisition perspective

Shopping is the acquisition of information that precedes the purchase of goods and services for household or individual consumption. New telecommunications technologies enable individuals to shop and purchase without leaving the home. Teleshopping options put the individual in a choice situation between home-based shopping and store shopping. This involves a trade-off between the costs (in terms of time and money) and benefits of making a trip or of communicating with vendors. Teleshopping serves as a useful case study for examining the demand for videotex-based services and some psychological factors involved in their adoption. Two major factors associated with the benefits of shopping appear to affect that choice. First, the direct experience of multi-sensory stimulation of store or shopping-mall environments is superior in terms of information quality and quantity to that obtained through teleshopping for many products. Thus, teleshopping may not reduce the uncertainty involved in purchasing decision to the extent possible in store shopping and, therefore, may not be a satisfactory substitute. Second, the recreational and psychological gratification (or costs) that many people experience in store shopping activity but which do not exist in teleshopping may affect the adoption of teleshopping. The relative importance of these factors varies across product or service type and individual shopper's preferences.     

Teleshopping or going shopping? An information acquisition perspective

Abstract

Shopping is the acquisition of information that precedes the purchase of goods and services for household or individual consumption. New telecommunications technologies enable individuals to shop and purchase without leaving the home. Teleshopping options put the individual in a choice situation between home-based shopping and store shopping. This involves a trade-off between the costs (in terms of time and money) and benefits of making a trip or of communicating with vendors. Teleshopping serves as a useful case study for examining the demand for videotex-based services and some psychological factors involved in their adoption. Two major factors associated with the benefits of shopping appear to affect that choice. First, the direct experience of multi-sensory stimulation of store or shopping-mall environments is superior in terms of information quality and quantity to that obtained through teleshopping for many products. Thus, teleshopping may not reduce the uncertainty involved in purchasing decision to the extent possible in store shopping and, therefore, may not be a satisfactory substitute. Second, the recreational and psychological gratification (or costs) that many people experience in store shopping activity but which do not exist in teleshopping may affect the adoption of teleshopping. The relative importance of these factors varies across product or service type and individual shopper's preferences.     

Understanding multi-channel research shoppers: an analysis of Internet and physical channels

The purpose of this study is to analyze how channel characteristics influence the channel attitudes of multi-channel research shoppers. In addition, the study also considers consumers’ complex shopping behaviors that involve using one channel for search and another for purchase simultaneously. Survey data were collected from 191 consumers with recent (i.e., in the last 3 months) multi-channel experiences. Qualified respondents had either searched in physical retail stores and purchased on the Internet or searched on the Internet and subsequently purchased in physical retail stores. The research hypotheses were examined using multiple regression analysis. The results show that customer perceptions of channel characteristics drive channel choice attitudes. Importantly, we find the significance of channel characteristics varies between the Internet and the physical channel. The research findings deepen our understanding of shopping behaviors in the multi-channel context. Practitioners may use the findings to manage the characteristics of the complementary channels while also designing marketing programs to create positive consumer attitudes toward search and purchase.     

The role of sunk costs in online consumer decision-making

Sunk costs, which can cause inconsistencies between consumer behavior and economic theory, have been widely studied in different research areas and among various consumer groups. Nevertheless, the authors found that to date there has been no empirical research examining how sunk costs affect consumer behavior with regard to online shopping in different product types. Therefore, this study used the following 2 × 2 × 2 experimental design to study the effects of sunk costs on consumers’ online shopping decisions. The results show that (1) sunk costs have significant effects on consumer online shopping behavior. However, due to the different product characteristics, the impacts were weaker effective when consumers bought search goods than when they purchased experience goods; (2) the sunk costs (Membership fee vs. Deposit) of an initial choice and a new choice had interaction effects on consumer intention to purchase a new product; and (3) the sunk costs and service quality of an initial choice and new choice would affect the level of regret felt with regard to the consumer’s initial choice. In addition, some recommendations on market positioning and service quality design are made, which practitioners can refer to when formulating marketing strategies.     

创造运动品牌店面独特的消费体验

在体验经济时代,消费者更渴望在选购服装时能获得一种美好而难忘的体验。基于此,本文提出联想式符号陈列法,主要研究运动品牌店面各区域陈列如何以运动场所或运动项目为灵感,营造出一种运动品牌特有的购物氛围,通过该陈列法的展示来引发消费者对产品的注意,以及感受到相应的运动场景,引起消费者共鸣,使消费者获得特殊的运动品牌符号信息和消费体验。     

In-store consumer behavior: How mobile recommendation agents influence usage intentions,product purchases,and store preferences

Product information given in purchase situations influences purchase behavior. In online purchase situations, the use of recommendation agents increases the value of product information as information becomes adaptive and thus more relevant to consumers’ information needs. Correspondingly, mobile recommendation agents (MRAs) may also increase the value of product information in bricks-and-mortar stores. In this sense, product information is not only adaptive but can also be requested at any place such as in front of products consumers are interested in. Because unprecedented, we investigate the use of a MRA that is virtually bound to a physical product via an RFID-enabled mobile device and provides product information. Based on Theory of Planned Behavior, Innovation Diffusion Theory, and Technology Acceptance Model, we develop a model to better understand the impact of MRAs on usage intentions, product purchases and store preferences of consumers. This model is then tested in a lab experiment (n = 47). Among high usability scores, results indicate that perceived usefulness of a MRA influences product purchases, predicts usage intentions and store preferences of consumers. Thus, new business models for retail stores can be considered in which MRAs satisfy both the information needs of consumers and the communication needs of retailers.     

Role of transfer-based and performance-based cues on initial trust in mobile shopping services: a cross-environment perspective

Building initial trust with consumers is critical for e-retailers. Drawing on the elaboration likelihood model, this study examines the factors affecting initial trust in mobile shopping services by focusing on transfer-based and performance-based trust building mechanisms in a web-mobile services extension context. A developed research model reflecting the above two mechanisms is empirically tested on data collected from 192 undergraduate students who were web-shopping users of a famous business-to-consumer retailer in China. The results indicate that transfer-based cues including trust in web shopping services and functional consistency, in combination with performance-based cues including mobile information quality and mobile service quality, significantly affect initial trust in mobile shopping services. In addition, mobile information quality had a stronger, while mobile service quality had a weaker impact on initial trust in mobile shopping services when the consumer had a low level of self-efficacy for change. However, the moderation effects of user involvement were not significant.     

Gender differences in consumers’ perception of online consumer reviews

Since the early days of the Internet, gender gap has existed in using the Internet, and it is particularly evident for online shopping. Females perceive higher level of risk for online shopping, and as a result, they tend to hesitate to make purchase online. Online consumer reviews can effectively mitigate such perceived risk by females and thereby attract them to buy online. This study investigates the effect of online consumer reviews on consumer’s purchase intention. In particular, we examine whether there are gender differences in responding to online consumer reviews. The results show that the effect of online consumer reviews on purchase intention is stronger for females than males. The negativity effect, that consumers are influenced by a negative review more than by a positive review, is also found to be more evident for females. These findings have practical implications for online sellers to guide them to effectively use online consumer reviews to engage females in online shopping.     

An empirical study of the cross-channel effects between web and mobile shopping channels

With the increasing popularity of mobile applications, increasingly more e-commerce websites are providing mobile shopping services that enable their consumers to access their products and services through an additional mobile channel. The question arises here as to whether the new channel brings new sales or merely shifts consumers from the web to the mobile channel. Using the 2½-year transaction data obtained from an e-commerce company that expanded its web service onto a mobile platform, we investigated the impact of the newly introduced mobile channel on the sales of the incumbent web channel, and whether it could stimulate new consumption from consumers. Our empirical results indicate that after the adoption of the mobile channel, the purchases on the web channel were slightly cannibalized; however, the consumers’ purchases increased overall, suggesting that the positive synergy effect of the new channel overrode the negative cannibalization effect. Our investigation contributes to multichannel e-commerce literature by empirically testing the cross-channel effects of a new mobile channel and also providing insights for e-retailers interested in introducing a new mobile channel.     

Examining the impact of rich media on consumer willingness to pay in online stores

This research examines the impact of rich media on purchase intentions and willingness to pay in online stores. Via an online experiment, we tested the effects of two rich media presentation formats: product videos and virtual product experience, and compared them with static displays. The results confirm that the rich media displays enhanced the feeling of informedness about the examined products and increased excitement regarding the shopping experience. Virtual product experience had a direct positive effect on consumer purchase intentions, suggesting that virtual product experience-focused tools have the potential to outperform passive videos. Moreover, consumers showed higher willingness to pay values for experience products than for search products when interaction was possible.     

Analysing complaint intentions in online shopping: the antecedents of justice and technology use and the mediator of customer satisfaction

Complaint behaviours are the key to the competition in an online market when service quality is a major concern of consumers. An understanding of complaint intentions can provide insight into a negative service experience and in turn, effectively redress consumer's problems. It is our purpose to examine the determinants of complaint intentions in the online shopping. When online consumers essentially involve the purchase of products/services and the use of web-based technologies, two major issues particularly arise in this context, exchange behaviour and technology use. This study thus integrates justice perception and expectation–confirmation model (ECM) of information system continuance to understand customer satisfaction and in turn, complaint intentions. Data were collected for online consumers with negative service experiences. The results of testing the structural model indicated that distributive and interactional justices significantly contribute to customer satisfaction and complaint intentions, but procedural justice does not. ECM-based features, such as perceived usefulness, are all important in determining customer satisfaction and complaint intentions. The implications for managers and scholars are further discussed.     

Item-level RFID for enhancement of customer shopping experience in apparel retail

In the customer-oriented apparel retail industry, providing satisfactory shopping experience for customers is a vital differentiator. However, traditional stores generally cannot fully satisfy customer needs because of difficulties in locating target products, out-of-stocks, a lack of professional assistance for product selection, and long waiting for payments. Therefore, this paper proposes an item-level RFID-enabled retail store management system for relatively high-end apparel products to provide customers with more leisure, interaction for product information, and automatic apparel collocation to promote sales during shopping. In this system, RFID hardware devices are installed to capture customer shopping behaviour and preferences, which would be especially useful for business decision-making and proactive individual marketing to enhance retail business. Intelligent fuzzy screening algorithms are then developed to promote apparel collocation based on the customer preferences, the design features of products, and the sales history accumulated in the database. It is expected that the proposed system, when fully implemented, can help promote retail business by enriching customers with intelligent and personalized services, and thus enhance the overall shopping experience.     

Situational variables in online versus offline channel choice

Since the advent and rapid diffusion of the Internet, the subject of consumer channel choice has attracted a large amount of research, mainly focused on the influence of channel, consumer and product category characteristics as its drivers. The interaction between channel choice and the purchase situation has been largely ignored, however. This paper is an attempt to fill this gap by identifying the key purchase situation variables and conducting an experiment to assess their impact on the choice between the traditional retail outlet and the online store. The results show that the key determinants of channel choice relate to time and distance. Distance-to-store and time pressures are among the factors affecting the probability of online purchase. Using a conceptual framework to explore differences in the impact of situational variables across product categories (high/low involvement, search/experience good), we show that distance-to-store has more influence on the likelihood of online purchase in situations involving search goods, while social variables are found to play a role only in the context of high-involvement goods.     

The influence of image interactivity upon user engagement when using mobile touch screens

Touch screens are a key component of consumer mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, as well as an increasingly common self-service component of information retrieval on fixed screens and mobile devices in-store. The ubiquity of touch screens in daily life increases consumer accessibility and extended use for shopping, whilst software innovations have increased the functionality of touch screens, for example the extent to which images respond to fingertip control. This study examines how users engage with interactive visual rotation and tactile simulation features while browsing fashion clothing products on touch screen devices and thus contributes to retail touch screen research that previously focused on in-store kiosks and window displays. Findings show that three dimensions of user engagement (endurability, novelty and felt involvement) are positively influenced by both forms of manipulation. In order to examine the extent to which touch screen user engagement varies with individual preferences for an in-store experience, the paper also examines whether user engagement outcomes are mediated by an individual's need for physical touch. Findings indicate that the need for touch does not explain the variance between individuals. We conclude that touch screen technology complements the physical retail environment.     

Inter-relationships among dominance, energetic and tense arousal, and pleasure, and differences in their impacts under online vs. offline environment

Only a few studies have investigated dominance and observed mixed results. The impact of arousal on pleasure and behavior has also produced inconsistent or no meaningful results. In addition, emotional responses such as dominance, arousal, and pleasure have been assumed to be independent, which have resulted in a void in the relationships research among these constructs. Based on this research tradition, the present study proposed an inter-relationship among dominance, energetic and tense arousal, pleasure, and their impact on intention. A two-dimensional concept of energetic arousal and tense arousal has never been adopted and studied in previous retail research. Dominance, energetic arousal, and tense arousal are introduced to explain inconsistent relationships found in previous retail consumer studies. Results from a survey of 406 consumers (217 from offline store customers and 189 online store users) using PLS demonstrated that that (1) while dominance has a significant positive and/or negative effect on both energetic and tense arousal, it has no impact on pleasure and intention under both offline and online environment; (2) the effect of dominance on tense arousal is not statistically significant in an online shopping environment; (3) both energetic and tense arousal has a positive and/or negative impact on pleasure; (4) energetic arousal affects intention directly and indirectly mediated by pleasure, whereas tense arousal has an indirect effect on intention; and (5) the results found in testing differences in path coefficients under the two different shopping environment suggested that (1) the impact of dominance on energetic arousal is stronger under offline shopping context; (2) the effect of dominance on tense arousal is stronger in online environment; (3) the effect of energetic arousal on pleasure is stronger in offline shopping context; and (4) the impact of tense arousal on pleasure is stronger under offline shopping environment. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in conclusion.     

Designing appliances for mobile commerce and retailtainment

In the emerging world of the new consumer and the `anytime, anywhere' mobile commerce, appliances are located at the collision point of the retailer and consumer agendas. The consequence of this is twofold: on the one hand appliances that were previously considered plain and utilitarian become entertainment devices and on the other, for the effective design of consumer appliances it becomes paramount to employ multidisciplinary expertise. In this paper, we discuss consumer perceptions of a retailtainment commerce system developed in collaboration between interactivity designers, information systems engineers, hardware and application developers, marketing strategists, product development teams, social scientists and retail professionals. We discuss the approached employed for the design of the consumer experience and its implications for appliance design.     

Enhancing the flow experience of consumers in China through interpersonal interaction in social commerce

Although research on flow experience has recently received much attention, few studies have been published on the perceived interpersonal interaction factors of consumers and their influence in social commerce. In addition, few studies have focused on the impact of interpersonal interaction factors on flow experience. Drawing on the stimulus-organism-response framework, this study examines the impact of interpersonal interaction factors (perceived expertise, similarity, and familiarity) on the formation of flow experience and its subsequent effects on purchase intention in the context of social commerce. We investigate whether the impact of the three interpersonal interaction factors on flow experience differs between young and old users. We conduct a survey and collect 349 responses from users of a social shopping site in China. Our results indicate that interpersonal interaction factors positively relate to flow experience and subsequently influence purchase intention. We also find differences between young and old users in this area.     

The impact of organizational efforts on consumer concerns in an online context

As organizations spend a significant amount of their resources on online channels, it is vitally important to understand the effects of this cost on consumer behavior. The author developed and empirically tested an integrated model combining the effects of organizational efforts on consumer concerns, process satisfaction, and purchase intentions. The results of this effort suggested that consumers are still skeptical of the organizational efforts in an online context and their concerns remain a critical factor in influencing their satisfaction and purchase intention. The study provided insights for managers about how they may reduce shopping cart abandonment in online purchasing environment by focusing on consumer concerns.