Seamless Experience In The Context Of Omnichannel Shopping And Exploring Its Effects On Customer Behaviors

In recent years,a large number of omnichannel retailers have made delivering a superior seamless experience(SE)to omnichannel shoppers as one of the most crucial aspects of omnichannel marketing.However,a key challenge for retailers is how to deliver a superior SE to omnichannel shoppers effectively to drive customer loyalty.The main reason for this is that the existing research on SE is mostly descriptive and fragmented,not only the concept of SE itself are unclearly defined in the existing studies but there is also a lack of in-depth theoretical and empirical research on the SE and fails to consider the SE’s long-term loyalty effects in the context of omnichannel shopping.Specifically:(1)there is a lack of conceptualizing and operationalizing the SE in the omnichannel shopping context;(2)the lack of exploration of the mechanism of the impact of SE on social media word-of-mouth(s WOM);and(3)the mechanism of SE’s impact on customers’ repurchase intention has not been tested.To fill the above research gaps,the author conducted three sub-studies: the first study is to define the SE,explicate the key dimensions of the construct,and develop a scale to measure it from an omnichannel shopper perspective.Then,in the two subsequent studies,to explore the role of SE in maintaining the long-term relationships between customers and retailers,by treating the s WOM behavior and customer repurchase intention as two crucial and distinct evaluation indicators for measuring the omnichannel customer loyalty,we explore how the SE influences these two mportant customer behaviors,respectively.In study1,the author firstly refined the definition of the SE construct and its connotation characteristics by summarizing the existing literature.Subsequently,qualitative research(semi-structured interviews and open-ended questionnaires)were conducted to identify the six key components of the SE construct,namely availability of links,consistency of sales strategy,information visibility,payment simplicity,flexibility of order fulfillment,and sharing convenience of sharing.Finally,the scale containing 18 measurement items is developed and validated by performing the scale development and validation steps.In Study 2,based on the S-O-R framework and attribution theory,a theoretical model of SE influencing s WOM behavior through customer’ smart shopper feelings is constructed.In addition,this study considers the moderating effect of shopper orientation on smart shopper feelings.The findings show that SE has a positive impact on smart shopper feelings and s WOM.Further,smart shopper feelings play a mediating role in the relationship between SE and s WOM behavior.More importantly,for experience-oriented shoppers,the positive relationship between the SE and smart shopper feelings and s WOM is significantly strengthened.In Study 3,based on the customer experience quality framework and trust theory,a theoretical model of SE influencing customers’ repurchase intention through omnichannel brand trust is proposed.In addition,this study considers the moderating role of brand involvement.The findings show that the SE has a positive impact on customers’ repurchase intention.Further,omnichannel brand trust plays a significant mediating role between SE and repurchase intention.More importantly,in the context of low brand involvement,the SE more strongly influences omnichannel brand trust and repurchase intention.The main contributions of this paper are as follows: First,this paper enriches customer experience theory by conceptualizing the SE in omnichannel shopping contexts and developing a seamless experience scale.Moreover,the scale developed in this paper provides an effective measurement and diagnostic tool for omnichannel retailers to assess the effectiveness of the SE that they provided to omnichannel shoppers.Second,this paper broadens extant literature on the antecedents of s WOM in the context of omnichannel shopping by validating that a highly seamless shopping experience is a new antecedent that facilitates s WOM among omnichannel shoppers.Third,this paper extends the existing research on the antecedents of omnichannel customer loyalty by verifying the mechanism of seamless experience on customers’ repurchase intention and enriches the research in the field of customer loyalty.Fourth,by exploring the moderating role of "shopping orientation" and "brand involvement" in the process of seamless experience influencing different customer behaviors,this paper expands the boundary of the role of the SE.