Measuring in-store customer experience online: an experimental study

Details

Supervisors

Steils, Nadia

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences de gestion, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

This master thesis examines the effects of spatially crowded supermarkets and emotionally salient packaging on customer experience, negative emotions, and purchase intention. Furthermore, it analyses the role of customers’ shopping values as a moderator between the spatially crowded store environment on one side and the customer experience and negative emotions on the other side. The Customer experience has been split up in three different dimensions: the cognitive, affective, and physical dimension. The results indicate that only the affective dimension of customer experience is significant for both the level of spatial crowding and the emotional saliency of the packaging. When we look at the effect of the customer experience and negative emotions on the purchase intention, we see that the cognitive and affective dimensions of customer experience are important, as well as the negative emotions. So, the indirect relationship between the spatial store crowding and purchase intention as well as the indirect relationship between the emotionally salient packaging and the purchase intentions are only significant through the affective dimension of customer experience. The direct effect of the spatially crowded supermarket and the emotionally salient packaging on the purchase intention were both non-significant. Furthermore, the customers’ shopping values did not seem to have a moderating effect.