The annual RARCS conference serves as a platform for transnational scientific exchange on retailing and consumer services. The conference is organized by the editors of the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services (VHB B).
Stephanie Jordan, research associate in the field of digitalization and artificial intelligence in sales and marketing and external doctoral candidate at the University of Bayreuth, presented the study “Enhancing Smart Store Adoption in Retail - Unveiling the Path to Customer Habituation”, which was conducted together with Prof. Dr. Alexander Kracklauer, Maike Netscher, Thomas Rehrl and Prof. Dr. Claas Christian Germelmann (University of Bayreuth).
As part of the study, over 100 customers and employees of a smart store were surveyed. In their analysis of the results, researchers identify challenges and tasks still to be solved during a smart store customer journey and point out pain relievers (“problem solvers”) and gain creators (“benefit creators”). The research contributes to improving theoretical knowledge about new retail formats and providing practical implications for retailers on how the customer journey should be optimized to get customers used to smart store formats.
