A holistic framework of customer experiences in retail stores: studying designers', retailers' and consumers' viewpoints

Abstract

Despite retailers’ and designers’ recognition of customer experience in retail practice today, academic literature on customer experiences seems to lack conceptualization of the phenomenon as such. Moreover, holistically inspired research on customer experiences in retail stores seems to be truly scarce. To fill in these gaps, the authors firstly conceptualize customer experiences in retail stores through a literature review, and secondly, they study customer experiences with the help of ethnographic interviews with retailers, designers and consumers. The research results provide insight in how the interviewees connote the aspects of the theoretical conceptualization of customer experience.