Abstract
In the modern retail environment, customers continuously rely on other consumers for assistance when interacting with retailers’ digital technologies. This study examined if technology acceptance drives affective commitment and ultimately existing users to assist potential users, as measured by direct customer citizenship behaviour (advocacy, help in using the technology) and indirect customer citizenship behaviour (tolerance and feedback to the retailer for improvement). The sample consisted of 533 electronic banking customers. All research hypotheses were supported. Practically, the research findings direct retailers on the strategies required to ensure customers engage in direct and indirect citizenship behaviour to assist fellow customers in interacting with the digital technologies, and to improve the customer retail experience. Theoretically, the study extends the extant research on technology acceptance by providing more insight into its connection with customer citizenship behaviour directed towards fellow customers and retailers in the post-consumption stage of digital technology and the extent to which affective commitment strengthens these relationships.
1. Introduction
New digital technologies are significantly changing the customer retail experience (Farah and Ramadan, 2017:54). For example, today many customers shop online, use self-service checkouts, and pay with mobile devices. Retailers are investing in these convenient self-service channels to increase their own productivity and achieve greater customer satisfaction (Demoulin and Djelassi, 2016:540). Furthermore, it is predicted that the growing digital trend will revolutionise retailing in the future and will radically impact the manner in which retailers interact with their customers (Kallweit et al., 2014:268). New wave technologies – such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality and innovative delivery systems – are expected to transform the consumer retail experience outside of traditional time and location boundaries (Parkin et al., 2018:1–2).
7. Conclusions, limitations and future research directions
The aim of the study was to introduce and test a social exchange model and to identify factors that would predict customer citizenship behaviours towards fellow customers and retailers. The research findings then assisted in addressing the aim by verifying the extent to which post-usage technology beliefs and affective commitment are interconnected and may drive customer citizenship behaviours in a retail setting.
