دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی اهمیت رفتار مشتری مدار در محیط خرده فروشی جدید - الزویر 2018

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.

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. Investigating the link between technology acceptance and customer citizenship behaviour furthermore was important, considering the rapid adoption of digital technologies in the retail environment, where it has become necessary to understand how customers’ beliefs of digital technologies would drive them to directly or indirectly help fellow customers in adopting and using the technologies. Accordingly, the research findings extend 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 postconsumption stage of digital technology and the extent to which affective commitment strengthens these relationships. Finally, while the present study makes a valuable contribution to extending the technology acceptance theory, the sampling approach limited the generalisability of the findings. It is recommended that the same study be repeated on a broader scale, following a more representative sampling method to confirm the extent to which the research findings can be extended to the larger population. Future research can also consider including a cognitive attitude in the model (such as satisfaction) and verifying the degree to which emotional and cognitive attitudes strengthen the effect of technology beliefs on customer citizenship behaviour. It may also be important to compare differences between age categories and to determine if older consumers may hold different beliefs and attitudes about digital technologies than younger consumers, which ultimately may affect their willingness to engage in customer citizenship behaviours.