Designing satisfying service encounters: website versus store touchpoints

Ruth Bolton, Anders Gustafsson (), Crina O. Tarasi () and Lars Witell ()
Additional contact information
Anders Gustafsson: Norwegian Business School (BI)
Crina O. Tarasi: Central Michigan University
Lars Witell: Linköping University

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 2022, vol. 50, issue 1, No 8, 85-107

Abstract: Abstract This study investigated how touchpoints moderate the antecedents of customer satisfaction with service encounters by comparing online and in-store encounters. Construal level theory was used within the Touchpoint, Context, Qualities (TCQ) Framework (De Keyser et al., 2020) to integrate a comprehensive model of how touchpoints—websites or stores—influence the magnitude of customer responses to qualities of service encounters. A hierarchical linear model (HLM) was estimated using survey data describing the service encounters of 2.4 million customers with a global retailer. Online customers weighed cognitive and behavioral qualities more heavily than in-store customers, whereas they weighed emotional and sensorial qualities less heavily. Moreover, random effects in the HLM model indicated that each country and store would have unique clientele effects for specific qualities. Since each firm has limited resources, this research offers guidance on key qualities in designing satisfying service encounters for each touchpoint and how qualities should be standardized and customized in global omnichannel environments.

Keywords: Service; Strategy; Encounters; Relationship; Retailing; Satisfaction; Experience; Touchpoints; Multichannel; Context (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11747-021-00808-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:joamsc:v:50:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1007_s11747-021-00808-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer ... gement/journal/11747

DOI: 10.1007/s11747-021-00808-9

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science is currently edited by John Hulland, Anne Hoekman and Mark Houston

More articles in Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().