How customer experience incongruence affects omnichannel customer retention: The moderating role of channel characteristics

Omni-Channel Customer Experience (In)Consistency and Service Success: A Study Based on Polynomial Regression Analysis

“…The prior refers to "the consistency of information features across different channels" [29], while the latter represents "the degree of consistency of relevant and comparable process attributes across channels" [30]. Although some extant literature has implied that omni-channel retailers ought to provide consistent customer experience, there has been a limited number of studies on omni-channel customer experience consistency [28].…”

“…We therefore pay attention to the dyadic nature of omni-channel consistency, and propose that customers desire online experiences that are consistent with offline ones [23]. In specific, following Gao et al [28] conceptualization, we define omni-channel customer experience (in)consistency as a (discrepancy) congruency between the offline and online customer experience. Consistency occurs when a customer's offline customer experience is of equivalent quality with his/her online customer experience.…”

“…Defined as customers' subjective responses to the contact with a company, customer experience captures their general assessments of a retailers' services, brands, and products [5,14]. Customer experience has been an enduring research realm for both academics and practitioners because it is an important antecedent of customer retention [28], loyalty [42] and ultimate behavior intention [43]. Therefore, superior customer experience has become a powerful tool for retailers to secure competitive advantage.…”

“…Thus, omni-channel businesses represent an unprecedented opportunity for brands and retail companies to leverage synergies between channels to synchronize customers' multichannel experiences [27]. Great efforts have been made to examine customer experience in both the offline channel environments (in the physical retailing literature) and online channel settings (in the virtual retailing literature), yet few studies have integrated offline and online research perspectives or developed an omni-channel understanding (Research Gap 1) of customer experience [5,7,28].…”

“…Based on these two dimensions, extant research has shed light on various types of channel consistency, such as promotion congruence [31], visual e-channel congruence [32], image congruity [33], cross-channel congruence [1], and retailer-brand incongruity [34]. Although customer experience captures a holistic judgement of interaction quality, and it is becoming the norm for customers to expect a consistent shopping experience across different retail channels [28], there has been little research on the consistency of multichannel customer experiences [35]. Further, although customers experience offline and online channels separately, without exception, prior studies applied unilateral and holistic measures, and none used a dyadic measurement methodology for consistency (Research Gap 2) in comparing offline customer experiences with online ones [20].…”