The principle aim of the current communication is to scrutinize the impact of distinguished effects like variable thermal conductivity and variable molecular diffusivity on non-Newtonian Reiner–Philippoff fluid moving over a stretchable surface. The process of heat transfer is carried out in the presence of nonlinear thermal radiation, variable thermal conductivity, and heat generation/absorption. Furthermore, the study of mass transfer phenomena is carried out in the existence of variable molecular diffusivity. The PDEs regarding our model are renovated into ODEs by utilizing similarity transformation. Furthermore, the dimensionless model is tackled with the help of the RK4 method in conjunction with the shooting technique. The effects of different physical parameters that emerged during the numerical simulation on mass transfer rate, heat transfer rate, and velocity field are portrayed in the form of tables and graphs. It is noteworthy that an elevation in the heat source/sink parameters causes a reduction in the temperature profile. Moreover, a positive variation in the species diffusivity parameter augments the mass fraction field. A variation in the fluid parameter is found to be significantly affecting the shear thinning and shear thickening behaviour of the fluid. Reliability of the numerical outcomes is judged by comparing the obtained outcomes with the already available literature. The article is unique in its sense that the heat and mass transfer analysis of Reiner–Philippoff fluid under the aforementioned effects has not been investigated yet.