Consumer-facing technology in retailing: how technology shapes customer experience in physical and digital stores

Retailing is currently undergoing radical changes due to the rapid level of technological advances in the industry (Sohn 2024). Technology and digital services help shape consumer experience, providing retailers with the potential to create a richer store experience for consumers. New in-store technology does not only affect the efficiency and experiences of store employees but also how consumers experience retail environments (Grewal et al. 2023). Therefore, this special issue focuses on an important subset of in-store technology affecting consumer experience, namely consumer-facing technology, defined as technologies that consumers interact directly with in either physical or digital stores (Inman and Nikolova 2017; Lorente-Martínez, Navío-Marco, and Rodrigo-Moya 2020; Shankar et al. 2021). Consumer-facing technology is often supplied or facilitated by the retailers themselves. Many retailers offer self-checkout solutions, where in-store service encounters with store personnel are replaced with self-service technology used by consumers on their own or assisted by staff. Technology can of course also be used in actual in-store service encounters between consumers and store personnel (Söderlund, Oikarinen, and Tan 2022). Consumer-facing technology plays an important part in contemporary in-store marketing, for example in the digital displays, kiosks, and signage that consumers encounter in contemporary stores. Some retailers even attempt to integrate virtual reality and augmented reality technology into their digital and physical stores (Heller et al. 2019). In addition to the technology supplied by retailers, consumer-facing technology also includes consumers’ in-store use of their own technology, such as for example using their mobile phones for unrelated tasks (scrolling, texting, e-mailing) while shopping in physical stores (Grewal et al. 2018). Retailers are increasingly using and investing in various in-store technology to further their market position and today most consumers have tried some type of consumer-facing technology. In all kinds of retail stores, consumer-facing technology can be present throughout the entire customer journey, from the pre- to post-purchase phases (Roggeveen and Sethuraman 2020), and previous research has demonstrated its ability to enhance consumer experience and create experiential value (Hoyer et al. 2020). Yet, the research in this important field is still limited. Adding to the research, the six articles in this special issue all examine different aspects of consumer-facing technologies in retailing. Their topics range from literature reviews to empirical studies of consumer responses to specific kinds of consumer-facing technologies.

In the first article ‘The link between consumer-facing technologies and customer experience in physical retail environments: a critical literature review’ Lahmeyer and Roemer report a detailed and comprehensive semi-systematic literature review of the extant research that has empirically examined how consumer-facing technology relates to customer experience in physical retailing. Based on four interviews with experts and their own review of 31 research articles, the authors indicate several research gaps, in addition to outlining new research areas and objectives for future research. The article also offers a conceptual model of the antecedents and consequences of customer experience with consumer-facing technologies in physical retailing. In their review, the authors describe a steadily increasing stream of research from 2014 to today, reporting both positive and negative outcomes of customer experience with consumer-facing technology. While about half of the reviewed articles examined consumer-facing technology in general, the other half focused on specific types of technologies, such as mobile phones, augmented reality, virtual reality, self-checkout, and service robots. Concluding their article, Lahmeyer and Roemer call for more research focusing on specific technologies in specific retail industry settings (e.g. examining the use of self-checkout technologies in grocery stores), as effects seem to vary between different types of settings and technologies.

Fortunately, many of the other articles in this special issue do indeed focus on specific technologies as these are applied in specific retail contexts. One such technology is, as mentioned, the mobile phones that we as modern consumers so often use while visiting stores. There is some concern in the retail industry that this mobile use may distract consumers, monopolizing their attention and thus preventing retailers from exposing them to in-store offers and promotions. In ‘The distracting effect of mobile phones on visual attention in consumer decision-making: a gaze behavior perspective’, authors Bažantova and Novak address this potential distraction effect of mobile phone usage on visual attention for products in retailing. The eye-tracking study reported in the article focused specifically on mobile usage unrelated to purchase decisions, namely an unrelated conversation on a mobile phone during the decision-making phase. The study examined whether consumer distraction in the form of the mobile phone conversation influenced visual processing (gaze behavior), as well as whether consumer distraction via mobile phone conversation moderated the relationship between visual attention and consumer preferences. Results showed that visual attention during the product choice decision process for soft drink products was not markedly affected by the mobile phone conversations, although using a mobile while making a purchase decision did impact the effect of preferences on visual attention. These findings are encouraging, considering the ubiquity of mobile phones in contemporary retail environments, and should be useful for retailers to consider when designing their in-store marketing. As mentioned, mobile technologies can also be used intentionally by retailers in service encounters between store personnel and consumers. In the article ‘How to infuse mobile technologies in frontline service encounters? An experimental analysis of customer perceptions of service competence’, Röding, Wagner, Steinmann, Maennekes, and Schramm-Klein examine the positive and negative effects of infusing mobile technology in service encounters. The article focuses on situations where the mobile technology is used to assist and augment, but not substitute, the service encounter between a customer and a store employee, comparing three types of service encounters: technology-facilitated encounters, technology-assisted encounters, and technology-free encounters. Results from the study indicate that technology infusion in service encounters have a negative impact on trust in the frontline employees, but a positive impact on consumer willingness to pay.

Consumer-facing technologies can of course also be used by retailers to substitute in-store service encounters with human employees entirely, for example by switching to self-service technology. In ‘Is it all about fun? Self-service technology acceptance in Germany’, Aguirre Reid, Vetter, Lackes, and Siepermann explore which factors may increase both experienced and inexperienced German consumers’ intentions of using self-scanning and self-checkout in a hypermarket. The study indicates that trust in the system and underlying technology is important regardless of previous experience of self-service technology, whereas fun is more important for prospective users, and perceived usefulness (and trust) become more important for long-term usage. The authors also include a structured literature review of the research on self-service technology in their article. Another type of service encounters where the human service provider is replaced by technology is consumer service encounters with virtual agents. In the article ‘“I do not know”: an examination of reactions to virtual agents that fail to answer the user’s questions’, Söderlund examines what happens when a virtual agent openly discloses that it has knowledge gaps, by claiming to be unable to answer questions posed by consumers. The article reports an online experiment, where consumers responded to scenarios featuring virtual agents with a varying ability to answer consumer questions about running shoes. Results from the study indicated that a higher ability of the virtual agent to answer questions from consumers had a positive effect on the perceived service quality, and that this effect was mediated by perceived competence, openness, usefulness and learning benefits. The author notes that these findings imply that retailers should perhaps avoid programming virtual agents to explicitly disclose that they are unable to answer questions. Finally, in ‘Does metaverse fidelity matter? Testing the impact of fidelity on consumer responses in virtual retail stores’, Frand, Peschel, Otterbring, DiPalma and Steinmann focus on metaverse retailing, more specifically on virtual retail stores that consumers visit using VR (virtual reality) technology, such as VR glasses. Multiverse retailing and virtual stores are not yet a central part of mainstream retailing, but both are predicted to become important parts of the phygital retail landscape of the future. In a laboratory experiment, the authors examined the importance of metaverse fidelity for consumers visiting virtual stores. In the experiment, consumers visited a virtual store, for which the degree of metaverse fidelity was varied by using different types of VR equipment, providing consumers with a higher or lower fidelity store experience. Interestingly, higher fidelity did not have any general positive effect on consumer intentions to revisit the virtual store. For female consumers, however, browsing the virtual store using the higher fidelity equipment had a positive effect on revisit intentions for the store.

As the guest editors of this special issue, we would like to express our sincere thanks to all the authors for their submissions, to the anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of the manuscripts and insightful comments, and to Professor Ulf Johansson for giving us the opportunity to publish this special issue. We hope that the articles in this issue will not only add to our knowledge about consumer-facing technology in retailing, but also inspire further research on this important topic.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hanna Berg

Hanna Berg is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Stockholm Business School, Stockholm University, as well as a Research Fellow at the Stockholm School of Economics’ Center for Consumer Marketing. Her research focuses on consumer behavior, retaling, and advertising. Her work has been published in scholarly journals such as the Journal of Business Research, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Advertising Research, and The International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research.

Elin Nilsson

Elin Nilsson is an Associate Professor at Umeå School of Business, Economics and Statistics at Umeå University and a research fellow at CERUM (Centre for regional science), Umeå University . Her research focuses on consumer behavior, retaling, and sustainability. Her work has been published in scholarly journals such as the Journal of Services Marketing, Service Marketing Quarterly, International Journal of Retail and Distribution Management and The International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research.

Karina T. Liljedal

Karina T. Liljedal is an Associate Professor at Stockholm School of Economics’ Center for Consumer Marketing and a Research Fellow at Stockholm School of Economics’ Center for Retailing. Her research focuses on consumer behavior, retaling, and advertising. Her work has been published in scholarly journals such as the European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Advertising Research, and The International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research.