Retail Experience Marketing : A study on customer perceptions of successful in-store experience marketing within retailing

Abstract: It has been shown that in today’s society, businesses will need to consider not only selling products or services, but also experiences in order to fulfil customers’ increasing demand for more stimuli in purchase situations. Additionally, brick and mortar retailers will need to respond to the increased use of online sales channels through finding ways of attracting customers to their stores. One way of responding to both trends can be to practise Experience Marketing and thereby offer holistic, stimulating and memorable customer experiences at every purchase situation. With this insight, this thesis will investigate which specific factors that are perceived as important when creating successful in-store experiences. From this, the aim is to create a framework based on customers’ perceptions that can be useful for brick and mortar retailers when implementing experience marketing. Five propositions of what factors to include in order to create successful experiences are presented. These are tested and further developed through both quantitative and qualitative research. The empirical investigation results in the creation of a final suggested framework including the supported propositions, one new Additional Factor and several suggested subcategories within each factor. The final framework suggests following factors as important when creating successful experience marketing: Store Environment, Employee Characteristics, Senses and Additional Factor.