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Feeling rewarded and entitled to be served: Understanding the influence of self- versus regular checkout on customer loyalty
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Feeling rewarded and entitled to be served: Understanding the influence of self- versus regular checkout on customer loyalty

Farhana Nusrat and Yanliu Huang
Journal of business research, v 170, 114293
Jan 2024
url
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2023.114293View
Published, Version of Record (VoR)Maybe Open Access (Publisher Bronze) Open

Abstract

Customer loyalty Retail shopping experience Self-checkout Self-service technology
• The use of regular (vs. self-) checkout systems improves customer loyalty to the store. • When customers use regular (vs. self-) checkout, the saved effort during the checkout process and the customers’ sense of entitlement parallelly mediate the main effects of checkout type. • The number of items customers purchase will moderate the effect of checkout type on customer loyalty where when the number of purchased items is low (vs. high), the effect of checkout type on customer loyalty will be mitigated. • Customers’ perceived saved effort during the checkout process will mediate the moderating effect of number of items purchased by customers. • When customers are primed to think of the self-checkout experience as rewarding and accomplishing, those who use self-checkout demonstrate the same level of customer loyalty as those who use regular checkout. As the popularity of self-checkout systems has been increasing in recent years, it is imperative to understand how their usage impacts customers’ shopping experiences. This research directly compares self- and regular checkout systems to determine how they affect customer loyalty differently. Through five studies, we demonstrate that regular (vs. self-) checkout service makes customers more loyal to the store (e.g., more likely to revisit the store in the future). Additionally, customers’ perceived saved effort during the checkout process and their sense of entitlement to be served parallelly mediate the effect. The number of items purchased during a shopping trip also moderates the effect of checkout type on customer loyalty. Finally, when shoppers are primed to think of the extra effort involved in self-checkout as a rewarding experience, their store loyalty is similar to that of regular checkout shoppers. This research provides both theoretical contributions and practical implications for retail marketing.

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12 citations in Scopus

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Business

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