Online customer experience in an emerging e-retail market

Although customer experience has attracted significant attention in marketing theorizing for over three decades, research has barely progressed beyond the traditional conceptualizations of the concept. Specifically, research on multichannel retailing experience is scarce and fragmented despite previous calls to investigate how customer experience can be optimized at different channels. Additionally, although eWOM is fast supplanting traditional WOM as a determinant of consumer behavior whilst Internet platforms have been declared the future fronts for successful customer relationship management, previous studies rarely examined how consumers process and integrate multiple online reviews especially dissatisfied eWOM. Extrapolating from the foregoing, the following research question is posed: “How can online retailers exploit the link between previous shopping experiences and perceived credibility of negative experience reviews (PCoNERs) to enhance consumer-firm relationship quality?”To answer the above research question, an experience-perception-attitude model was built on the foundations of two social cognitive psychology theories (i.e. the schema theory and the elaboration likelihood model (ELM)) and consequently tested through four scenario-based experiments mapped out into one pilot study and two main studies. The pilot study and study 1 utilized a 2 × 2 between-subject factorial design while study 2 employed 2 × 2 × 2 between-subject factorial design. Data was generated from undergraduate and postgraduate students recruited from two universities located in southern Nigeria. Exploratory factor analysis, partial least squares structural equation modelling procedure, independent sample t-test, Chi-square, one-way analysis of variance, and multivariate analysis of variance were the analytical techniques utilized.Five major contributions are made. First, the thesis developed and tested a unique experience-perception-attitude model from the perspective of two social cognitive psychology theories. The ...