Main Article Content
Abstract
Online retail market is on a path of rapid growth across the world. Increase in purchasing power of consumer population in developing economies, increased access to internet, innovative marketing efforts of online retail firms continue to contribute to the growth in customer base of this sector. Impressive growth rates of the sector attract lot of firms into online retail everywhere in the world. There is a wide spectrum of online retail players from multi-products “pure’ online retail giants to small boutique firms running business on social media platforms, vying for precious market share in the online market space. The market is therefore highly competitive and volatile. Most retail players respond to this fierce competition by upping their sales and promotional efforts. Thus, frequent price-offs, discounts and other freebies have become the regular features of this market, turning customer loyalty into a remote and difficult probability for many. Though sales promotional tactics bring in short term results in the form of greater in-site traffic and increased short term sales, the threat of deal-proneness of customers arising out of price-based competition is bound to be a cause for concern in this market. Hence identifying and acting on a service differentiator is vital to the growth and survival of every firm occupying the online retail space. Online retail business, however, does not accord several opportunities for service differentiation as firms are similar in products variety or conditions of sale. In the light of positive results from traditional retail channels, customer experience seems to be a potential source of competitive differentiation in online retail. Extant literature points at the direction of positive impact of customer experience on consumer behaviour in retail (Gilmore & Pine, 2010). This paper is an attempt to analyse whether the customer experience in online retail is comprehensive enough given the complex nature of customer experience in a multi-faceted and complex service environment.