Merchandising/Marketing/Retailing: Management

Competing in the Digital Age: Understanding the Customer Experience of Department Stores through Mobile App Reviews

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Abstract

Mobile apps bridge the gap between the online and offline channels and transform the consumers’ buying process and experiences. Many fashion department stores have launched their mobile apps. It is necessary to explore how customers utilize department store mobile apps to achieve convenient and comfortable shopping experiences. This study explored the customers’ motivations and barriers in adopting mobile app shopping based on customer value theory, through text-mining analysis of customer reviews from eight well-known fashion department store mobile apps. The finding reveals 15 topics by providing the top eight keywords of each topic. The most heavily mentioned motivations to use department store mobile app is the ease of use as well as financial value. The barriers include technology issues, slow delivery/return, financial risks, and poor customer service. These findings could help department stores to improve their mobile app usage experience by strengthening the motivations and eliminating the barriers.

Keywords: Mobile app review, customer experience, topic modeling, customer value

How to Cite:

Li, M. & Zhao, L., (2022) “Competing in the Digital Age: Understanding the Customer Experience of Department Stores through Mobile App Reviews”, International Textile and Apparel Association Annual Conference Proceedings 78(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/itaa.13484