Merchandising/Marketing/Retailing: Management

Channel Service Integration, Customer Experience, and Trust in Online Shopping in the Eye of Beauty Customers

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Abstract

As beauty businesses reduced in-person capacity and some closed completely during the pandemic, research shows that not having immediate access to beauty products impacted the psychological well-being of consumers. This study aims to assess omnichannel beauty retailer service consistency, service transparency, customer experience (flow) in channel usage, and the effect of customers’ trust on purchase intention within the beauty industry since the onset of Covid-19. Theory of Reasoned Action suggests that the stronger the intentions of a consumer leads to increased effort to perform the intended behavior, which also increases the likelihood of the behavior to be effectively performed. Previous research shows that service transparency and service consistency are positively related to customer experience or flow. Customer trust is a formed positive belief system towards the product as well as the producer that relates to the overall purchase intention of the customers. The result of this study shows that process and service consistency has a positive effect to flow, and flow has a positive effect to purchase intention. However, the flow does not have an indirect effect to purchase intention through trust. The findings of this study show that customers care about the process and service consistency across the retailer's channels as it affected their customer's experience that can affect their intention to purchase from the retailers. Although our study did not find that trust directly relates to customers’ purchase intention, previous research studies have been found to increase brand image. Hence, it is possible that by building customers’ trust, the customer will remember the retailer in the future. 

Keywords: Beauty Retailing, Channel Service Integration, Customer Experience, Flow, Trust, Purchase Intention

How to Cite:

Kopot, C. & Robertson, C., (2022) “Channel Service Integration, Customer Experience, and Trust in Online Shopping in the Eye of Beauty Customers”, International Textile and Apparel Association Annual Conference Proceedings 78(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/itaa.13567