Sascha Steinmann

• PhD
• Professor at Aarhus University

Brands are increasingly using the metaverse to promote sales of products and services, but the social influence of avatars in that context is largely unknown. Grounded in social impact theory and impression management literature, this research investigates the impact of retail store employee avatar presence on consumer behavior. Two between- sub...

The future of retailing takes consumers to the metaverse. Yet, how these novel shopping experiences will look and feel remains largely unknown. Experts predict immersive metaverse shopping experiences will help build even deeper connections with customers. We conducted a virtual reality (VR) experiment (N = 127) into the effect of metaverse fidelit...

In technology-infused frontline service encounters, human-based service represents a high degree of uncertainty. However, understanding how technology can meet customer demands without undermining the importance of human interaction is crucial for retailers to remain competitive. However, empirical evidence comparing different types of service enco...

Purpose In this paper the authors aim to review the state-of-the-art literature on online review systems and their impacts on consumer behavior and retailers' performance with the aim of identifying research gaps related to different design features of review systems and developing future research agenda. Design/methodology/approach The authors co...

Building on the motivation–ability (MA) theoretical framework, we develop a motivation–trust–vulnerability (MTV) framework to explain behavioral decision making in situations of uncertainty and vulnerability. We apply our new framework to cross-border online shopping, which is characterized by uncertain benefits, potential losses, and increased vul...

When it comes to investigating how customers use POS technologies or which factors might promote their adoption, it is important to know which characteristics are particularly relevant from the customers' perspective. Based on three recent approaches to POS technology systematization, this research empirically categorizes POS technologies from the...

Many companies are seeking to balance between the use of information transparency to attract new customers by presenting themselves as open companies and the associated risk of losing customers, as disclosing certain information could trigger negative sentiments. Being transparent with certain information can make the potential buying process seem...

While the potential of storytelling to create emotional and memorable connections to a brand has long been realised, today’s omnichannel brands face the challenge of telling their story across a multitude of touchpoints and channels, forming a multi-associative network for customers to navigate and make sense of. With an increasingly blurry boundar...

When it comes to investigating how customers use POS technologies or which factors might promote their adoption, it is important to know which characteristics are particularly relevant from the customers’ perspective. Based on three recent approaches to POS technology systematization, this research empirically categorizes POS technologies from the...

In-store displays are a frequently used tool in shopper marketing. Empirical studies show the effects of promotional displays on sales; however, they seldom attend to the determinants of the effects of displays from the shoppers’ perspective. Thus, there are hardly any findings about the role of the display’s location in the shop. In this paper, we...

During the global coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the relevance of proximity mobile payment (m-payment) applications (e. g., Apple Pay and Google Pay) has increased due to their ability to let consumers shop inside physical stores and pay for products without having to make physical contact with a store employee or touch a card-reader...

Previous research has shown that the impact of advertising on brand attitude depends on various factors, such as the visual elements shown in the advertisement. In this study, we investigate how factors influencing the attitude towards the brand change when advertisings and brands are presented in either a rural or urban context. We conducted two e...

Recent literature discusses the increasing relevance of technology-infusion in service encounters, but only a few studies empirically investigate the impact of technology-infusion within the interaction of the frontline employee service (FES) and the customer. Based on the assumptions and implications of Social Interaction Theory (SI), the findings...

Little is known about customers’ information disclosure at the physical Point of Sale (PoS) in terms of technology-infused frontline employee service encounters (e.g. using a tablet for information gathering within a sales dialog). Transferring the Role and Script theory to this context, we assume an underlying script of employee-customer interacti...

The purpose of the present paper is to investigate if there is any effect between the depletion of self-regulatory resources during the product selection when shopping for groceries and subsequent food consumption. More precisely, we propose that consumers who have to self-regulate in purchasing decisions because of their desire to keep their baske...

This study analyzes the impact of implementation intentions as well as restrictions on the delay of gratification in children. We assume that both strategies impact the decision process of children in different ways: While implementation intentions activate the mental representation of specified cues that help pursuing a goal, restrictions support...

This research contributes to broadening understanding of online retailing across electronic channels (e-channels, e.g., mobile devices) and e-channel touchpoints (e.g., mobile shopping apps) from a consumer perspective. Based on the multichannel retailing approach and theoretical considerations, the authors suggest an enhanced perspective on the on...

Marktdaten belegen, dass die Akzeptanz von In-Store M-Payment, trotz technologischer Fortschritte und vermehrter Bezahlmöglichkeiten, gering ausfällt. Daher ist von Interesse, inwieweit die Akzeptanz von In-Store M-Payment von der Bereitschaft Technologien zu nutzen abhängt. Insbesondere stellt sich die Frage, ob gewisse Kundensegmente eher dazu ne...

Vicarious embarrassment is a negative emotion, which is experienced by an individual when others misbehave. People can feel vicariously embarrassed when observing other people's pratfalls or awkward appearance. For instance, vicarious embarrassment is elicited when watching reality TV or in service encounters where many other customers are present....

Mobile apps have gained a tremendous popularity. In 2016 more than 140 billion apps were already downloaded from the app store, generating a sales volume of $28 billion and by far, gaming apps are the most popular and profitable app category. Given this enormous potential, it is surprising that little research is known about the drivers of market s...

Products presented in reality have a higher chance to be purchased than products that are symbolically presented as a photograph (Müller 2013). Loewenstein (1996) explains the superiority of the products presented in reality by the fact that the presentation’s sensory richness increases vividness. Thus, shoppers experience the gratification arising...

In this article, we develop a conceptual framework for online retailing that contributes to broadening the understanding of online shopping across electronic channels (e-channels) and e-channel touchpoints. For this purpose, we define an e-channel as a category of Internet-enabled devices (e.g., mobile devices) that consumers can use to interact wi...

Based on the huge potential and the predicted growth of the mobile gaming app market, the research questions arise, how mobile gaming apps should be designed and which factors will trigger their success in the market. The icon as a pictorial presentation of the app is likely the first elements of a mobile app that will get the consumer visual atten...

It has been common for retail companies to use multiple channels simultaneously (Rangaswamy and van Bruggen 2005). However, simultaneous use is only the first step in creating a customer-centric multichannel system that demands channel synergies rather than parallel retail formats (McGoldrick and Collins 2007). At issue is therefore not the degree...

When online retailers operate more than one electronic distribution channel (e-channel), they have to manage the individual online distribution channels (such as an online Web site and a mobile shopping app), but they also have to manage the degree of synergies and complementarity across these channels. Though many retailers already provide diverse...

In the past years a huge market for mobile applications has evolved and it is to be expected that this market will considerably grow in the future. Within this market mobile gaming apps are the most important category. Mobile games have accounted for 30.9% of the mobile content market in the U.S. in 2015. Given this enormous potential of mobile gam...

Purpose: This research analyses how children behave during a purchasing process in a simulated shop and how they put their goals into effect at the point of sale (POS). The focus of this research are children in Germany between the age of eight and 12. The results reveal answers to the following questions: which criteria do the children consider i...

In deutschen Haushalten nimmt die Anzahl an internetfähigen TV-Geräten (iTV) beständig zu, ebenso wie der Anteil von iTV-Besitzern, welche die Online-Funktionen ihres iTVs aktiv nutzen. Durch diese Entwicklung, in Verbindung mit der generell zunehmenden Relevanz des E-Commerce, bieten iTVs vielfältige Möglichkeiten für den vertrieblichen Einsatz. N...

We used a multidimensional sequence alignment method to cluster customers (N = 304) of a German multichannel retailer for consumer electronics according to the multidimensional sequences of their realised customer contacts (dimension 1), the functions of the realised contacts (dimension 2) and the importance of the customer contact (dimension 3). I...

Das verbraucherpolitische Leitbild befindet sich im Wandel. Der notwendige Abschied vom umfassend informierten und nutzenfixierten mündigen Verbraucher wurde durch die interdisziplinäre Verbraucherforschung eingeleitet. Niemand hat mehr einen Otto Normalverbraucher vor Augen, sondern es entwickelt sich ein vielfältiges Bild von Situationen, Rollen...

Im Jahr 2014 nutzen erstmals mehr Personen den Internetzugang über mobile Endgeräte als über stationäre Computer oder Laptops (comScore 2014). Somit haben sich mobile Endgeräte (insbesondere Smartphones) zu einem festen Begleiter in dem Alltag von Konsumenten entwickelt. So verlassen 87 Prozent der Smartphone-Besitzer ihre Wohnung nicht ohne Smartp...

Online communities are often focused on consumption-related consumer interests and offer marketers the opportunity to actively engage and cooperate with consumers, foster customer relationships, and easily spread information about new products and services. In spite of this enormous potential, it is surprising that to date, little is known about ho...

This essay deals with the different forms of engagement and evaluation of members of social on-line networks such as Facebook or Google+. From the perspective of marketing the authors provide an overview of the passive and active participation of different member types in social online networks. Drawing on literature and findings of empirical studi...

This essay deals with the different forms of engagement and evaluation of members of social online networks such as Facebook or Google+. From the perspective of marketing the authors provide an overview of the passive and active participation of different member types in social online networks. Drawing on literature and findings of empirical studie...

Evaluating products in virtual environments is constrained by the inability of ecommerce to provide a touch-and-feel experience compared to the way to experience products in traditional retail stores. Research has shown that this limitation could be reduced by enabling users to experience products virtually by providing a stimulating virtual produc...

This article describes four studies that served the development (studies 1 and 2) and the validation (studies 3 and 4) of an instrument for measuring emotions in research with German-speaking consumers. The result is the Inventar kaufbegleitender Emotionen (IKE), which comprises 13 emotion categories and reflects a broad range of emotions that can...

With the increasing availability of Internet-enabled devices (such as smartphones and tablet PCs), online shopping behavior changes and shifts to a multidevice usage. This implies that retailers have to operate and manage diverse online channel formats. Next to the individual capabilities of an individual online channel, we expect that interactions...

With regard to the topicality of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in retail practice, only a few studies have comprehensively analyzed the role of CSR in retail. Due to the specific role of a retailer as a gatekeeper between the producer and the consumer in the supply chain, a comprehensive understanding of the impact of consumer perceptions o...

Children are a key target group for retailers and manufacturers (Effertz, 2008; Schor, 2004). Consequently, children are exposed to many marketing messages (Cross, 2002; Kunkel et al., 2004), which is evident in an increasing amount of advertising directly aimed at and targeted towards them (Kunkel, et al., 2004) and a large number of products spec...

From its beginning the digitalization of media was accompanied by the introduction and use of new forms for online and interactive advertising, e.g. banner, interstitials, e-mail advertising, ad-games, and in-game advertising (Silberer, 1997; 1997a; 2000; Fritz, 2004; Schulz et al., 2008). This development is still going on and includes efforts of...

It has been common for retail companies to use multiple channels simultaneously. However, simultaneous use is only the first step in creating a customer-centric multichannel system that demands channel synergies rather than parallel retail formats. Therefore, the perceived integration of customer-related functions and processes between the channels...

An established way to analyze shoppers' behavior at the point of sale consists of identifying their paths through the store as well as their approach behavior towards different shelves. Such proceeding allows e.g. for optimizing product placements or in-store advertising and guidance. Since there is a technological challenge in doing this inside th...

Mit der Digitalisierung vieler Medien ging von Anfang an eine rasante Neuentwicklung neuer Werbeformen einher. Dies gilt vor allem für das Internet. Zu diesen neuen Werbeformen zählen Banner, Interstitials, Streamings, In-Game Advertising und Advertising Games sowie die E-Mail-Werbung, das Werbeplacement in e-Mails und das Website- Sponsoring (vgl....

Many commercials are still broadcast on TV, and many TV users often only have it on in the background without paying particular attention to the program. This article focuses on the impact of advertising in such situations. The discussion is centered on the following question: does it make a difference to the impact of advertising whether or not fo...

Dieses Kapitel beschäftigt sich mit der Beschreibung und Abgrenzung des Untersuchungsgegenstands dieser Arbeit. Dies ist notwendig für die zielgerichtete Bearbeitung, vereinfacht die Datenerfassung und die Interpretation sowie die Einordnung der Ergebnisse in den Stand der Forschung. Hierfür ist die detaillierte Beschreibung des Untersuchungsobjekt...

As a specific form of below the line communication, online adgames have emerged as one recent method of branded entertainment. In contrast to in-game advertising, adgames are developed or adapted by the company itself and further serve as a means to publish the advertising message. The potential of advertising with computer games becomes apparent f...

We used a sequence alignment method to cluster customers (N = 132) of a branch of a German consumer electronics retailer according to the sequence of the customers' contacts with its different marketing channels (e.g. store, homepage, newspaper advertising) during the whole purchase process. In doing so, we obtained three clusters in a short sequen...

We used a multidimensional sequence alignment method to cluster customers (N=151) of a German tour operator according to the multidimensional sequences of their customer contacts (dimension 1), their functions (dimension 2) and importance of the customer contact (dimension 3). In doing so, we obtained four clusters. Results reveal differences in th...