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Entertainmerce and Phygital consumers - Changing preferences for
retail shopping destinations and retailtainment options
A Anuradha1, Jambulingam Manimekalai2, Arumugam Thangaraja3
1 Vellore Institute of Technology, Business School, Chennai
2 School of Management & Marketing, Taylor’s University, Malaysia
3 Vellore Institute of Technology, Business School, Chennai
Abstract
Customers today are looking for interesting shopping destinations both physical stores and web
stores, to spend some leisure time with their friends or family members to gain joyful experience.
They are more phygital and frequently get to know all the details of the products and services they
need through the online web sources and web store portals. Although they gain knowledge about
these stores by engaging in web rooming, about 80% of them are still buying the products by
visiting the stores/web stores which has provisions for entertainment. Retailing is hence forth
going to be about the experience and not the product and its attribute alone. Consumers want their
virtual shopping basket to include attractive product/ service of good quality that, which fulfils
emotional desires, enhances their knowledge, productively engages them, entertains them and
helps them in the path of enlightenment through delightfulness. This study mainly focuses on the
digital revolution in shopping destinations, the concept of retailtainment, entertainmerce and the
process of managing the Phygital customers which are the major factors shaping the shopping
behaviour of the consumer in a major way. The result of the Conjoint analysis provides an insight
that the modern entertainmerce is most preferred by customer respondents compared to their
choice of conventional retailtainment options provided by the retailers.
Key Words: Phygital Consumers, retailtainment, entertainmerce, shopper behaviour analysis,
entertainment, entertainment options
1. Introduction
The physical retail industry now and then finds its solution to the falling sales and tries to revive
the magic by offering additional frills to its customers rather than giving them just a standard
shopping experience. The utility factor in the retail outlets are taken care of by providing the
merchandise need by the customers. The novelty factor sought by the customers can be provided
only with the help of entertainment elements such as F&B, multiplexes cinema, modern gaming
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arcades etc., Today’s phygital customers are demanding more by forcing the retailers to sustain
their breath of sales into the new retail world that competes to offer better customer experience.
Shopping is making people feel a sense of relaxation and is looked upon as an option to relax from
the daily routine of work-life. Shopping is chosen to be the best opportunity or pill to keep up the
work-life in balance. A large part of the urban population craves to step out of their regular routine
every day to do shopping online or in physical stores, seeking experience to explore the best
product options to satisfy their family needs. Family shopping needs are completely different from
that of the bachelor’s shopping needs. Bachelor as a customer does a lot of shopping online and
takes the suggestions from his or her friends of his age who are having the same years of
experience in choosing those products. But the family encompasses all the members belonging to
all the generations (generations X, Y and Z). Therefore in countries which give much importance
to the structured family orientation the challenge before the retailers today is to move out of their
comfort zone and to innovate products and service methods that can satisfy all the family members
belonging to different generations.
2. Review of literature
The success of social networking sites shows that young customers love to share the social
media contents such as videos, pictures, stories, jokes, comments, critiques, games, articles,
profiles, preferences and even advertisements with their peers through these online platforms
(Kaan Varnali., et.al., 2011).With their mobile devices people need not wait till they reach home or
to reach the place where the person with whom they have to converse. Through social media
customers can tell their friends about their day, criticize a movie, talk about a product they used or
share a wonderful picture which they had taken using their in-built mobile camera. Therefore it is
time for the retailers to think in line with increasing their in-store traffic (both physical and web
stores) by engaging the customers in entertainment activities to observe them inorder to design and
deliver the delightful experience/s. This would automatically increase the customers’ lifetime
value with the store. The following literature review shows the importance of entertainment in
retailing and also the ways in which the customers can be engaged to increase their patronage.
Sherry L. Lotz, Mary Ann Eastlick, Anubha Mishra, Soyeon Shim (2010), in their work on
understanding patrons' participation in activities at entertainment malls have discussed in depth
about the “Flow theory” which is a psychological condition typified by feelings of customers such
as intense involvement and vigor during their visit to the store.
Thomas Leclercq, Wafa Hammedi and Ingrid Poncin (2018), in their research study on
gamification for engaging customers, opine that despite the increasing use of gamification
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mechanics to engage customers in firms’ activities, the risks related to such use remain unclear.
The field experiments conducted by them show that win/lose decisions weaken the benefits of
gamification and in the case of losing a competition, there seems to be negative impacts on
customer experience and engagement. The researchers suggested suitable methods to make
gamification mechanics more effective and provides recommendations to properly implement it.
Alessandro De Nisco, Maria Rosaria Napolitano, (2006) in their research study provides
empirical evidence about the main factors that influence the adoption of entertainment orientation
by shopping centres and found a positive link between entertainment orientation and performance
outcomes.
Jason Sit, Bill Merrilees, Dawn Birch, (2003) in their study on "Entertainment‐seeking
shopping centre patrons: the missing segments", identified six market segments of shopping centre
patrons labelled as ‘serious’, ’entertainment’, ’demanding’, ’convenience’, ’apathetic’ and
’service’ shoppers. Out of the six segments the entertainment and service shoppers are identified as
entertainment seeking segments.
Alessandro De Nisco, Maria Rosaria Napolitano, (2006) in their study on the entertainment
orientation of Italian shopping centres provides shopping centres and other retail organisations
with clear guidance in developing strategies for incorporating entertainment into the traditional
retail setting.
Maya F. Farah et.al (2019) opines virtual reality as a multi-sensory experience which plays
an important role in the current business environment. The researcher investigated the efforts taken
by retailers to increase the usage of head-mounted devices by the consumers and its impact on the
shopping experiences of the consumers. They also attempted to do a qualitative study with the
technical experts and the consumers. The findings of the study showed an expectation’s gap which
was the difference in the customer experience while using virtual reality and the physical in-store.
Sanu Meena et.al (2019) with the increase in traffic related problems coupled with the
evolving lifestyle of people in general, it has become imperative to focus on trips intended for
other purposes as to understand the minds of the customers. In most of the urban scenarios,
shopping trips constitute the second most frequented trips after the work trips.
Retailing is not just about buying the product in the outlet, it is about a sought-after unique
experience which could satisfy the joined members seeking them, such as, friends, family,
corporate companions, birthday party groups, meet-up members etc., who are always looking for
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some kind of novelty or the other when they are in groups. It should include enjoying, learning,
emotional and enlightening options for these novelty seekers. As this generation is always with the
portable kit (mobile phones) which moves along with them to serve them by offering all that they
need, the application developers for the retail business are much focused on embedding all these
options for entertainment on one side and the physical stores are trying to make it all real time
entertainment experiences in terms of store image in their stores to attract more number of
consumers. Entertainment is defined as play put on display (Martin Zerlang, 2015).
The context driven actions of the retailers are decided by the availability of huge amount of
customer data in volume and variety with the retailer conceptualised as “Big data”. Who the
customers are? What they are buying? How they are buying? And where else they are buying? are
very clearly analysed by the retailers for effectively designing the new entertaining attributes in the
store. Shopper behaviour analysis helps in the decisions on the channels of distribution to be
focused and also on the necessary attributes in the store whether it is online or physical stores. By
tracking the customer across online and offline channels, the customer is placed at the centre of all
marketing activities.
The cash registers , loyalty cards, social media, beacons, handheld scanners, in-store traffic
videos, online click streams and the mobile wallets of the customers clearly helps the retailers to
capture the interests of the customers to enable them with personalised products and services. This
gives a greater scope for the designing of retailtainment options like gaming in online shopping
portal and setting up of aquarium, dolphin pools, multiplexes and food courts in the retail spaces.
Identifying the attributes that needs development to increase the traffic in the outlet is the
real challenge that is ahead for today’s retailers. The common store attribute enhancement on day-
to-day basis can be done with the help of metrices like the “gap analysis”, data envelope analysis
(DEA), churn, factor, cluster analysis, multidimensional scaling techniques etc. There is a need for
in-depth analysis (Viz., the RFM analysis) on the volume of money spent by the consumer in-order
to identify the possible opportunities to enhance the paid recreational activities in the store. It is
found from research that marketers focus on game schemes and prizes to trigger player’s intrinsic
and extrinsic motivations and elicit certain behavioural responses such as sharing personal data and
forwarding the game.
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Role of entertainment in Retailing
With the advent of the television, socializing has become very less among the young and the old
population. Tangibility of the socializing experience and entertainment cannot be compared with
the online formats. Some of the traditional and the modern entertainment options are listed below.
a. Traditional Store entertainment options
Some of the traditional store entertainment options are Kids play area, Concerts, Toy Train, Free
Sample shop, Magic Show, Fashion Ramp Walk, Dramas and plays, Festival theme decorations
and displays, Bike trips for customers, Snow world, In-store Music, Product launch event,
Birthday cake cutting for customers, Horror house, Runway Show, Off- store events (Marathon),
Meet and Greet (Book Launch), Lucky draw, Work-out class and Meditation (Experiential events),
Charity events and celebrity events during festival seasons, Flash Mobs, Product Treasure Hunt,
Food Fest and Food Court, Sky Walk, Massage Chair, Turkish ice cream vendor’s performance,
Free- Fish Pedicure, Comedy clubs, Art and Craft exhibition etc.,
b. Modern Store entertainment options
Some of the major modern store entertainment options are Gaming Zone, Virtual Mirror, VR
Game, Animation character display, Aquarium in the Mall, Gaming Arcades etc.,
c. Modern web store management and entertainment options for Phygital customers
Managing the modern web store is a challenging task as data is key to the interface
between consumers, their content shopping experience and brand, as well as to innovation in web
store attributes. To harness these three drivers the company needs to focus on the empowered
customers, involved advertisers and organised collaborative digital business enterprise. By
collecting the information of the customers through various social media platforms like Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn etc., and pre-processing it, the ontology is constructed (Fig.1) which consists of
relationships among the customers using social media as knowledge base for further process.
Ontology deals with questions concerning what entities exist or can be said to exist, and how such
entities can be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and
differences. The proliferation of digitized content, web access, and social media has made the
companies to have the ability to mine and analyze detailed /contextual information which is not
previously available. Based on the constructed ontology the demographic and the psychographic
(activities and interests) data of the customers are obtained and their expectations are analysed.
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The existing gap between the expectation of the customers and the level of perception of the
company about its web store attributes are filled by improving these attributes in order to give
higher levels of satisfaction by enhancing the web store attributes to the customers.
Eunju Suh and Joseph J.West estimated the impact of showroom entertainment on the restaurant
revenues in a casino in a Las Vegas hotel. The findings of the research showed a positive
relationship between the daily showroom headcount and food and beverage revenues.
Patric Van Esch et.al (2019) in their “study on anthropomorphism and augmented reality in the
retail environment”, randomly selected the consumers/shoppers using augmented reality on a
mobile device and demonstrated that anthropomorphism influences consumers’ experiences of AR
and their attitudes towards brands that use it.
Sean Sands, et.al (2014) investigated on the educational and entertaining events within the store
environment among the task-oriented customers and recreation-oriented customers. The findings
of the study revealed that the task-oriented customers derived more value from the education
focused events while the recreation oriented customers appreciated both but more of entertainment
focused events.
Atieh et, al (2017) attempted to examine the impact of augmented reality on user experience and
satisfaction of the customers. The result showed that augmented reality play a vital role in
shopping the user experience.
The above review of the available literature shows the signs of the preference of “Entertainmerce”,
which is a combination of entertainment and e-commerce by the customers especially the younger
generation. The depiction (1) below shows the traditional and the emerging modern retailtainment
options available in many of the modern retail stores in India.
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Depiction (1) Traditional and the emerging modern retailtainment options available in the
modern retail stores in India
3. Objectives of the Study
The primary and the secondary objectives of the study are listed below
1. The primary object of the study is to focus on the digital revolution in shopping and to find
out the perception of consumers towards the concept of retailtainment and entertainmerce
in modern retailing.
2. The secondary objective of the study is to categorise the phygital customers based on their
preferences on the type of entertainment they look for in the retail outlet.
4. Research Methodology
Samples of 153 customers shopping both in physical stores and in web stores were chosen for the
study from the major companies and institutional catchment area of Chennai city. Conjoint
analysis is used to calculate the importance score and utility scores to measure the weightage given
by the phygital customers to the retailtainment and entertainmerece attributes offered by the stores.
Virtual Reality
Augmented Reality
Collaborative
Web based
Interiors
Nautical
Contemporary
Traditional
Bots
Interactive Voice
Personalization
Musical Concerts and Dance
Concerts
Flash Mob
Light-Music
Sports Events
Work-out Class
Meditation
Marathons
Stage Events
Magic Show
Dramas and Plays
Comedy clubs
Retailtainment
Entertainmerce
Conventional Entertainment
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5. Analysis and Interpretation
Around 49 % of the sample population are young adults and 37% of sample phygital customers are
millennials and the remaining 14 % are baby boomers. The economic status of the sample phygital
customers ranges from 3 lakhs to 15 lakhs per annum. It was ensured that all the respondents
engage in buying from both physical stores and web stores to come under the phygital category.
The result of the conjoint analysis is discussed below.
Analysis on Modern entertainment options
Table.1: Conjoint analysis with attributes of entertainmerce
Model Description
N of Levels
Relation to Ranks or Scores
Virtual Reality
3
Discrete
Interiors
3
Discrete
Bots
2
Linear (more)
Interactive Voice
2
Linear (more)
Personalisation
2
Linear (less)
All factors are orthogonal.
Utilities
Importance
value
Correlation
Pearson's R
Utility Estimate
Std. Error
0.441*
Virtual Reality
Augmented Reality
.076
.170
28.106
Collaborative
-.084
.200
Web based
.008
.200
Interiors
Nautical
.240
.170
29.723
Contemporary
-.315
.200
Traditional
.075
.200
Bots
Yes
-.017
.256
14.138
No
-.034
.511
Interactive Voice
Yes
-.360
.256
14.122
No
-.721
.511
Personalisation
Yes
.158
.256
13.912
No
.317
.511
(Constant)
16.749
.679
* Significant at 0.01 level.
The term “Averaged importance score” under the box with the importance values tells us that a
Combined Conjoint Analysis has been performed. These values give us a measure (in per cent) of
the relative importance of the single factors for the determination of the utilities. We can see that
“interiors” is the most important factor whereas “personalisation” is the least important. The
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Correlation coefficients are a measure for the quality of reproduction of the empirical data by the
results of the conjoint analysis. The estimated partial values for the factor values are given in
the column “Utility Estimate”. From the utility values, it is understood that interiors and VR
the factors that make maximum satisfaction to the customers. These equations are the better
combination for the highest customer satisfaction.
From the result it is understood that augmented reality has got higher positive utility whereas the
collaborative and web based are registering higher negative utilities.
Conjoint Analysis: The individual utilities for each attributes
Figure 1: Virtual reality Figure 2: Robots for entertainment
Figure 3: Interiors Design Figure 4: Interactive Voice streams
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Figure 5: Personalized retail showroom Figure 6: Importance of all factors – An individual
projection
Interpretation
Figure 1:
Based on the individual plot on the factor virtual reality which consists of three discrete
attributes. From the result it is understood that augmented reality has got higher positive
utility whereas the collaborative and web based are registering higher negative utilities.
Figure 2:
Robots for entertainment are factors which comprises of two linear attributes. The results
are showing that the interactive voice streams are less preferred.
Figure 3
Based on the individual plot on the factor interior design which consists of three discrete
attributes. From the result it is understood that contemporary designs has got higher
positive utility and higher negative utility also. The overall summary would help the
researcher to take a decision on the interior design preference.
Figure: 4
An interactive voice stream is a factor which comprises two linear attributes. The results
are showing that the interactive voice streams are less preferred.
Figure 5
Personalized retail showroom a factor which comprises two linear attributes. The results
are showing that the personalized retail is less preferred by customers.
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Overall summary of each factor with attributes’ utility
Figure 7: Interiors design –Overall Figure 8: Interactive voice streams –Overall
Figure 8: Personalized retail showroom –Overall Figure 9: Robots for entertainment –Overall
Average importance values provide us a measure (in per cent) of the relative importance of the
single factors for the determination of the utilities. It is visible from the table 1, that “interiors” is
the most important factor whereas “personalisation” is the least important.
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Analysis on conventional entertainment
Table 2: Conjoint result for conventional entertainment
Model Description
N of Levels
Relation to Ranks or Scores
MCD
3
Discrete
SE
3
Discrete
STE
3
Discrete
All factors are orthogonal.
Utilities
Importance
value
Correlation
Pearson's R
Utility Estimate
Std. Error
0.522
Music and Dance
Concerts
.150
.141
27.322
Light Music
-.078
.223
Flash mob
-.221
.221
Sports and Events
Work out class
-.201
.336
22.329
Meditation
.094
.220
Marathon
-.332
.105
Stage Events
Magic show
-.147
.032
15.778
Dramas and Plays
.044
.552
Comedy clubs
.741
.669
(Constant)
23.422
.621
From the utility values, in the table 2 it is understood that concerts are the most preferred event
among the ‘Music and dance’ category of retailtainment and under ‘stage events’ which include
Magic show, Dramas and Plays and Comedy clubs, the comedy club is the most preferred event,
that gives maximum satisfaction to the customers. These equations are the better combination for
the highest satisfaction in the retail stores offering traditional retail entertainment options. The
Correlation coefficients are a measure for the quality of reproduction of the empirical data by the
results of the conjoint analysis. The estimated partial values for the factor values are given in the
column “Utility Estimate”
On the whole, conjoint analysis provides an insight that the modern entertainmerce is most
preferred by customers comparatively with the conventional entertainment events. Robots for
entertainment are a factor which comprises two linear attributes. The results are showing that the
interactive voice streams are less preferred. Contemporary designs have got higher positive utility
and higher negative utility also. The overall summary would help the researcher to take a decision
on the interior design preference. Interactive voice streams are a factor which comprises two linear
attributes. The results are showing that the interactive voice streams are less preferred.
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Personalized retail showroom is a factor which comprises of two linear attributes. The results are
showing that the interactive voice streams are less preferred.
6. Conclusion
With all the members in the family engaged in looking for options for shopping and
entertainment during their leisure and with the advancement in technology, it is inevitable for the
retailers to take all initiatives to integrate the digital into customers’ behaviour especially into the
behaviour of the members (customers) who belong to generation Y and Z in the families. With
such integration webrooming has become common among the customers belonging to generation
X. These Customers browse for details on the products and the physical stores in which these
products are available in the internet and other social media network sites and buy the products
online or offline. Lagging is loosing and any retailer should inculcate the innovation driven culture
in-order to maintain a competitive edge and to attract customers belonging to generation Y and Z .
The upcoming in-store technology trends like smart malls, AR+VR, facial recognition, interactive
displays, robotics, evolving pure play, gamification, technology empowered store associates,
natural language processing etc., should be used by retailers to engage their customers and enable
retailtainment. Whether the goal is to reinforce customer loyalty or to drive a stronger customer
engagement the focus should be on latest internet trends, in-store technology and entertainmerce to
sustain in the business. The success factors of live e-commerce are entertaining the customers
through event-driven formats, involving celebrities and providing flawless mobile payment
options. The preference of live e-commerce to live streaming by today’s customers urges the retail
business owners to direct their investments in live video platforms.
7. Acknowledgement
The author is grateful to the reviewers for their valuable suggestion to improve the quality of this
article
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