How technology is evolving in-store shopping behaviors: Evidence from the field

Sammanfattning: Walking into a bricks-and-mortar store today is anything but offline. Technological marketing devices greet shoppers in practically every step of their shopping trip, wherever they go. The idea of these types of shopper-facing retail technologies is to add value to the shopper in different ways. The question, though, is what impact these in-store technological elements have on shoppers and their actual shopping behaviors. The effect of shopper-facing retail technologies on shopping behaviors is the focus of this dissertation.In this dissertation, I present five research papers that aim to shed light on the question of how, and why shopper-facing retail technologies affect shopping behaviors and, in particular, purchase behaviors. The shopper-facing retail technologies that are empirically examined in the dissertation include mobile phones, in-store kiosks, music, multi-sensory displays, and virtual reality store experiences. These technologies are shown to all impact shopping behaviors, but the reason why they do differ.The studies all employ a field experiment approach and uses different types of data sources such as real sales data, shopper observations, surveys, and eye tracking; hence the subtitle “evidence from the field.” The results offer evidence on both how and why shoppers react to these types of shopperfacing retail technologies, and a number of conceptual, practical, and methodological insights are presented. For example, contrary to popular belief, retailers that wish to encourage purchases may want to encourage shoppers using their smartphones while they are shopping, as that leads to shoppers spending more time in the store and get exposed to more products