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Inspiring Customers Early: How Social Online Touchpoints in the Pre-Purchase Phase Drive Customer Inspiration and Purchase Decisions
Schwerpunktthema: Aktuelle Herausforderungen des Handelsmanagements und -controllings
Inspiring customers is a powerful strategy for retailers to increase basket values and unplanned purchases. Based on Social Impact Theory and Shopping Goal Theory, this article examines how the socialness of the pre-purchase journey influences customer inspiration and purchase behavior. Analyzing 1,391 customer journeys, we find that higher socialness of the pre-purchase phase significantly boosts customer inspiration, but only when the touchpoints used are primarily online. Customers who feel more inspired through social touchpoints spend more (+7.3 %) and make unplanned purchases more frequently (+24.5 %). These findings highlight the opportunities for management to leverage targeted online touchpoint strategies in the pre-purchase phase to drive customer inspiration. To unlock this potential, companies should strategically realign their customer journey and omnichannel management with the goal of fostering customer inspiration.
1 Introduction
In recent years, customer inspiration has received growing attention in retail research. However, existing studies have primarily focused on inspiration during the purchase phase in brick-and-mortar environments,...