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| Version | Summary | Created by | Modification | Content Size | Created at | Operation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rob Barlow | + 2044 word(s) | 2044 | 2021-09-24 10:24:48 | | | |
| 2 | Lindsay Dong | + 576 word(s) | 2620 | 2021-09-28 08:17:10 | | |
Phygital consumer experiences provide marketers an opportunity to combine and leverage the benefits of in-person shopping with digital payment in ways that are already transforming the modern retail shopping environment.
The concept of “phygital” consumption experiences is relatively new, reflecting the novelty of the emerging digital technologies that empower them [1][2]. Phygital marketing involves crafting a consumer journey that integrates physical and digital experiences in a seamless way, creating experiences that are only possible due to the rise of emerging digital technologies [3]. For example, popular phygital approaches involve incorporating contactless payment systems, interactive touch screens, seamless digital payment systems, and augmented reality into the customer experience [4][5]. Ultimately, the use of such strategies has a wide application across industries (e.g., education, tourism, banking, etc.), but we focus exclusively on retail applications here.
There is significant excitement about the proliferation of phygital marketing in the future of retail commerce [6][7]. While research on the subject is still nascent, early work has found that phygital experiences can be designed to provide a novel and seamless experience that users enjoy, influencing customer perceptions of product value while generating trust and minimizing confusion [8]. In this paper, we review relevant findings from the literatures on retail consumer purchasing behavior, including work on the underlying psychology and neuroscience that helps to explain it, in order to better understand the role that technological innovations, including digital sensing technologies and the rise of augmented and virtual reality, can play in compensating for challenges that arise out of the digital purchasing environment. Presumably, these technologies hold potential to combine many appealing features of the “in person” purchasing experience with the ease of digital search and payment, an exciting and increasingly common combination that has recently been referred to as a “phygital revolution” [9].
Implicit in the excitement about phygital marketing is that physical experiences provide unique value above and beyond what can be offered via digital means. However, the specific sources of this marketing potential remain undertheorized, and the factors determining the appropriateness of such strategies from the standpoint of their capacity to increase sales and net ROI remain unclear. In this paper, we review relevant theoretical models and research findings in consumer psychology and consumer neuroscience with direct application to these issues. Grounded by this literature, we develop a theoretical framework to help explain the potential power of phygital marketing experiences, accounting for their unique value. In doing so, our overarching goal is to equip academics and practitioners with a scientific and practically useful understanding of the dimensions contributing to the potential value of such approaches when integrated as part of a company’s retail marketing strategies. Based on the findings of our review, we develop an account isolating two elements of the consumer experience as particularly important factors contributing to phygital marketing’s power: the pre-purchase product experience and the payment experience. Specifically, we argue that these dimensions comprise a primary source of phygital marketing’s contribution to mental gain and loss calculations dictating retail consumers’ purchasing decisions. We conclude by outlining a more general set of criteria contributing to these calculations, based on the extensive review of relevant literatures, and pose further questions for direct empirical testing and research.

We begin with a more fine-grained analysis of the elements contributing to consumer calculations regarding the anticipated costs of buying goods and of phygital’s potential impact on them, when applicable. As we have seen, these costs are described in terms of the “pain of paying” within dominant psychology and neuroscience literatures on consumer behavior. Existing research suggests that four main elements (captured on the right hand side of Figure 1) contribute to such calculations, each of which may be comprised of multiple dimensions: abstraction of payment method, physical effort of purchasing, cognitive effort of purchasing, and opportunity cost of purchasing. A description of each dimension along with lists of potential measurement variables, key questions, and relevant resources are provided in Table 1.
| Dimension | Description | Measurement Variables | Key Questions | Related Research |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Abstraction of payment method | Does the purchase take place through a direct exchange of currency for goods, or are there vehicles for indirect transacting involved? | Physical immediacy (e.g., cash vs. debit payment) | How does the physical means of transacting affect purchase likelihood and associated brain function? | [19][20][21] |
| Temporal immediacy (e.g., immediate cash/debit vs. credit/financing payment; paying in advance vs. paying upon receipt of good or service) | How does the temporal separation of purchase and payment (i.e., the degree of “coupling”) during the process of transaction affect purchase likelihood and associated brain function? | [22][23][24][21][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33] | ||
| Opportunity cost of purchasing | The amount of time it takes to complete a purchase (e.g., do customers have to wait in a real or virtual line?) | Average time to completion of purchase | How does the real or anticipated amount of time it will take to complete an initial purchase affect purchase likelihood and associated brain function? | [34][32][35][36][37][38] |
| Physical effort of purchasing | The degree of physical “strain” required to complete the purchase (e.g., does it take physical exertion to search for products or present them for purchase?) | Time spent engaging in physical vs. virtual product search, extent of physical labor involved in act of purchasing | How does the real or anticipated amount of physical effort it will take to complete a purchase affect purchase likelihood and associated brain function? | [33][39][35][40] |
| Cognitive effort of purchasing | The degree of cognitive “strain” required to complete the purchase | Process complexity | How does the complication and complexity of the purchasing process affect purchase likelihood and associated brain function? | [6][41][32] |
| Social demands | How does the amount of social interaction involved in the purchasing process affect purchase likelihood and associated brain function? | [6][42][43][44] |
| Dimension | Description | Measurement Variables | Key Questions | Related Research |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Product appeal (perceived quality) | Consumer beliefs about a product’s level of quality | Consumer beliefs about a product’s intrinsic qualities (e.g., “intrinsic quality” dimensions might include perceived attractiveness, durability, functionality, etc.) | When, for whom, for what types of products, and to what extent do consumer beliefs about a product’s “intrinsic qualities” affect purchase likelihood? | [45][46][47][48][49][50][51] |
| Consumer beliefs about product reputation and associated effects (e.g., what do others think about the product and what will owning the product lead others to think about me? | When, for whom, for what types of products, and to what extent do consumer beliefs about product and/or brand reputation affect purchase likelihood? | [49][50][51] | ||
| Product appeal (product attachment) | The extent to which a given means of showcasing the product provides consumers with experiences that generate product attachment or a sense of “psychological ownership” | Consumer attachment levels as evidenced by, e.g., self-report, willingness to exchange for a product of equal perceived quality, increased valuation relative to pre-exposure levels | For a given level of perceived product quality, how (if at all) do different types of pre-purchase “exposure” to the product (e.g., image vs. video vs. AR/VR interaction vs. first-person use) affect product attachment and purchase likelihood? How are these effects mediated by product and customer type and/or time to acquisition? | [17][52][32][53][54][55] |
| Time to acquisition | The length of time a customer must wait between completing the transaction and receiving the good or service | Consumer beliefs about time to product acquisition after completion of initial transaction | How does the anticipated time to product acquisition affect purchase likelihood? How are these effects mediated by product and customer type? | [56][57][58] |