Technological Interface Shopping and Retail Store Loyalty

: A Comparison Between Boomers and Millennials

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the world in many ways and will continue to influence the way we live in the future, not least the way we do our shopping. Contactless shopping solutions in the form of technologies are quickly becoming an all more common way for retailers to do business. With these rapid advancements comes difficulties, primarily for older generations. Prior research indicates that older generations are struggling with staying up to date with technological solutions. Understanding what effect these new technologies have on the customer is therefore an interesting aspect to examine.
Thusly the purpose of this study was to explore the customer usage of technological interfaces in electronic retail stores and how this influences the customer’s loyalty to the retail store. Further, the study aimed to understand the difference between Boomers and Millennials in this regard.
The study utilized an abductive approach in exploring the research topic. A qualitative methodology was implemented where the data was collected through 8 interviews, 4 Boomer respondents and 4 Millennial respondents respectively. The findings contributed to new insights in how electronic retail store managers
can strategize when implementing a technological interface shopping solution. Furthermore, the findings expand upon existing theory by highlighting how Boomers and Millennials approach a TI customer journey and the influence this has on retail store loyalty. Further the findings explain how the two generations
generate trust differently in a technological interface customer journey.
The main limitations with the study are as follows. Through the interview process the respondents were asked to interact with a stimulus. In hindsight this interaction could have been documented to a better extent, perhaps through notetaking. Nevertheless, this limitation is not deemed to be detrimental as the
stimulus interaction was highly vocalized through the interview. Furthermore, the data collection could have been more saturated. Even though enough interviews were held to fulfil the purpose of the study, had there been more time and resources more data collection could have garnered a more specific look at
companions on the customer journey. Despite these shortcomings the study fulfils the purpose.

Date of Award	2022-Jun
Original language	English
Supervisor	Karin Alm (Supervisor), Jens Hultman (Examiner) & Christian Koch (Examiner)