The role of spatial presence in establishing customer engagement in the mobile retail applications: a contingency perspective

Abstract

This study develops and investigates the mechanisms through which retail mobile-app cognitions—i.e., interactivity and vividness—are translated into spatial presence experience and subsequently result in customer engagement under the parasol of the hierarchy-of-effects model and the situated cognition theory. The contingency roles of need for cognition and domain-specific interest as individual intrinsic tendencies and issue-specific motivations, respectively, are also scrutinized. A dataset obtained from a survey of 558 customers is employed to estimate the proposed research model. The results indicate that interactivity and vividness significantly stimulate the spatial presence experience, i.e., feelings of “being there” in the mobile-app environment; in turn, this drives customers to become more engaged and contribute to retailers that provide such experiences. The moderating roles of the two motivations are also identified. The study makes crucial contributions to the field of retail marketing by developing and investigating a theory-driven dynamic and contingent model of customer engagement in the context of retail mobile apps. Specifically, drawing on the hierarchy-of-effects model, we deepen the theoretical understanding of the sequential effects of mobile app cognitions on spatial presence experience, which in turn leads to customer engagement under the conditional impacts of need for cognition and domain-specific interest. The situated cognition theory complements the hierarchy-of-effects model by disentangling the two categories of embodied and embedded cognitions (i.e., interactivity and vividness, respectively) to explain spatial presence experience. As such, we advance the knowledge pertaining to enablers that generate a specific experience, that feeling of “being there”, in virtual environments. In general terms, we add to the development of foundation theories in the realms of SPE and engagement behaviours in virtual retailing environments. In addition, by empirically validating the proposed dynamic model, we not only support the applicability of the two theories in the context of the specific study but also offer practical knowledge for retailers to design mobile apps that foster consumers’ interactive and vividness cognitions, facilitate the feeling of a “real” shopping experience and ultimately encourage customers to actively engage and effectively contribute to participating retailers.