Yonathan Silvain Roten and Regine Vanheems
Even as retailers add digital features to their physical stores and equip their service teams with digital devices, no research has addressed the implications of frontline…
Abstract
Purpose
Even as retailers add digital features to their physical stores and equip their service teams with digital devices, no research has addressed the implications of frontline employees (FLEs) sharing a screen side-by-side with customers as a contemporary service practice. This paper aims to identify the potential customer benefits of this service practice.
Design/methodology/approach
Noting the lack of theoretical considerations of screen-sharing in marketing, this paper adopts an interdisciplinary approach and combines learning theories with computer-supported collaborative learning topics to explore how screen-sharing service practices can lead to benefits or drawbacks.
Findings
The findings specify three main domains of perceived benefits and drawbacks (instrumental, social link, individual control) associated with using a screen-sharing service. These three dimensions in turn are associated with perceptions of accepted or unaccepted expertise status and relative competence.
Research limitations/implications
The interdisciplinary perspective applied to a complex new service interaction pattern produces a comprehensive framework that can be applied by services marketing literature.
Practical implications
This paper details tactics for developing appropriate training programmes for FLEs and sales teams. In omnichannel service environments, identifying and leveraging the key perceived benefits of screen-sharing can establish enviable competitive advantages for service teams.
Originality/value
By integrating findings of a qualitative research study with knowledge stemming from education sciences, this paper identifies some novel service postures (e.g. teacher, peer, facilitator) that can help maximise customer benefits.
Details
Keywords
Yonathan Silvain Roten and Régine Vanheems
Increasingly, consumers shopping online are not doing so alone. This paper aims to identify motivations for and barriers to shopping together with relatives or friends on the same…
Abstract
Purpose
Increasingly, consumers shopping online are not doing so alone. This paper aims to identify motivations for and barriers to shopping together with relatives or friends on the same screen.
Design/methodology/approach
This study proposes an interdisciplinary theoretical framework investigating “sharing” and related commercial practices. It adopts an exploratory qualitative methodology as the phenomenon of screen sharing has not been widely investigated in prior consumer behavior literature.
Findings
Social and utilitarian motives elicit joint shopping in stores and collaborative consumption. This study reveals a third motive, related to the need for control, that drives shopping on the same screen. Screen sharing can increase efficiency, social bonds and control, due to the transparent presentation of information on the screen, but it also can cause inefficiency, social tension and struggle for control over the device.
Research limitations/implications
Screen-sharing motives reflect different logics for sharing: distribution (use with), communication (discuss with) and collaboration (control with). Defining further antecedents and consequences of joint shopping on the same screen represents relevant goals for further research.
Practical implications
By adapting their online platforms, brands can provide more agreeable, efficient and empowering experiences to screen-sharing shoppers, and thus gain competitive advantages.
Originality/value
Marketers generally assume online shoppers are alone at their screens, but in practice, many of them are often browsing together. Especially for families confined together at home, shopping together online constitutes a common practice.