Smart retailing: the role of smart retail technologies in the customer experience, engagement, and social presence. Application to a smart fitting room. 

Diane Detry, Louvain Research Institute in Management and Organizations 
Ingrid Poncin, Louvain Research Institute in Management and Organizations 
Marion Garnier, Grenoble Ecole de Management 

Summary 
Current challenges in the retail industry have forced the spawn of many in-store technologies to keep customers entertained and satisfied. This raises the question of their impact and the consumer’s appreciation of such tools. This work investigates how interacting with a smart fitting room affects perceived social presence, consumer experience, and consumer engagement, acknowledging the importance of in-store social interactions and the role of shopping in meeting social needs. We do so by manipulating the level of interactivity and personalization offered by the machine, considering other mediators and control variables such as artificial empathy and content vividness. This paper addresses social aspects of ISTs currently overlooked in the retail literature, through an innovative methodology combining a video-based online study and a lab replication, thus bringing methodological contributions on top of managerial insights on technology implementation. 

Keywords: Smart retailing, smart retail technologies, customer experience, customer engagement, social presence. 

Navigating differentiated promotional practices: examining consumer fairness perceptions in omnichannel retail. 

Ophélie Duquesne, Louvain Research Institute in Management and Organizations 
Simon Hazée, Louvain Research Institute in Management and Organizations 
Caroline Ducarroz, Louvain Research Institute in Management and Organizations 

Summary 
In today’s connected world, retailers must rethink and effectively execute their marketing strategies across channels to stay competitive. Despite the several benefits of omnichannel retailing, whether to unify or differentiate promotional practices across online and offline channels remains a controversial topic among researchers and practitioners, potentially impacting business performance. Building upon fairness theory, this multi-experiment research first investigates consumer responses to these promotional strategies and highlights consumers’ aversion to differentiated promotional practices across channels. Secondly, authors delve into consumers’ processes to uncover the reasons why consumers perceive a promotional deal available both online and offline differently from an equivalent online-exclusive or an offline-exclusive deal. Such insights offer retailers clear strategic guidelines to tailor their promotional approaches without hurting consumers’ fairness perceptions. 

Keywords : Differentiated Marketing Decisions, Promotional Practices, Fairness Perceptions.

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