WeChat mobile-payment-based smart retail customer experience: an integrated framework

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of WeChat mobile-payment (m-payment)-based smart technologies in improving the retail customer experience and to develop an integrated framework of the smart retail customer experience including antecedents, consequences, and moderators. Based on the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) paradigm, we investigated the relationships among socio-technical stimuli, the smart retail customer experience, and relationship quality. We also developed hypotheses regarding the moderating role of customer lifetime value (CLV), which is considered an important customer characteristic. The proposed framework was empirically tested based on transaction and survey data of 462 WeChat m-payment retail customers. The results showed the following. (1) WeChat m-payment-based smart retail technology can enhance the customer experience by improving customer-perceived relationship orientation, employee-customer interaction, and communication effectiveness. (2) CLV has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between socio-technical stimuli and the customer experience. (3) The customer experience has a positive influence on relationship quality in the retail industry. Retail managers should make full use of smart retail technologies to improve the customer experience. In addition, they should emphasize the increase in CLV, as this increase enhances the positive relationship between socio-technical stimuli and the customer experience, making customer experience management more efficient.