The Wallpaper Matters: Digital signage as customer experience provider at Harrods (London UK) department store
- When?
- Monday 11 June 2012, 15:45 to 17:00
- Where?
- 66MS03
- Open to:
- Public, Staff, Students
- Speaker:
- Professor Charles Dennis
- Refreshments:
Refreshments served at 15:30
The Marketing and Retail Group at the University of Surrey are pleased to present Prof. Charles Dennis, Lincoln Business School, University of Lincoln, delivering a seminar titled: 'The Wallpaper Matters: Digital signage as customer experience provider at Harrods (London UK) department store'.
Biography
Professor Charles Dennis is Associate Editor (Retailing) of the European Journal of Marketing. His research area is (e-)retail and consumer behaviour – the vital final link of the Marketing process. Charles has published in journals such as Journal of Business Research, Journal of Marketing Management and European Journal of Marketing. Books include Marketing the e-Business, (1st & 2nd editions) (joint-authored with Dr Lisa Harris); the research monograph (combined textbook) e-Retailing (Routledge); and research monograph Objects of Desire: Consumer Behaviour in Shopping Centre Choice (Palgrave). His research into shopping styles has received extensive coverage in the popular media including TV appearances with Sir Trevor McDonald OBE and Adrian Edmondson; and many radio interviews, including internationally. Pure research into why people buy has led to applied research projects on both business and public funded research, making contributions to knowledge and impact of commercial value to the real world of business and the community, including, for example, developing a new environmental psychology conceptual framework for shopper responses to retail atmospherics – the ‘SEER’ model. Professor Charles Dennis’s current research focuses on (e-)shopping behaviour, especially in relation to social networking.
Abstract
This presented paper draws on the construct of brand experience to investigate the previously little-researched role of digital signage (DS) in retail atmospherics. Face-to-face between-subjects survey experiments were carried out at permanent DS installations in the UK: a pretest in a university (n=103); and a field trial at the Harrods department store, London (n=437).The findings demonstrate effectiveness of a DS sensory-affective ad (little functional information), whereas previous studies concern mainly cognitive content. DS content high on sensory cues (hedonic), evoking affective experience among customers strengthens experiential processing. DS ads high on factual information (utilitarian), evoking intellectual experience, strengthen deliberative processing and the influence of the cognitive route. Evoked affective experience is more associated with attitude towards ad and approach towards advertiser than evoked intellectual experience. The findings indicate that incidental brand-related stimuli on DS can trigger deliberative processes that lead to evaluative judgments such as attitudes. Such stimuli can also work spontaneously by evoking sensory and affective experiences and eliciting approach behavior towards advertiser. Practical implications arise as ‘affective’ DS ads can increase shoppers’ approach towards an advertiser and the store that carries the ads, especially in generating loyalty from first time shoppers.
