Building customer experience strategy in phygital retail.
Evidence from the fashion industry
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7433/s128.2025.06Keywords:
fashion industry;, phygital, omnichannel strategy, brand experience, retailAbstract
Frame of the research. Given the rising importance of customer experience and accelerating digitization, brands must meet customers wherever they prefer, urging brands to build a symbiotic ecosystem of digital and physical retail touchpoints through phygital strategies.
Purpose of the paper. The paper adopts an explorative approach to analyze the role and elements of customer experience in phygital retail strategies. Using the fashion industry as empirical setting, we investigate how customer experience can be successfully delivered in phygital retail.
Methodology. The paper combines semi-structured interviews and a press and media case analysis to highlight which elements are crucial to build an effective customer experience in phygital retail.
Results. The research identifies five key elements as those successfully creating a relevant customer experience in phygital retail: shared purpose, experience customization, core digital platform, brand positioning, and ecosystem of partnerships. If effectively integrated, they can guide organizational decision-making and strategy.
Research limitations. Main limitations relate to the impossibility to visit stores and the running of interviews online with partial control on contextual variables. Multiple sources were combined to make findings reliable, and a sample of questions was given before interviews to reduce uncontrollability. Sample size could also be further enlarged.
Managerial implications. Due to escalating digitization, brands become increasingly omnipresent in consumers’ daily life. As they must develop phygital retail strategies, this research supports managers on how they can develop a coherent customer experience throughout phygital retail touchpoints integrating five proposed elements.
Originality of the paper. Despite growing literature on phygital customer experience and retail, limited guidance for managers on how to build an effective customer experience strategy, especially in phygital retail is provided. This paper makes a theoretical and practical contribution, identifying five relevant elements.
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