The impact of consumers’ transaction experience on the retailers’ transaction-specific brand equity: an analysis into consumers’ transaction experience with contactless technology in the context of the UK

This research gave an insight to the concept of transaction experience and established it as a construct; by defining and by establishing measures for the construct. The study also added knowledge to the transaction-specific outcomes and portrayed the impact of transaction experience on transaction-specific brand equity.

Transaction experience occurs while customers are at the checkout, to pay for their purchase. Hence, it is very essential for retail management to ensure that customers undergo a speedy, convenient, enjoyable and secure transaction experience. The overall customer experience is the made up of different stages of experiences at various touch points and transaction experience is one of them. At a retail store the ultimate idea of majority of customers is to save time and effort in their day-to-day shopping. In particular, during the Covid-19 situation in 2020/2021, transaction experience has become one of the major concerns, whereby social distancing and the ‘touch’ factor have become the main concern, especially at the checkout. However, not many studies highlight the importance of transaction experience, neither there exist any definition or measure for this construct.

Therefore, this research had been carried out to account for these gaps mainly, by exploring the concept of transaction experience, the transaction-specific outcomes from transaction experience and its impact on transaction-specific brand equity. The study has undertaken a mixed-method research design, predominantly a quantitative approach, supported by understandings from an exploratory phase, which embraced in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. In this study, transaction experience was treated as a second order variable and is considered as a formative in nature. It is measured in a formative manner through perceived transaction speed, perceived transaction convenience, perceived transaction enjoyment, and perceived transaction security, which are the lower order constructs.

The first stage of this research involved an extensive literature review, where multi-item measures from studies in social psychology and business studies were gathered. The second stage involved interviews and focus groups with customers and professionals to collect more items and to purify current items. The third and final stage involved quantitative survey to examine the validity and reliability of the multi-item measures obtained (regarding transaction experience and other constructs) and to examine the relationships between the constructs. A sample of 500 respondents was used to perform multivariate analysis of the data, which included exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling using Partial Least Square (PLS) 3.3.5, to account for the complex model and to ensure that the scales developed were valid and reliable.

The findings of the qualitative analysis led to some major revision and redesigning of the entire conceptual model which was initially designed based on the literature review. Some of the relationships were revised and some hypotheses were nullified. In addition, the qualitative findings pointed towards a couple of moderation (age and profession) and mediation (perceived reputation and brand personality) effects, which were later on incorporated into the revised model. Moreover, the qualitative findings led to some of the construct being renamed (transaction-specific brand personality to brand personality and transaction-specific reputation to perceived reputation).

The quantitative findings supported the significance of the measures of the higher order construct, namely, transaction experience. All the lower order constructs, i.e., perceived transaction speed, perceived transaction convenience, perceived transaction enjoyment, and perceived transaction security are significant measures of transaction experience according to the quantitative analysis. However, the quantitative study did not support and validate some of the hypotheses. For example, it did not support and validate the effect of transaction-specific performance, transaction-specific association, and brand personality on transaction-specific brand equity. Moreover, the moderation effect of profession was not too significant. Although the moderation effect of age was not quite significant, it did have some effect for the younger generation only (moderation effect included two groups, young and elderly generations). The non-validated relationships from the quantitative analysis were well explained and justified by the qualitative analysis. Thus, it is significant and beneficial for the researcher to adopt a mixed-method study.

This research has several theoretical, methodological, managerial and social contributions. Theoretically it contributes to the concept of transaction experience, defines and establish measures the construct. In addition, identifies the transaction-specific outcomes and its impact on transaction-specific brand equity. The major methodological contribution includes the use of PLS statistical software, to analyse the conceptual framework allowing the simultaneous modelling of multiple layers and also studying formative and reflective variables at the same time. Managerial contribution is extended in terms of studying transaction-specific brand equity, which is an important topic for decision-makers, business developers, advertisers, and retail management as it involves profit, loyalty other financial benefits. The social contribution is small yet significant; which is likely to make a checkout experience for customers speedy, convenient, enjoyable and secured.