Improving customer website involvement through experiential marketing
This study outlines some of the important positive outcomes of enhancing e-retailing services through adding experiential benefits. It investigates how provision of experiential values by an online store improves involvement of customers in the e- retailer’s website. This paper also looks at the impacts of experiential values on the recently developed construct of perceived e-retailer’s assistive intent and investigates whether this variable contributes to the enhancement of website involvement. Collecting data from 431 North American students through a survey on actual shopping experiences supports the overall model and the majority of the hypotheses. Findings confirm that esthetics, service excellence, and customer return on investment are effective experiential values in terms of improving e-retailer’s assistive image and enhancing customers’ involvement in the website.