Omnichannel safe customer experience: how should it be measured? Does it affect customer well-being and retailers’ performance?

Abstract

Customer safety is a fundamental need, so for customer-centric omnichannel retailers operating in competitive and technologically intensive markets, a critical question arises: do customers’ perceptions of a safe customer experience determine their sense of well-being, as well as the retailers’ performance? To offer insights into these questions, the current research relies on mixed methods across five studies in six phases to develop a multidimensional scale for safe customer experiences (SafeCX). The formative SafeCX scale, which can be adopted as either a full 48-item or a condensed 12-item version, contains 12 critical safety dimensions that constitute essential considerations for managers, as well as key concepts for researchers dedicated to customer safety considerations. Among these dimensions, several directly capture in-store technologies, such as payment systems, surveillance cameras, and technology-mediated order fulfillment processes. Other dimensions reflect online technologies, such as data protection, social media safety, and practices that bridge physical and digital channels, offering a comprehensive perspective on customer safety. Complementing SafeCX, we also develop a two-dimensional, 8-item customer well-being scale: individual well-being, reflecting effects on one’s own mental, emotional, social, and physical life; and community well-being, reflecting effects on family, friends, and the broader community. This scale enables researchers and retail managers to assess how safety perceptions translate into personal and societal value in omnichannel contexts. In turn, this research establishes that customers who indicate positive appraisals on the SafeCX scale also exhibit a higher share of wallet and stronger intentions to influence others, effects that are mediated by their well-being appraisal.