How and when authenticity relates to sales growth: Longitudinal field evidence from the retail customer journey

Abstract

We examine how perceived organizational authenticity relates to customer–company identification (CCI) and store-level comparable sales growth (CSG) using a rare, retailer-partnered longitudinal field dataset. Linking three waves of customer survey data to archival store-level sales across hundreds of locations, we assess how authenticity is associated with identification over time and when this relationship is strongest. Adopting an empirics-first approach, we find that authenticity is positively associated with subsequent CCI, and that CCI – rather than authenticity directly – predicts later comparable sales growth, consistent with an indirect identification-linked pathway to performance. We further examine retailer-tracked boundary conditions across the customer journey (pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase), treating them as exploratory, field-based contingencies rather than novel theoretical constructs. A complementary retail experiment provides convergent evidence for the moderating role of prestige. Overall, the study offers rare field evidence linking authenticity to customer identification and archival sales performance and identifies retail contexts in which authenticity appears most influential in practice.