There is no place like home: home satisfaction and customer satisfaction in online grocery retailing

ABSTRACT This study acknowledges that home is a central and valenced place for most people, and therefore it is assumed that (a) the content in people’s general category for home issues can be activated easily, particularly by various home-related stimuli, and that (b) the affective charge of such content can have a valence-congruent impact on evaluations of home-related stimuli. These assumptions were the basis for two empirical studies carried out in an online grocery shopping context with respect to home delivery. Both studies indicate that home satisfaction had a positive influence on satisfaction with home delivery – and that home satisfaction had an indirect and positive influence of overall satisfaction with the retailer that provides home delivery. These findings, then, emphasize the need to ‘emplace’ the contemporary online shopper: although the shopper faces an abundance of alternatives only a mouse-click away, he or she is still emplaced in an environment when orders are placed and when goods are received. And when this environment is home, it is particularly likely to influence home-related offers.