Examining the relationship between customer experience and customer loyalty in the brick-and-mortar eyewear industry

In recent years physical eyewear stores in China have been faced with a challenging landscape due to negative word-of-mouth (WOM) (I research,2022) and Covid-19. As such, enhancing the customer experience to improve customer loyalty could present an opportunity to counter any effects from negative WOM and improve business performance (Lemon and Verhoef,2016). Acknowledging the importance of customer satisfaction, we take a two-step approach within this study. First, we examine effect of customer experience on customer satisfaction and then test the link between customer satisfaction on customer loyalty. We also assess customer experience role as a mediating
variable within the customer experience-loyalty relationship. In line with other scholars, we define customer experience as a customer’s subjective response to external stimuli. Customer experience is multi-dimensional, therefore, in order to effectively measure this concept, we draw on the five dimensions of customer experience. These are cognitive, affective, physical, sensory and social and (Becker and Jaakkola,2020). It is worth noting that the brick-and-mortar eyewear industry in China, the setting of our research, is an industry context that has not previously received academic attention.

Loyalty is a key important concept for businesses as loyal customers provide long-term profitability and help businesses to improve their financial performance and remain competitive (Chen, Mandler and Meyer-Waarden,2021). Customer experience is an important area of research since a better understanding of this can create value for consumers in high-priority areas and in an environment of increased competition (McKinsey and Company,2020). There are prior studies that have examined the direct link between customer experience and customer loyalty (Kandampully, Zhang and Bilgihan, 2015, Seunghwan Lee, 2018, Thakur, 2019). However, there is a clear gap in the literature when it comes to the role of other key variables within this relationship (Liu-Thompkins et al.,2022). Furthermore, Covid-19 presented an array of challenges and it is not clear if customer preferences for experience may have changed (Roggeveen and Sethuraman,2020). Therefore, previous research findings in this area may not be applicable in the current evolving consumer landscape.

Using a sample of 207 eyewear consumers from different regions across China, we test the relationships between the key constructs in our model. We found that three dimensions of customer experience have significant influence on customer satisfaction. Specifically, cognitive response is the most influential factor on customer satisfaction, followed by social and affective responses. Contrary to expectations, there was non-significant finding’s relating to the influence of physical and sensory responses on the customer satisfaction construct. As predicted, the positive impact of satisfaction on customer loyalty was confirmed. Lastly, customer satisfaction was confirmed to mediate the positive direct effect of customer experience (cognitive, social and affective responses) on customer loyalty.
In terms of the practical applications, investing in the customer's cognitive experience is the most cost-effective way to gain loyal customers in the optical industry, which includes: product price, quality, service and so on. In addition, keeping customers in a positive mood (Guzzo et al.,2021) and making them feel valued (Flacandji and Krey,2020) can also increase their loyalty.