Title: Identification and ranking the significant factors influencing customer experience for shopping malls in the Indian context

Authors: Mukesh Govind Kharat; Rekha D. Chikhalkar; Manoj Kumar Jha; Manoj Govind Kharat

Addresses: National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Powai, Mumbai, 400087, Maharashtra, India ' National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Powai, Mumbai, 400087, Maharashtra, India ' National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Powai, Mumbai, 400087, Maharashtra, India ' National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Powai, Mumbai, 400087, Maharashtra, India

Abstract: Today the market is highly competitive and saturated with multiple products, to survive and sustain in such an environment customer experience (CE) plays a vital role. Globally, marketers and academicians are focusing on understanding and creating pleasant CE. For marketing managers understanding the elements essential to create experience will help in better management and creation of CE. The present research identifies and assess the critical success factors affecting CE for shopping malls and prioritises to determine which is more significant and causative to achieve promising CE. The study is based on the existing literature on 'customer experience' and results obtained from brainstorming sessions with academicians and retail industry experts. It scrutinises the critical success factors affecting CE which are finally confirmed in the context of shopping malls. With the analytical hierarchy process, 11 main factors and 28 subfactors are prioritised which are responsible for creating unique and memorable CE. The findings suggest that the brand managers must ameliorate these factors according to their weights, in order to attain superior CE and sustainable competitive advantage.

Keywords: customer experience; retail; shopping malls; determinants; analytical hierarchy process; AHP; critical success factors; India.

DOI: 10.1504/IJICBM.2020.110455

International Journal of Indian Culture and Business Management, 2020 Vol.21 No.3, pp.340 - 368

Received: 13 Feb 2019
Accepted: 15 Apr 2019
Published online: 20 Oct 2020 *

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