Keywords

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Self-service technologies (SSTs) allow customers to experience service without directly dealing with service employees; however, these have drawn a mixed response from the customers especially in retail shopping context. Hence, it is still not clear how the perceived service quality and satisfaction with SSTs may influence customers’ overall satisfaction and loyalty towards a retail store. This study addresses this research gap using a field survey with 313 retail shoppers in the UK, a relatively new market for these technologies. Results show a lower overall preference for SSTs (e.g. self-checkout machines and online shopping) with the customers in our sample because of their higher perceived service quality and satisfaction with staffed checkouts, which in turn seems to also drive overall perceived quality, satisfaction and loyalty towards the store. We also find significant differences in these effects based on age, gender, education and income, wherein relatively younger and male customers with higher education and income levels show significantly greater preference for self-checkout and online shopping methods. These findings highlight the importance of giving customers more options to choose from, based on their personal preferences, rather than trying to make all customers use SSTs, which may lead to lower customer satisfaction and loyalty.