Lost in Co-Creation: A Mystery Shopping Approach to Assess Retailer Omnichannel Readiness

Omnichannel services can be considered as complex new service developments (NSD) integrating offline and online offers into one streamlined experience. Yu & Sangiori (2017) show that in a NSD context service design and value co-creation are essential parts of service success. However, to our best knowledge, only a few studies investigate the implementation and success of omnichannel services from these perspectives. The research at hand provides an innovative exploratory research approach in using the participant observation method of mystery shopping (MS) in combination with a critical incident approach and a service quality perspective to shed more light on the real-world performance of omnichannel services in stationary retailing. Therefore we follow a prescriptive approach and integrate consumer and retailer perspectives. The objective of the study is to design an easy-to-implement, parsimonious value-in-use measurement instrument, to continuously observe omnichannel service co-creation and assess its outcomes. We observe the omnichannel measures of two competing nonfood retail chains in a German-speaking region in Europe. In total we visited 42 stores. In all stores, the environment was first analyzed regarding the implementation of the omnichannel concept. In addition, a disguised participant observation of the behavior of the sales staff was carried out (accounting for reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy). A service failure was staged for this purpose. Subsequently, the interaction with the sales staff was observed based on an observation protocol. To assess the quality of information gathered through the MS and compare it to more traditional service quality assessments we additionally conducted 168 face-to-face interviews with store customers. The main conclusion of our research is that omnichannel retailing does not stop at implementation. Following the service dominant logic, value is co-created in every single transaction. As suggested by Yu & Sangiori’s (2017) NSD model we consider omnichannel service design a continuous process. Omnichannel readiness is not an end state to be designed once, but a multifaceted value co-creation process with the customer that requires constant monitoring and continuous improvement. The approach outperformed a traditional survey which gave no indication of service failure in co-creation.