Digital touchpoints in customer pre-purchase journey : quantitative research in the retailing industry for skincare product

Abstract

The thesis research focuses on the first stage of customer journey, namely the search process in a business to customer (B2C) context. The previous literature talks about the general effect of touchpoints; however, this research aims to understand what specific digital touchpoints are and their effectiveness concerning the retailing industry. In the thesis, the product category is skincare and cosmetics products.

In detail, the customer search journey is researched with touchpoints effectiveness on different search stages. Well-known previous literature about customer journey and the customer behaviors is the foundation for the thesis. Moreover, digital touchpoints are investigated deeper through quantitative research, which consists of questions about touchpoint definitions, customers’ shopping habits, digital touchpoint effectiveness, and the relationship between online and offline touchpoints. The questionnaire asks respondents’ opinions about their attitudes towards online touchpoints and channels, their trust towards those channels, attitudes towards the Internet, and buyers' criteria when searching for a product. The research brings rich insight into customers’ perspectives on the common digital touchpoints and their effectiveness. The correlation analysis was applied to find out different relationships between digital touchpoints. The findings support the previous literature about the search process and consumer behaviors and attitudes towards the search process. The thesis contributes to the theory by adding the most important touchpoints, which are identified in each stage of the search journey, besides information about duration of customers search time ‘1 hour’ with the ‘Internet’ tool into the customer search process. To sum up, the digital touchpoints take the majority of places during the search process; however, physical touchpoints still have their impacts on the customers’ time of making purchase actions.