Customer experience analysis of cosmetics retail store on millennial women

Abstract Nowadays, customer experience is one of the most powerful forces to increase customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, service quality, and company profit, especially for the cosmetics retail industry that is strongly influenced by the hedonic aspects. Therefore, this exploratory study aims to analyse plausible combinations of factors to reveal commonalities of online and offline customer experience with retail stores to support retailers in the alignment of the store system design with the promising profile of millennial women. The study uses a combination of several methods to conduct a comprehensive analysis, namely Eye Tracking (ET), Customer Journey Analysis (CJA), Retrospective Think Aloud (RTA), and In-Depth Interview (IDI). The analytical methods deliver qualitative and quantitative data to explore both positive and negative experiences from the customer point of view. The study reveals many possible factors that can bring positive or negative customer experience from a cosmetics retail store. Based on the findings, the design recommendations for offline and online cosmetics retail stores (physical, interface, and service systems) were made to help cosmetics retailers produce a positive customer experience. This paper provides two research contributions to the field of service experience. First, the study uses an original combination of four methods that have never been used to explore the experience comprehensively. The combination can increase the depth of this exploratory study in understanding the complexity of all customer experience dimensions. Therefore, this study brings a fresh perspective on the development of the method that can be used by many researchers in a similar area. Second, this study fills the existing gap in that area of exploratory research on customer experience in the cosmetics retail sector. This study could help many cosmetics offline or online retailers to improve their store system to bring a positive customer experience to millennial women as their biggest customer segment. This study could also inform the system design for new “players” in the cosmetics retail industry with valuable guidelines for a positive shopping experience at their store.