Predicting Trends and Building Strategies for Consumer Engagement in Retail Environments

The deep recession might explain the crush of big retailers, still, in decay after great recession retailersface the meltdown. In post-recession period, they have the real situation: overall retail spending steadily,if a little barely. The possible low-economy level of countries might not affect this situation; in fact, manyof them face recovery in economic terms as growth of wages and GDP, reduced unemployment and fuelgas, so the trend of steady shopping might be influenced by other factors: the increase of online shopping,the change of consumer aspirations and habits, the overwhelmed assortments in shopping malls,the revival of restaurants experience.In today’s digitalized and hyper connected environment, customers are at least expecting retailersto realize and achieve their needs “on” time. Retail is heavily impacted by the digital revolution andspecifically digital technology, which is the enabler that drives winning engagement for all. Customerexperience doesn’t constraint in creating a satisfactory experience during their sales journey but creatingcustomer loyalty. Consumers’ purchase experience patterns are complex and customers definitely wantquality, service, offers and convenience in their transaction with retailers. The consumer becomes sooften “seeker for discounts”, “bargain-hunters”, and “fan of fast-fashion outlets”. This dynamic natureof consumer behavior and evolving technology has created unforeseen circumstances and opportunitiesfor retailers! The key question is: are retailers ready to capitalize disruptive technologies and innovativemethods and gain a consumer’s attention?Confronting these phenomena there is a need in a research world to explore what is the today’sconsumer profile, what are occurring inside and outside of retail environment, and accordingly set theframeworks for future recovery strategies. The purpose of the book is to explore the external and internalinfluence on consumer shopping in a retail store, considering the multi-disciplinary approach, with theobjective to help retailers to overcome current situation, to find and better predict trends, rebuilt andimplement strategies in various retail segments.The book analyzes customer engagement, a very interesting topic and currently discussed amongscholars. By analyzing the contributions in this research area, it emerges that the focus is on the analysisof the attitudinal and behavioral dimensions of customer engagement, its antecedents and consequences,and its evolution on social mediaThe subject area covers multiple disciplines related to retail business as a retail management, relationalmarketing, digital marketing, consumer behaviour and marketing management. It is necessary tolink the various disciplines in order to explore the factors that influence the consumer behaviour insideand outside of a retail store. Under the retail context can be considered any retail format with its microenvironmentoffering products and service in which also the other provider of services (e.g. touristicxivaccommodations) can be included. By meaning of an environment, it can be any environment that aretail format interacts with or is influenced by, e.g. macroeconomic environment, international markets,micro-environment, web-environment, also impact of weather, technology, demographics structure etc.