Kundenanforderungen an ein digitalisiertes Einkaufserlebnis im Möbeleinzelhandel – Identifikation und Klassifizierung von Features mit Hilfe des Kano-Modells

With the widespread use of smartphones, the boundary between the digital and analog worlds in retail has been blurring since the Covid-19 pandemic at the latest. Mobile apps, technologies such as augmented reality, and services such as click & collect are now opening up numerous approaches for companies to digitize the stationary shopping experience in order to offer relevant added value and thus increase customer satisfaction. Against this backdrop, this paper uses the example of furniture retailing to examine what customers expect from a digitized shopping experience. Based on a review of existing literature, 31 potential digital services and functionalities are first identified. These are then examined in a survey of 106 respondents regarding their influence on customer satisfaction and classified using the Kano model as must-be, one-dimensional and attractive features, among others. A large proportion of the services and functionalities examined are categorized as attractive features. The most important attractive features include services such as Click & Collect, Click & Return, and Shop & Deliver, and functionalities such as live checking of merchandise availability, virtual space planning, and searching for the nearest store. A website and cashless payment methods are seen by customers as must-be features. A robot that assists customers while shopping and answers questions is classified as a reverse feature and would lead to dissatisfaction. The results provide important insights for decision-makers on the customer-oriented further development of digitization in stationary furniture retailing.