Customer experience in coffee stores: A multidisciplinary Neuromarketing approach

Companies in the service retailing industry are constantly looking for strategies to provide a customer experience that improves brand perception and increases customer loyalty. This study provides a deeper understanding of customer experience in two coffee stores in Vietnam by providing a multidisciplinary approach, including a quantitative and a neuromarketing approach. Two-hundred participants participated in the study, combining mystery shopping visits with the Brand Association Reaction Time Test (BARTT). Results from the mystery shopping visits confirm the holistic concept of customer experience. Store atmosphere, employee service, drink quality, price, and previous visits significantly impact customer experience. Empirical results also confirm the impact of customer experience on loyalty. Furthermore, the BARTT analysis shows that in-store customer experience can influence customers' short-term brand perceptions. The national brand is associated with friendly, expensive, globalized, and unique, whereas the local brand revealed significant associations with clean, smells good, welcoming, and unique. From the mystery shopping results and the BARTT, we can infer that customer experience needs multi-methodological capturing of its multifaceted aspects. Our findings are relevant to researchers and practitioners seeking to understand and bolster customer experiences, justifying a multidisciplinary approach and the application of new insightful tools.