Unlocking Economic Growth: Digital Customer Experience in Grocery Retail – from traditional via unmanned to humanized unmanned supermarkets?

As grocery retail sales in Europe in 2023 were still below the 2019 (adjusted for
inflation) value, many retailers are experimenting with innovative shopping concepts
in their search for growth. Among the offline concepts, unmanned stores are
increasingly popular. We compare the customer experience of traditional, manned
supermarkets with unmanned, digitalized supermarkets. A questionnaire was created
for manned and unmanned stores. Participants acted as silent shoppers and answered
the questionnaire after their purchase. They evaluated their perceived shopping
experience, especially efficiency and repurchase intention. The framework was
tested on a sample of consumers living in Germany. Data from 157 silent shoppers
were analyzed using majority distribution. The main findings are that unmanned
stores are perceived as more efficient than manned stores. Manned stores, however,
are associated with a higher repurchase intention. Hence, leveraging both the efficiency
of unmanned stores as well as integrating “humanness” has the potential to
increase repurchase intention and, finally, to unlock growth in humanized unmanned
supermarkets.