From content to context: why some brands succeed in smart retail and others don’t

Smart retail holds significant transformative potential, yet its outcomes differ markedly across contexts. This study investigates how customer experiences in smart retail are shaped not only by technological innovation but also by the contextual actors embedded in the service ecosystem. Drawing on Service-Dominant (S-D) logic and adopting a critical realist methodology, we conducted in-depth interviews in two smart retail settings and uncovered four generative mechanisms – goal congruence, task fitness, brand synergy, and social consonance – that may explain variations in customer perceptions. We also identified previously underexplored socio-emotional perceptions, including respect, love, contradiction, attractiveness, harmony, and warmth, that illuminate the affective underpinnings of smart retail experiences. These findings introduce a contextual and mechanism-based framework that clarifies why identical technologies can succeed in some environments yet fail in others. The study advances S-D logic by showing how contextual resource integration operates through four generative mechanisms to shape value-in-context, while offering practical guidance for designing effective smart retail solutions.