Strengthening customer relationships in omni-channel retail: omni-channel service quality

Purpose Service quality plays a pivotal role in shaping customer engagement and loyalty across physical stores, virtual stores, and omni-channel retailing. However, the differential impacts of specific service quality components on consumer decision-making remain poorly understood. Grounded in the elaboration likelihood model, this study aims to investigate how the three components of omni-channel service quality – integration, physical store, and virtual store qualities – differentially impact customer engagement and loyalty, with customer engagement's mediating role tested under a value co-creation framework. Design/methodology/approach Consumer responses were collected through online questionnaires from two major Chinese retailers. After establishing measurement invariance across the two subsamples, the datasets were combined into a single sample of 310 responses. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was then employed to analyze the pooled dataset and examine the hypothesized relationships. Findings The results indicate that the three components of omni-channel service quality have different effects on and causal relationships with customer engagement and customer loyalty. The results confirmed that channel integration quality has an indirect effect on customer loyalty via customer engagement. In contrast, physical and virtual store qualities had no significant effect on customer engagement but positively impacted customer loyalty. Research limitations/implications This study contributes to the omni-channel retail service literature by elucidating the components of omni-channel service quality and how these components contribute to customer engagement and customer loyalty. Practical implications Retailers should adopt asymmetric strategies by optimizing physical and virtual store quality for single-channel customers, while deploying cross-channel integration features to enhance interaction and engagement for omni-channel customers. Originality/value This study advances omnichannel retailing literature by demonstrating that customer loyalty is shaped through two distinct pathways. Channel integration quality fosters customer engagement via central route processing but does not directly affect loyalty. Instead, loyalty is primarily driven by physical and virtual store quality through peripheral route processing. Customer engagement mediates the integration–loyalty relationship, suggesting that retailers should balance integration efforts with physical and virtual store quality to optimize retention.