Although it appears increasingly important yet potentially challenging to attract customers to physical stores, location-based messaging, i.e., delivering mobile phone messages using data about the recipient's location when that recipient is near the sender, has been said to enable such attraction. Still, existing studies offer very limited insight into which particular location-based persuasion approach retailers should use. Drawing on persuasion theory, this exploratory study aims to investigate and compare the potential of two discrepant persuasion techniques (scarcity and social proof) to influence customers' experiences and thereby stimulate them to visit the retailer's physical store. A factorial survey design was applied to test the research model. Data were collected from a sample of actual customers of a Dutch fashion retailer (n = 579). The results suggest that scarcity is a more effective persuasion technique in the studied context than social proof; scarcity-focused messages appear to be experienced as more informative, more entertaining and less irritating, seem to be valued more because of this, and are thus more likely to incline customers to visit the store. We discuss these findings and their implications for theory as well as for practice.
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Although it appears increasingly important yet potentially challenging to attract consumers to physical stores, location‐based messaging has been said to enable such attraction. Still, existing studies offer very limited insight into which particular location‐based persuasion approach retailers should use. This study aimed to establish and compare the potential of two discrepant persuasion strategies to influence consumers’ experiences and thereby stimulate them to visit the retailer's physical store. Drawing on persuasion theory and construal level theory, and using a vignette‐based online survey method, we determined that scarcity is a more effective persuasion strategy in the studied context than social proof; scarcity‐focused messages are experienced as more informative, more entertaining and less irritating, are therefore valued more, and are thus more likely to induce store visits. We discuss these findings and their implications for theory as well as for practice.
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What is a pop-up store and how can it be used for organisational counterspacing? The pop-up can be interpreted as a fashionable and hypermodern platform focusing on the needs of a younger generation of consumers that searches for new experiences and is prone to ad hoc decision-making. From this perspective, the pop-up is a typical expression of the experience economy. But it is more. The ephemeral pop-up store, usually lasting from one day to six months, is also a spatial practice on the boundary between place as something stable/univocal and space as something transitory/polyphonic. Organizational theory has criticized the idea of a stable place and proposed the concept of spacing with a focus on the becoming of space. In this article, the pop-up store is introduced as a fashionable intervention into organizational spacing. It suggests a complementary perspective to non-representational theory and frames the pop-up as co-actor engaging everyday users in appropriating space. Drawing on Lefebvre’s notions of differential space, festival and evental moment, theory is revisited and then operationalized in two pop-up store experiments. Apart from contributing to the ongoing theoretical exploration of the spacing concept, this article aims to inspire differential pop-up practices in organisations. https://www.linkedin.com/in/overdiek12345/
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