Help us to Help you: An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Technological-Infused Frontline-Employee Service on Customer Information Disclosure at the Point of Sale
(A2019-9635)

AUTHORS

Tobias Roeding, University of Siegen; Hanna Schramm-Klein, University of Siegen

KEYWORDS

retailing; technological-infused-service; information-disclosure

ABSTRACT

The collection of customer data is one of the most sensible topics in today’s practical as well as academic discussion. On the online shopping market, every step of the customer can be monitored, stored and later used for individual advertisement or customized products. However, companies respectively retailers without such an online competence will hardly build up an extensive pool of data. Therefore, we raise the question, what opportunities the stationary market has to gather this kind of information as well. In this context, we conducted a field study to examine the effects of technological-infused frontline employee services on the customers’ willingness to disclose personal information in a traditional retail environment (N=242). The results indicate that as well the traditional (vs. technological-infused) frontline-service as the fact that an explicit, verbal explanation on the use of the collected data is given, generally enhance customers information disclosure.