An In-Store Mobile App for Customer Engagement: Discovering Hedonic and Utilitarian Motivations in UK Grocery Retail

This paper investigates the hedonic and utilitarian motivations that may influence UK grocery consumers to adopt and use new features proposed for an in-store mobile app. The scope of this research is to develop a conceptual model that reflects the motivations for using an in-store mobile app to engage customers. Two pilots were conducted to explore possible attributes for hedonic and utilitarian motivations found in literature, and factor analysis was used to test their validity. A survey with the final items selected was used to collect data from a large UK grocery retailer resulting in a sample of 633 customers. The results supported that utilitarian motivations for grocery shopping include time convenience, performance expectancy and information availability. For the hedonic motivations, the attributes supported include idea motivation, personalisation, value motivation and experiential shopping. Although previous research conceptualised user control as an important utilitarian motivator, this research found that this attribute correlates similarly to both, hedonic and utilitarian motivations. Possible implications are that regardless of customers’ hedonic or utilitarian preferences, it is always essential for customers to have the ability to choose and customise what data and communications they share and receive for successful in-store mobile app engagement.