International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management

Mapping touchpoint exposure in retailing: Implications for developing an

omnichannel customer experience
Marco Ieva, Cristina Ziliani,
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Mapping
Mapping touchpoint exposure touchpoint
in retailing exposure in
retailing
Implications for developing an omnichannel
customer experience
Marco Ieva and Cristina Ziliani Received 28 April 2017
Department of Economics and Management, University of Parma, Parma, Italy Revised 28 September 2017
22 December 2017
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29 January 2018
Accepted 9 February 2018
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify the patterns of customer exposure to touchpoints by
segmenting consumers based on the frequency of their exposure, and to understand the relationship of
patterns of exposure with customer loyalty intentions (relationship commitment, self-disclosure and positive
word-of-mouth) and demographic characteristics.
Design/methodology/approach – An online survey of almost 4,000 customers was employed in a
supermarket retail setting. Customers were segmented based on their frequency of recalled exposure to
multiple touchpoints, by means of a latent class cluster analysis, while considering the role of demographic
characteristics. Afterwards, loyalty intentions variables were regressed on the resulting customer segments.
Findings – Based on the touchpoint exposure, six customer segments emerge. The main differences across
segments relate to the intensity of frequency of exposure and the types of touchpoints customers have been
exposed to. Sex, age, shopping role and geographic area of residence are related to segment membership.
The identified patterns of exposure explain relationship commitment, self-disclosure and positive
word-of-mouth: clusters displaying higher exposure to touchpoints display higher loyalty intentions than
clusters displaying lower exposure.
Practical implications – The study offers actionable implications for brands and retailers on how to
manage touchpoints for implementing omnichannel strategies.
Originality/value – As far as the authors know, this study is the first to identify exposure to multiple
touchpoints and understand the role of demographics as far as touchpoint exposure is concerned.
It also provides interesting findings on the relationship of different combinations of touchpoints with
customer loyalty.
Keywords Loyalty, Segmentation, Touchpoints, Latent class cluster analysis
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
The proliferation of channels has led to an explosion in the number of different touchpoints
within the customer journey (Hall and Towers, 2017; Pantano and Viassone, 2015;
Simon et al., 2016). Touchpoints are the verbal or nonverbal incidents an individual
perceives and consciously relates to a given firm or brand (Baxendale et al., 2015;
Duncan and Moriarty, 2006). The increased number of channels and touchpoints is putting
pressure on retailers to design omnichannel customer experiences (Verhoef et al., 2015).
“Customer experience is the evolvement of a person’s sensorial, affective, cognitive,
relational, and behavioural responses to a firm or brand by living through a journey of
touchpoints along pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase situations” (Homburg et al.,
2017, p. 8). In fact, a seamless experience across online and offline touchpoints will deliver a
stronger overall customer experience (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016).
To develop customer experience, practitioners have started to adopt customer experience
management (Homburg et al., 2017). The customer experience management framework is a
firm-wide management approach for designing customer experience. The final goal of
customer experience management is achieving long-term customer loyalty by designing and International Journal of Retail &
Distribution Management
continually renewing touchpoint journeys (Homburg et al., 2017). Defining which touchpoint © Emerald Publishing Limited
0959-0552
journeys matter and hence deciding where to begin the (re)design of such touchpoints is DOI 10.1108/IJRDM-04-2017-0097
 IJRDM indeed a challenging task (Rawson et al., 2013). Despite the growing importance of
touchpoints, relatively little is known about their nature and scope (Payne et al., 2017).
As far as their nature is concerned, traditionally touchpoints were identified with media, but
today it seems necessary to consider touchpoints in a broader view. As far as touchpoint
scope is concerned, Lemon and Verhoef (2016) argue that the question of whether specific
touchpoints can reach specific customer segments is still unanswered. Hence, identifying
customer segments based on their exposure to touchpoints and profiling the segments
in demographic terms would expand our knowledge about the scope of touchpoints.
Previous research has found that the frequency of exposure to touchpoints influences brand
consideration (Baxendale et al., 2015). No research, however, has been produced so far on the
relationship between touchpoint exposure and customer loyalty, which is the ultimate goal
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of customer experience management (Homburg et al., 2017; Payne et al., 2017).

To address these research gaps, this paper aims to:
(1) identify the patterns of customer exposure to touchpoints by segmenting consumers
based on the frequency of their exposure. The analysis is based on a sample of almost
4,000 customers involved in grocery shopping in a supermarket retail context;
(2) identify the contribution of demographic attributes in their relationship with
customer exposure to touchpoints; and
(3) estimate how patterns of exposure to touchpoints might be related to customer loyalty.
This study makes the following contributions:
• to the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to identify the customer segments at
a touchpoint level by measuring exposure to 23 touchpoints with a substantial
sample of consumers; and
• it sheds light on how consumer demographic characteristics are related to exposure
to touchpoints and how exposure to touchpoints is related to customer loyalty.
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. First, it reviews previous research on
touchpoints, both in the advertising and services literature, and presents the study’s
conceptual development and research questions. Then, it employs a latent class cluster
analysis (LCCA) to reveal heterogeneous customer segments with reference to their
touchpoint exposure. The paper concludes with a discussion of the results, limitations and
implications for practice and future research.

Background and conceptual development

The proliferation of channels and touchpoints has made the customer journey more complex
and difficult to manage (Hall and Towers, 2017; Simon et al., 2016) in that consumers
have an increasing number of opportunities to decide how and when to be in touch with
brands and retailers (Wind and Hays, 2016). Creating and managing a consistent experience
across all touchpoints is, therefore, a key issue (Homburg et al., 2017). Touchpoints include
and go beyond channels and media, as they encompass any encounter in the customer
journey that could be related to a firm (Baxendale et al., 2015). In fact, Baxendale et al. (2015,
p. 236) define touchpoints as “episodes of direct or indirect contact with the brand”. These
can take many forms, such as online platforms, physical environments or personal
interactions (Voorhees et al., 2017). A huge number of touchpoints have been identified in the
literature, including traditional media, in-store, telephone, salesforce, catalogues, customer
service, payments, returns, loyalty programs, digital, e-mail, paid and organic search,
display ads, word-of-mouth and so forth (Baxendale et al., 2015; Li and Kannan, 2014;
Peltier et al., 2003; Romaniuk et al., 2013; Wind and Hays, 2016; Zahay et al., 2004). To cope
with this variety and to provide a touchpoint organising framework, multiple ways of
 classifying touchpoints have been proposed. Lemon and Verhoef (2016) have classified Mapping
touchpoints based on the subject that manages and controls them: the company itself, touchpoint
a business partner of the company, the customer, or external factors (e.g. a peer, the exposure in
environment). Other researchers have distinguished between firm-initiated and
customer-initiated touchpoints (e.g. Anderl et al., 2016) with a focus on whom is starting retailing
the occurring interaction. Another proposed classification distinguishes between personal
vs non-personal touchpoints (Payne et al., 2017), thus highlighting the presence or absence
of a human component within the interaction.
To evaluate the role of touchpoints within the customer journey, scholars and
practitioners stress the importance of considering reach and frequency of exposure.
Advertising literature has explored reach and frequency of exposure recall with reference to
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media touchpoints. Reaching consumers belonging to the right segment with the right
message is indeed essential for media placement (Romaniuk et al., 2013). Previous research
has found differences in terms of recall between brand users and non-users: brand users
systematically recall more, having been exposed to brand advertising for longer than
non-users (Vaughan et al., 2016). In terms of the intensity of brand usage, social media and
word-of-mouth are touchpoints that have been found to reach heavy brand users while
television advertising, gift-pack, in-store displays/promotion and outdoor advertisements
reach average brand users (Romaniuk et al., 2013). In a nutshell, research on touchpoints in
the advertising literature does not deal with differences in terms of recalled frequency of
exposure to a touchpoint, or combination of touchpoints, nor does it consider non-media
touchpoints, such as loyalty programs. Therefore, the following research question was
formulated for this study:
RQ1. Can customer segments be identified based on frequency of exposure to touchpoints?
Exposure to touchpoints has been found to be predicted by consumer attributes. Several
studies have showed that males are more oriented towards online media than females
(e.g. Ieva and Ziliani, 2017; Van Deursen and Van Dijk, 2014), while Romaniuk et al. (2013)
did not find any relationship between touchpoint reach and sex. Age has been found to
influence the reach of media touchpoints (Romaniuk et al., 2013). Product sampling, social
media, websites, public relations, word-of-mouth, events and online advertising tend to
reach younger consumers (aged up to 35 years old). Baxendale et al. (2015) have found that
the frequency of exposure to touchpoints is negatively correlated with age in the cases of
word-of-mouth, peer observation and brand advertising. Studies on medium preference for
non-promotional communication and loyalty promotions report that younger consumers
tend to prefer online over print touchpoints (e.g. Ieva and Ziliani, 2017; Magee, 2013).
Lemon and Verhoef (2016) hypothesise that touchpoint preference might differ across
generational cohorts, with millennials more favourable than baby boomers and Generation X
towards online and non-personal touchpoints. These non-conclusive findings reveal the need
for a closer investigation into the relationship between demographic attributes and exposure
to touchpoints. Thus, a second research question was formulated:
RQ2. Are demographic attributes related to consumer exposure to touchpoints?
Frequency of exposure to touchpoints contributes to shaping attitudes and behaviours
(e.g. Baxendale et al., 2015). It has been found to influence brand attitudes, such as brand
consideration (Campbell and Keller, 2003). Specifically, it is brand advertising, peer
observation, in-store communications and retailer advertising that have been found to
influence brand consideration (Baxendale et al., 2015). In the services literature, studies on
customer experience have investigated the relationship between the former and customer
loyalty. Klaus and Maklan (2013) have found a positive relationship between customer
experience and customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and positive word-of-mouth.
 IJRDM Srivastava and Kaul (2016) and Brun et al. (2017) have found that customer experience
directly impacts attitudinal and behavioural loyalty. However, the mentioned studies did not
consider the role of specific touchpoints (nor combinations of them) within the customer
experience itself in customer loyalty. Assessing the relationship between exposure to
touchpoints and customer loyalty remains an open research area (Lemon and Verhoef, 2016;
Payne et al., 2017). Hence, the following final research question was formulated:
RQ3. How are patterns of exposure to touchpoints related to customer loyalty?
To address the three research questions, this study measures the recalled frequency of
exposure to touchpoints, i.e. customers recalled how frequently they encountered a given
touchpoint in a specified time period. A list was compiled identifying 23 touchpoints with
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reference to supermarket shopping by considering and integrating lists of touchpoints

employed in previous studies (Baxendale et al., 2015; Li and Kannan, 2014; Peltier et al., 2003;
Romaniuk et al., 2013; Wind and Hays, 2016; Zahay et al., 2004). The goal of this selection
process was to include all touchpoints that were relevant to the setting of reference. Previous
studies did not explicitly provide proper criteria for touchpoint selection or aggregation
(e.g. Baxendale et al., 2015) and simply excluded touchpoints that displayed low reach and
frequency of exposure (e.g. Romaniuk et al., 2013). As far as demographic attributes related
to the frequency of exposure to touchpoints, the following variables are drawn from
previous studies (e.g. Konuş et al., 2008): sex, age, number of household members, affluency,
geographic area of residence, city size and shopping role. Sex and age could be related to the
propensity to interact with online vs offline touchpoints. Number of household members,
affluency and shopping role could be correlated with price sensitivity, and with the amount
of attention devoted to promotional touchpoints. Geographic area of residence and city size
are employed as available proxies for lifestyle and education that might differ across
geographic regions and city sizes.
As far as customer loyalty is concerned, the study focused on loyalty intentions. Loyalty
intentions are defined as the “disposition of customers to either repurchase a product/
service from a providing organisation, or go to a competitor” ( Jacoby and Chestnut, 1978).
Positive word-of-mouth and relationship commitment are constructs of customer loyalty
intentions that are widely employed in service research and practice (e.g. Cho, 2006;
Klaus and Maklan, 2013; Zeithaml et al., 1996). Specifically, this study investigated the
relationship between touchpoint exposure and positive word-of-mouth, relationship
commitment and self-disclosure. As touchpoints are also key ways to gather customer
information when interaction is taking place (Zahay et al., 2004), it is important to introduce
in this context a measure of customer willingness to disclose personal information, such as
self-disclosure (Cho, 2006).
Relationship commitment can be defined as the enduring desire of the consumer to have
a relationship with a company or brand and the intention to try to maintain this relationship
(De Wulf et al., 2001; Macintosh and Lockshin, 1997). Relationship commitment has been
found to be the key antecedent of relationship maintenance (Aurier and N’Goala, 2010).
Advertising literature has shown that ad repetition can lead to a positive attitude towards a
given brand or company due to positive habituation (e.g. Campbell and Keller, 2003;
Haugtvedt and Wegener, 1994). Hence, consumers displaying higher frequency of exposure
to touchpoints might also display a higher relationship commitment.
Psychology and consumer marketing literature recognise the role of self-disclosure in
individual-to-individual and individual-to-corporate relationship-building (Clore and
Schnall, 2005). Self-disclosure, in general, refers to any inside information one provides to
another (Collins and Miller, 1994). Hence, in marketing, self-disclosure measures a customer’s
intention to provide personal information to a person or organisation (Cho, 2006). Previous
research has showed that missing personal information in the retailer’s customer database,
 reflecting customer unwillingness to share it, is a significant predictor of customer defection Mapping
(Buckinx and Van den Poel, 2005). Higher frequency of exposure to touchpoints might lead touchpoint
consumers to become familiar with encountering them. When consumers feel more exposure in
comfortable with other consumers or firms, they are more willing to divulge personal
information (Cho, 2006; Loiacono, 2015). Hence, habitual exposure to touchpoints might lead to retailing
increased consumer propensity to self-disclosure.
Broadly speaking, word-of-mouth includes any information about a target object
(e.g. a company or brand) transferred from one individual to another either in person or via
some communication medium (Brown et al., 2005; Harrison-Walker, 2001). In the present
study, positive word-of-mouth is employed as the intention of customers to provide
positive recommendations of a company (Babin et al., 2005). The influence of customer
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experience on positive word-of-mouth has been reviewed widely in the traditional offline
(Babin et al., 2005) and online (e.g. Hennig-Thurau et al., 2002) media. The present
study explores the following proposed relationship between touchpoints and positive
word-of-mouth: as repeated exposure increases favourable attitudes, one might expect
that higher frequency of exposure could lead to higher intention to provide positive
recommendations of a given company.
In line with segmentation research (e.g. Konuş et al., 2008; Sands et al., 2016), this study
employed a post hoc segmentation analysis with “a posteriori segments”. Hence, no “a priori
hypotheses” will be formulated.

Methodology
Data were collected by means of an online survey conducted in 2016. The survey was run in
Italy using the Nielsen online consumer panel. The panel includes 6,212 subjects over
14 years old and it is aimed at being representative of all the age groups that can be
considered as shoppers for at least one category of products and services. A total of
4,068 responses were collected from the subjects who are in charge or cooperate with the
household’s grocery shopping. The respondents were asked to answer the survey with
reference to the supermarket retailer which receives the highest share of their wallet for
grocery shopping. The respondents were asked to recall the frequency of exposure to
each listed touchpoint in the previous three months on a seven-point Likert scale from
“never” to “very often”.
Measuring touchpoint exposure by means of recall might be affected by bias.
Previous studies have shown that consumers are biased in recalling the past purchase
behaviour (Wind and Lerner, 1979) and that recall of affective experiences might be
inaccurate (Aaker et al., 2008). However, recall is still widely used in advertising research
(e.g. Ieva et al., 2017) and it has been specifically employed for studies on touchpoint
exposure (Romaniuk et al., 2013) and on channel usage (e.g. Frasquet et al., 2015).
To keep a potential recall bias to a minimum, the recall period was limited to the last three
months, which is consistent with the previous studies (e.g. Romaniuk et al., 2013).
The respondents had to answer with reference to the following touchpoints: store, store
flyers, private label, store associates, loyalty programme, coupons, word-of-mouth (in which
case respondents were asked if they had received recommendations from others), customer
magazine, special promotions, billboards, retailer website, newspaper advertising, e-mailing,
customer service, direct mailings, TV and cinema advertising, online advertising, radio
advertising, special events, mobile apps, customer satisfaction surveys, social networks and
mobile messaging. This list aimed to encapsulate the most relevant encounters between a
retailer and a customer within the customer journey. The touchpoint list was randomized for
each respondent to avoid order bias. Data were cleaned, and invalid responses were removed.
Invalid responses were identified by checking whether a respondent declared the same
frequency of exposure for all the considered touchpoints and by evaluating response time.
 IJRDM Data cleaning yielded 3,920 responses for analysis. Demographic information was collected
directly from Nielsen records. Affluency was measured by means of the Nielsen OECD
method that employs a four-level ranking based on revenue per consumption unit. The basis
for the calculation is: the household’s net income, the number of children in the household and
the total number of household members. These three components are used to compute the per
capita income for each household. City size was also measured in ordinal terms with the
following cut-offs: cities up to 20,000 inhabitants; 20,000-100,000 inhabitants; 100,000-500,000
inhabitants; and more than 500,000 inhabitants.
Relationship commitment, self-disclosure and positive word-of-mouth were measured by
seven-point Likert scales: the word-of-mouth scale was adapted from Babin et al. (2005),
measuring agreement with statements concerning intentions to say positive things to
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others, recommend the retailer to another consumer and encourage friends and relatives to
visit the retailer. The self-disclosure scale was adapted from Cho (2006) and measured the
willingness to disclose personal information to the retailer of reference. The relationship
commitment scale, adapted from De Wulf et al. (2001), measured the desire to continue a
relationship and the willingness to make efforts directed at sustaining this relationship with
the retailer. These items can be viewed in Appendix.
The analytic strategy employed LCCA to estimate latent classes or unobserved segments.
LCCA differs from the traditional cluster analysis (e.g. hierarchical or k-means cluster
analysis) as it is a model-based approach providing a probability-based classification through
posterior probability of membership (Haughton et al., 2009). LCCA has been widely used in
marketing for segmentation purposes (e.g. De Keyser et al., 2015; Madi, 2016). In the LCCA
literature, two ways for dealing with covariates have been proposed: a one-step and a three-
step approach. The one-step approach involves the simultaneous estimation of the LCCA
model of interest with a multinomial regression model in which the latent classes are a
function of a set of covariates (Vermunt, 2010). The one-step approach thus considers
covariates as the predictors of latent segments. The three-step approach entails the following
(Vermunt, 2010): after estimating the latent-class model (Step 1), individuals are assigned to
latent classes based on the proportional posterior class membership probability (Step 2) and a
linear regression analysis is carried out with proportional probability of belonging to the
identified segments regressed on covariates or, conversely, outcome variables regressed on
the proportional probability of belonging to the identified segments (Step 3). The three-step
approach thus could involve variables that have the role of covariates or outcomes. This study
employs both one-step and three-step approaches: the former to estimate latent segments and
their relationship with demographic covariates included as predictors, and the latter to
estimate the relationship between latent segments and loyalty intentions as outcomes.
The LCCA was used to segment respondents based on their exposure to 23 different
touchpoints while considering the impact of demographic variables on segment
membership. One could argue that with such a high number of touchpoints,
data reduction techniques might be necessary. However, as far as LCCA is concerned,
Wurpts and Geiser (2014) point out that adding more indicators is beneficial because it
decreases the occurrence of solutions with low accuracy in terms of class assignment.
The LCCA was run on a number of clusters varying from two to eight. The procedure runs
the algorithm with 100 random sets and 200 iterations for each number of clusters (this to
avoid local minima), and retains the model yielding the minimal value of the BIC. BIC is
regarded as the best among all the information criteria to select the number of clusters for
the LCCA (Haughton et al., 2009; Nylund et al., 2007). Once the best model for each number of
clusters is retained, BIC is used to compare model fit and to choose the best solution as the
one with the minimum BIC value.
Moreover, as the study aimed to investigate the relationship between segment
membership and loyalty intentions as outcomes (relationship commitment, self-disclosure
 and positive word-of-mouth), the three-step approach was performed with bias adjustment Mapping
(Bakk et al., 2013) that corrects classification error. In Step 3, the Bolck-Croon-Hagenaars touchpoint
correction method is employed, which is less sensitive to violations of distributional exposure in
assumptions (Bakk et al., 2013). Finally, paired comparisons across clusters have been
performed to identify significant differences in terms of relationship commitment, retailing
self-disclosure and positive word-of-mouth. The performed paired comparisons are based on
χ2 Wald tests comparing parameters across each pair of latent classes (Vermunt and
Magidson, 2016). The analyses were conducted using R statistical software and LatentGold
statistical software 5.1.

Results
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Sample description
Table I displays the demographics of the sample. The respondents are mainly female
(58 per cent) with an average age of 52 years old. The respondents belong to families with an
average of three members and tend to live in smaller cities. In addition, 52 per cent of
respondents state that they are in charge of their household grocery shopping, and the
remaining 48 per cent state that they cooperate with other family members for shopping.

Touchpoint exposure
Table II displays descriptive statistics of recalled reach and frequency of exposure to the
touchpoints considered. Descriptive statistics provide a first overview of which touchpoints

Demographic profile %

Sex
Males 42.5
Females 57.5
Age
Average 51.6
Number of household members
1 14.0
2 33.3
3 24.4
4 22.2
5 or more 6.0
Affluency
Low affluency 17.2
Below-average affluency 27.9
Above-average affluency 30.2
High affluency 24.7
Geographic area of residence
North-west 30.4
North-east 21.0
Centre 22.8
South 25.8
City size
Up to 20,000 inhabitants 34.0
20,000-100,000 inhabitants 31.0 Table I.
100,000-500,000 inhabitants 19.8 Demographic
More than 500,000 inhabitants 15.2 variables
 IJRDM Touchpoint Frequency of exposure (score 1-7) Reach (%)

Store 5.18 92
Store flyers 4.90 87
Private label 4.22 81
Store associates 3.71 74
Loyalty programme 3.41 61
Coupons 2.95 55
Word-of-mouth 2.79 56
Customer magazine 2.64 47
Special promotions 2.58 46
Billboards 2.54 52
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Retailer website 2.33 41

Newspaper advertising 2.18 42
E-mailing 2.11 35
Customer service 2.00 35
Direct mailings 1.93 31
TV and cinema advertising 1.91 32
Online advertising 1.78 29
Radio advertising 1.74 28
Table II. Special events 1.65 24
Descriptive statistics Mobile apps 1.64 19
of recalled reach and Customer satisfaction surveys 1.63 23
frequency of exposure Social networks 1.53 19
to the touchpoints Mobile messaging 1.49 18

are encountered by consumers. “Traditional” retail touchpoints, such as store, store flyers,
private label, store associates and loyalty programme reach a higher percentage of
customers. Mobile and social media touchpoints display the lowest frequency of exposure.
To better assess the validity and reliability of the scales, a confirmatory factor analysis
was conducted using R statistical software. To avoid redundancy, one item was dropped
from the positive word-of-mouth scale, which improved reliability measures (Cronbach’s α,
AVE and composite reliability). To increase the validity, one item was dropped from the
self-disclosure scale as its standardized loading was below 0.60 (Appendix). Results of the
definitive measurement model are displayed in Table III. Fit indexes displayed an
acceptable fit, CFI ¼ 0.99, TLI ¼ 0.98, RMSEA ¼ 0.08 (0.07-0.08), χ2 (11) ¼ 262.293, p o001.
Table III also shows the adequate values regarding indicators of convergent validity
(factorial loads W0.6 and significant) and reliability (Cronbach’s αW0.7; AVEW0.5,
composite reliabilityW0.7) for all the considered measures.
The LCCA was run on the variables showing frequency of exposure to 23 touchpoints.
Whereas models include a high number of variables, as in this case, it can be difficult to

Construct Item STD. loadings Z p-value Cronbach’s α AVE CR

Self-disclosure SD_1 0.86 50.628 0.000 0.77 0.63 0.77

SD_3 0.72 43.330 0.000
Positive word-of-mouth WOM_1 0.94 75.355 0.000 0.94 0.89 0.94
WOM_3 0.95 76.805 0.000
Relationship commitment RC_1 0.87 66.746 0.000 0.89 0.73 0.90
Table III.
Reliability and RC_2 0.90 70.039 0.000
validity measures RC_3 0.81 59.877 0.000
of constructs on Notes: AVE, average variance extracted; CR, composite reliability. See Appendix for the wording of the
loyalty intentions items comprising each construct
 identify the best solution because BIC tends to decrease when solutions with a high number Mapping
of clusters are considered (Masyn, 2013). The usual solution to this is to identify an elbow in touchpoint
the BIC curve across the considered cluster solutions (e.g. Petras and Masyn, 2010; Sands exposure in
et al., 2016). BIC values were therefore here examined to identify an elbow point across the
possible solutions, and a six-cluster LCCA solution with a BIC value of 153,277 was retailing
selected. Table IV and Figure 1 show the different BIC values per each number of groups.
All the employed indicators – i.e. all the considered touchpoints – within the model have
been found to be significant. In other words, all the indicators can be considered as
discriminating between the groups in a significant manner (Vermunt and Magidson, 2005).
Segments are labelled and described as follows below. Table V shows how segments differ
in terms of their exposure to touchpoints.
Cluster 1 (“Unexposed”) represents 36 per cent of the total sample. “Unexposed” customers
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display the lowest frequency of exposure to almost all touchpoints. Moreover, they are
exposed to the smallest number of touchpoints, 14 out of 23. Within this segment, two
“traditional” retail touchpoints attain the highest scores: the store and the store flyer. Cluster 2
(“Low exposed”) represents 22 per cent of the sample. “Low exposed” displays the levels of
exposure that are slightly lower than the average across all the considered touchpoints.
Cluster 3 (“Average exposed”) represents 16 per cent of the sample and displays average
levels of exposure across most considered touchpoints. Cluster 4 (“Omni-exposed”) represents

Cluster solutions BIC (LL) Change in BIC % change in BIC

1-Cluster 320,408
2-Cluster 224,747 95,661 30
3-Cluster 193,287 31,460 14
4-Cluster 179,854 13,433 7
5-Cluster 169,368 10,486 6
6-Cluster 153,277 16,091 10
7-Cluster 147,428 5,849 4 Table IV.
8-Cluster 144,070 3,358 2 BIC values for
Note: The cluster solution presented in italics has been selected as the best solution model selection

330,000
320,000
310,000
300,000
290,000
280,000
270,000
260,000
250,000
240,000
230,000
The selected number of clusters
220,000
210,000
200,000
190,000
180,000
170,000
160,000
150,000
Figure 1.
140,000
BIC values
130,000 and groups
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
 IJRDM Cluster 2: Cluster 3: Cluster 4: Cluster 5:
Cluster 1: 21.9% 15.6% 12.4% 7% Promotion Cluster 6: Total
36.4% Low Average Omni- exposed – ad 6.7% sample
Touchpoints Unexposed exposed exposed exposed unexposed Overexposed 100%

n 1,427 860 611 488 273 261 3920

TV and cinema
advertising 1.0 2.3 2.0 3.0 1.0 4.6 1.9
Radio advertising 1.0 1.9 1.8 2.4 1.0 4.7 1.7
Newspaper advertising 1.4 2.1 2.4 3.1 2.0 5.1 2.2
Customer magazine 1.8 2.3 3.2 3.4 2.8 5.1 2.6
Direct mailings 1.3 1.6 2.0 2.6 2.1 4.7 1.9
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Store flyers 4.3 5.0 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.7 4.9

Billboards 1.7 2.6 2.8 3.2 2.8 5.0 2.5
Online advertising 1.0 1.7 1.7 2.6 1.8 4.8 1.8
Social networks 1.0 1.3 1.0 2.3 1.9 4.6 1.5
Retailer website 1.3 2.3 2.3 3.3 3.3 5.1 2.3
Store 4.9 5.3 5.3 5.3 5.5 5.7 5.2
Special events 1.0 1.0 2.1 2.3 1.9 4.7 1.7
Private label 3.5 4.3 4.7 4.8 4.6 5.5 4.2
Store associates 3.2 3.5 4.1 4.1 4.0 5.4 3.7
Word-of-mouth 2.0 2.7 3.1 3.5 2.9 5.2 2.8
E-mailing 1.0 2.2 2.1 3.0 3.2 4.9 2.1
Loyalty programme 2.5 3.1 4.0 4.3 4.6 5.5 3.4
Mobile apps 1.0 1.6 1.0 2.4 2.7 4.1 1.6
Special promotions 1.7 2.1 3.0 3.5 3.4 5.3 2.6
Coupons 2.1 2.4 3.6 3.8 4.0 5.3 3.0
Mobile messaging 1.0 1.0 1.0 2.4 2.5 4.3 1.5
Customer service 1.3 1.0 2.8 2.8 2.7 4.9 2.0
Table V. Customer satisfaction
Description of surveys 1.0 1.0 1.9 2.5 2.0 4.6 1.6
clusters based on No. of touchpoints with
touchpoint exposure recall higher than 1 14 19 20 23 21 23

12 per cent of the sample and displays consistently higher than average levels of exposure to
all 23 touchpoints. Cluster 5 (“Promotion exposed – ad unexposed”) represents
7 per cent of the total sample. They display higher levels of exposure than the sample
average to promotional touchpoints such as coupons, loyalty programs and special
promotions. At the same time, they show lower than average levels of exposure to advertising
touchpoints such as TV and cinema advertising, radio advertising and newspaper
advertising. Cluster 6 (“Overexposed”) represents 7 per cent of the total sample. They show
the highest exposure levels across all touchpoints.
Results for RQ1: consumers can be classified into six segments as far as their frequency
of exposure to touchpoints is concerned. All segments are of a relevant size and display
differences in terms of exposure intensity and types of touchpoints they are exposed to.

Demographics and segment membership

By employing the one-step approach, the relationship between demographic variables and
segment membership is considered in the estimation stage. “Unexposed” was chosen as the
reference group for the multinomial logistic regression because these consumers display
the lowest levels of frequency of exposure to all touchpoints considered. Descriptive and
inferential statistics are shown in Table VI.
The results show that cluster membership is significantly related to sex ( p o 0.01),
age ( p o 0.001), shopping role ( p o 0.001) and geographic area of residence ( p o 0.001).
 Cluster 2: Cluster 3: Cluster 4: Cluster 5:
Mapping
Cluster 1: 21.9% 15.6% 12.4% 7% Promotion Cluster 6: Total touchpoint
Consumer 36.4% Low Average Omni- exposed – Ad 6.7% sample exposure in
characteristics Unexposed exposed exposed exposed unexposed Overexposed 100%
retailing
Sex**
Male 40.2% 44.0% 43.4% 42.2% 45.0% 45.7% 42.5%
Female 59.8% 56.0% 56.6% 57.8% 55.0% 54.3% 57.5%
Age***
Average 52.9 49.3 55.7 49.6 50.9 46.7 51.6
Number of household members
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1 12.9% 14.7% 13.4% 15.3% 17.2% 13.9% 14.0%

2 34.8% 33.1% 37.5% 30.3% 32.2% 23.1% 33.3%
3 26.1% 24.3% 23.9% 22.8% 20.9% 23.7% 24.4%
4 19.7% 22.2% 19.3% 25.9% 23.5% 33.9% 22.2%
5 or more 6.5% 5.7% 5.9% 5.7% 6.2% 5.4% 6.0%
Affluency
Low 16.7% 15.0% 14.2% 19.8% 16.1% 30.4% 30.4%
Below average 27.0% 30.1% 29.2% 26.8% 26.7% 26.3% 21.0%
Above average
online 30.4% 30.0% 31.7% 30.2% 31.2% 24.9% 22.8%
High 25.9% 24.9% 24.9% 23.2% 26.0% 18.4% 25.8%
Geographic area of residence***
North-west 27.3% 26.7% 36.8% 31.1% 45.8% 27.4% 30.4%
North-east 22.4% 23.1% 20.3% 21.1% 20.3% 8.2% 21.0%
Centre 23.3% 24.1% 22.4% 24.1% 13.8% 24.0% 22.8%
South 27.0% 26.1% 20.4% 23.7% 20.1% 40.4% 25.8%
City size
Up to 20,000
inhabitants 35.7% 33.1% 33.3% 30.9% 34.9% 33.7% 34.0%
20,000-100,000
inhabitants 30.1% 31.8% 31.5% 30.5% 28.4% 36.5% 31.0%
100,000-500,000
inhabitants 19.2% 19.2% 21.0% 23.5% 19.8% 14.6% 19.8%
More than 500,000
inhabitants 15.0% 15.9% 14.2% 15.1% 16.9% 15.2% 15.2%
Table VI.
Shopping role***
Descriptives and
In charge of shopping 47.9% 52.9% 51.3% 54.6% 62.1% 53.4% 51.8% overall significance
n 1427 860 611 488 273 261 3920 of demographic
Notes: Significant covariates of cluster membership probabilities are highlighted in italics. **o 0.01; covariates included in
***o 0.001 the one-step approach

The numbers of household members, affluency and city size have been found not to
be significant.
Descriptive statistics reveal that “Unexposed” includes the highest percentage of females
(59.8 per cent), while “Overexposed” include the highest percentage of males across the clusters
(45.7 per cent). The “Average exposed” cluster displays the highest average age
(55.7 years old) and “Overexposed” the lowest (46.7 years old) across clusters. Customers in
charge of the grocery shopping are less present in the “Unexposed” cluster (47.9 per cent), while
their presence is the highest in the “Promotion exposed – ad unexposed” cluster (62.1 per cent).
Table VII displays the odds ratios of significant demographic variables. Odds ratios
show that the role of demographic variables is not only significant but also relevant as far as
 IJRDM Cluster 2: Cluster 3: Cluster 4: Cluster 5: Promotion
Low Average Omni- exposed – ad Cluster 6:
Variable exposed exposed exposed unexposed Overexposed

Sex: male 1.30 1.18 1.22 1.48 1.49

Age 0.98 1.01 0.98 0.99 0.97
Shopping role: cooperating
with the shopping 0.79 0.79 0.74 0.52 0.74
Geographic area: North-east 1.02 0.61 0.67 0.47 0.33
Geographic area: Centre 1.01 0.69 0.81 0.33 0.91
Geographic area: South 0.98 0.51 0.65 0.41 1.21
n 860 611 488 273 261
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Table VII. Notes: “Unexposed” (Cluster 1) was chosen as the reference level for the outcome; “North-west” was chosen
Odds ratios resulting as the reference level for the geographic area; “In charge of their household grocery shopping” was chosen as
from the LCCA one- category of reference for shopping role. Odds ratios presented in italics are those computed from significant
step approach multinomial coefficients

their correlation with segment membership is concerned. For instance, the relative
probability of belonging to “Overexposed” rather than “Unexposed” is 49 per cent higher for
males than for females with the same other demographic characteristics. The relative
probability of belonging to “Overexposed” or to “Average exposed” rather than
“Unexposed” is respectively 3 per cent higher and 1 per cent lower for any one-year
increase as far as age is concerned – holding constant the same other demographic
characteristics. Interestingly, the relative probability of belonging to “Promotion exposed –
ad unexposed” rather than “Unexposed” is 48 per cent higher for subjects in charge of
shopping than for subjects cooperating with others for grocery shopping with the same
other demographic characteristics.
Results for RQ2: several demographic variables are significantly related to touchpoint
exposure, specifically: sex, age, shopping role and geographic area of residence.

Segment membership and loyalty intentions

Loyalty intentions have been found to be significantly related to segment membership.
The “Unexposed” cluster was chosen as the reference group. Overall, cluster membership is
significantly related to relationship commitment, self-disclosure and positive word-of-mouth.
Table VIII shows descriptive statistics and overall significance of cluster membership.
Table IX displays the results from pairwise comparisons across clusters.
Comparisons show that, at the segment level:
• “Unexposed” displays significantly lower self-disclosure and relationship commitment
than all the other clusters and significantly lower positive word-of-mouth than all
the other clusters apart from “Omni-exposed”.

Cluster 5:
Variable averages Cluster 1: Cluster 2: Cluster 3: Cluster 4: 7% Promotion Cluster 6:
are displayed in 36.4% 21.9% Low 15.6% 12.4% Omni- exposed – ad 6.7%
Table VIII. factor scores Unexposed exposed Exposed exposed unexposed Overexposed
Overall differences in
terms of loyalty Average SD*** −0.2228 0.0075 0.1332 0.0732 0.3407 0.3856
intentions from the Average WOM*** −0.1277 0.0278 0.0709 −0.0165 0.223 0.2379
LCCA three-step Average RC*** −0.2029 −0.0343 0.0977 0.0701 0.2738 0.5738
approach Notes: RC, relationship commitment; SD, self-disclosure; WOM, positive word-of-mouth. ***o 0.001
 Cluster 5:
Mapping
Cluster 2: Cluster 4: Promotion touchpoint
Cluster 1: Low Cluster 3: Omni- exposed – ad Cluster 6: exposure in
Unexposed exposed Exposed exposed unexposed Overexposed
retailing
Cluster 1: Unexposed SD WOM SD WOM SD RC SD WOM RC SD WOM RC
RC RC
Cluster 2: Low exposed SD WOM RC SD WOM RC
Cluster 3: Average exposed SD SD RC
Cluster 4: Omni-exposed SD WOM SD WOM RC
Cluster 5: Promotion RC
exposed – ad unexposed
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Cluster 6: Overexposed
n 1,427 860 611 488 273 261
Notes: Each cell displays the variables that are significantly different between the considered pair of
clusters. Per each pair, the cluster in column shows always a higher variable score than the cluster in row for Table IX.
the displayed variable. Pairwise comparisons are performed with Bonferroni corrections. RC, relationship Pairwise comparisons
commitment; SD, self-disclosure; WOM, positive word-of-mouth on loyalty intentions

• “Overexposed” displays significantly higher relationship commitment than all the

other clusters and significantly higher self-disclosure than all the other clusters apart
from “Promotion exposed – Ad unexposed”.
• “Promotion exposed – ad unexposed” displays significantly higher self-disclosure
than all the other clusters apart from “Overexposed”.
Results for RQ3: segment membership is found to be significantly related to relationship
commitment, self-disclosure and positive word-of-mouth. Specifically, “Unexposed” customers
display the lowest scores in terms of loyalty intentions, and “Overexposed” the highest.

Discussion and conclusion

Discussion
This study identifies customer segments based on exposure to touchpoints by means of an
analysis on almost 4,000 consumers in a supermarket retail setting. It sheds lights on how
demographic attributes are related to the frequency of exposure to touchpoints. Moreover,
the study estimates how different patterns of exposure to touchpoints are correlated to loyalty
intentions such as relationship commitment, self-disclosure and positive word-of-mouth.
The findings show that consumer differences in terms of frequency of exposure to
touchpoints are consistent across all touchpoints as far as five clusters are concerned:
“Unexposed”, “Low exposed”, “Average exposed”, “Omni-exposed” and “Overexposed” could
be ranked in increasing order of frequency of exposure to the majority of the considered
touchpoints. This leads to the conclusion that 93 per cent of consumers can be segmented
based only on how frequently they encounter a comprehensive set of touchpoints. One cluster,
instead, displays frequency differences in terms of types of touchpoints it is exposed to.
“Promotion exposed – ad unexposed” display high exposure to promotional touchpoints but
low or no exposure to traditional advertising touchpoints.
The comparison of the theoretical frameworks for classifying touchpoints (personal vs
non-personal; customer-initiated vs firm-initiated; brand-owned vs partner-owned,
customer-owned and social/external) with the study’s empirically based patterns reveals
interesting conclusions. Consumer exposure emerged as not skewed towards a specific
category of touchpoints identified in these classifications: for instance, no cluster
displayed high exposure to personal touchpoints and low exposure to non-personal
 IJRDM touchpoints, or vice versa. Rather, consumers are exposed, at different intensity levels,
to combinations of touchpoints that belong to multiple theoretical categories. Hence, these
results highlight the complexity for customer experience management in managing
touchpoints consistently and allocating investment across them.
In terms of mere absolute frequency of exposure, the touchpoints that attain highest
exposure among all customers, regardless of the cluster they belong to, are store, store
flyers, store associates and private label. These share the common characteristic of being
brand-owned touchpoints.
As far as covariates are concerned, this study finds that demographics are significantly
related to frequency of exposure to touchpoints. Key findings are as follows:
• Males are more likely than females to belong to the segments displaying higher levels
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of exposure to touchpoints rather than to the “Unexposed”. The literature had found
that males tend to prefer online media more than females (e.g. Ieva and Ziliani, 2017).
The present study extends the previous findings by demonstrating that men are
more likely to encounter a higher number of touchpoints with higher frequency,
in general, than women.
• Age positively influences the likelihood of belonging to the “Unexposed” than to all
the other clusters. Thus, older consumers are less likely to be exposed to touchpoints,
both in terms of number of touchpoints and frequency of exposure. While previous
studies have found that younger consumers are more exposed to online touchpoints
(e.g. Romaniuk et al., 2013), this study has found that younger consumers tend to be
more exposed to any touchpoint.
• Customers in charge of grocery shopping are less likely to be “Unexposed” than to
belong to any other cluster. As subjects in charge of the grocery shopping are more
involved in purchase decisions, they might pay more attention to retail touchpoints.
• Geographic area of residence also plays a role in influencing the likelihood of
exposure to touchpoints. This reveals the importance of the context of reference in
driving touchpoint exposure.
The study provides evidence for the correlation between touchpoint exposure and
loyalty intentions, specifically: relationship commitment, self-disclosure and positive
word-of-mouth:
• It revealed a general positive relationship between high touchpoint exposure
(vs average exposure, low exposure or un-exposure) and the intention to commit to a
long-term relationship: “Unexposed” display lower relationship commitment than all
other segments, and “Overexposed” a higher one. This result evokes what is known
in advertising as the usage effect, where intensity of use is related to positive
consumer response (Romaniuk et al., 2012; Vaughan et al., 2016).
• As far as self-disclosure is concerned, segments displaying lower levels of exposure
display lower levels of self-disclosure, and vice versa. Being familiar with the retailer
touchpoints seems to be positively related with the likelihood of revealing personal
information to that retailer. Moreover, as no difference emerges in terms of
self-disclosure between “Overexposed” and “Promotion exposed – ad unexposed”,
the conclusion can be made that exposure to promotional touchpoints is similar to
over-exposure in its relationship with self-disclosure.
• As far as positive word-of-mouth is concerned, differences across clusters emerge
with a less conclusive pattern. Over-exposure to all touchpoints, or exposure
to promotion, is only related to higher positive word-of-mouth when compared to
un-exposure or low levels of exposure.
 From a managerial perspective, this study has implications for retailers and brands. Mapping
First, the findings show that consumers are exposed to a relevant number of touchpoints touchpoint
and what differs in exposure is primarily the frequency and, secondarily, the type of exposure in
touchpoint. For this reason, retailers are advised to pursue omnichannel strategies to ensure
that all touchpoints are consistent, thematically coherent and connected to offer a seamless retailing
and unique customer experience, since this is what the majority of customers will
experience. Second, the results show that efforts in increasing consumer exposure to
touchpoints are worthwhile because high levels of touchpoint exposure are related to higher
relationship commitment with the retailer, higher willingness to share personal information
and a higher positive word-of-mouth. This makes the argument for retailers to make their
presence more conspicuous in the everyday life of customers. To identify customers less
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exposed to touchpoints, marketers should target females and older consumers. Moreover, as
males and younger consumers are more likely to be exposed more frequently to a higher
number of touchpoints, companies should ensure that customers with these characteristics
are reached with consistent messages across all touchpoints.
Finally, given that consumers more exposed to promotional touchpoints and less
exposed to advertising touchpoints display higher loyalty intentions than the other four
clusters, retailers are advised to enhance the reach of touchpoints related to loyalty
programme and price promotions, in order to leverage consumers’ loyalty intentions.

Limitations and further research directions

This study has several limitations. First, given the cross-sectional research design
employed, this study provides correlational – not causal – evidence to establish
conclusions between exposure of touchpoints and loyalty intentions. Second, even though
surveys are widely used for academic and practitioner studies on touchpoint exposure
(e.g. Romaniuk et al., 2013), respondents might find it hard to recall the experience with
touchpoints they had some time ago (Wind and Lerner, 1979). Third, touchpoint exposure
is affected by the retailer’s targeting strategies and by the availability of touchpoints
offered by each retailer in the context of the study, although the self-selection that
occurs as far as consumer exposure to touchpoints is concerned might reduce this
(e.g. Ieva et al., 2017; Lemon and Verhoef, 2016). Moreover, the respondents were asked to
answer questions with reference to the retailer that takes the highest share of their wallet,
so the results are not representative of any retailer’s entire customer base. Finally, the
external validity of the study might be increased by extending the study to different
industries, different time periods and to retailers with a relatively low share of customers’
wallets. Further studies are called for to provide theoretical and methodological
contributions to the identification and classification of customer experience touchpoints
within the customer journey across different settings. It would also be of key relevance to
identify the causal inference relationships between touchpoint exposure, customer
experience and attitudinal and behavioural customer outcomes. Recent studies have
already made preliminary contributions (e.g. Anderl et al., 2016; Baxendale et al., 2015)
but more insight is needed in this area.

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 Appendix Mapping
Items of relational intention constructs
touchpoint
Relationship commitment – adapted from De Wulf et al. (2001): exposure in
RC_1 – I am willing “to go the extra mile” to remain a customer of this retailer. retailing
RC_2 – I feel loyal towards this retailer.
RC_3 – Even if this retailer would be more difficult to reach, I would still keep buying in its stores.
Self-disclosure – adapted from Cho (2006):
SD_1 – I am willing to provide my personal information when asked by this retailer.
SD_2 – I am willing to disclose even sensitive personal information to this retailer (dropped to
increase validity).
SD_3 – I am willing to be truthful in revealing my personal information to this retailer.
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Positive word-of-mouth – adapted from Babin et al. (2005):

WOM_1 – I will say positive things about this retailer to other people.
WOM_2 – I will recommend it to someone who seeks my advice (dropped to avoid redundancy).
WOM_3 – I will encourage friends and relatives to visit the retailer.

About the authors

Marco Ieva, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Marketing at the Department of Economics and
Management, University of Parma, Italy. His research interests are media effectiveness, retailing,
loyalty marketing and customer experience. Marco Ieva is the corresponding author and can be
contacted at: marco.ieva@unipr.it
Cristina Ziliani, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Department of Economics
and Management, University of Parma, Italy. She is the Author of several works on loyalty programs
and customer insight in retailing and the Scientific Director of the Loyalty Observatory
(www.osservatoriofedelta.it). Her research interests are retail, promotions, loyalty and CRM.

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