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ABSTRACT

Marketing has been defined as the science and art of exploring,

creating and delivering value to satisfy the unfulfilled needs and desires of
target customers at a profit (Kotler 1997). Over the years, it has undergone
various stages of orientations, namely production orientation (1900-1920),
product orientation (1921-1930), sales orientation (1931-1960), marketing
orientation (1961-1970) and customer orientation (1971-till date) (Kaur &
Sharma 2009). During customer orientation period, four types of marketing
orientations have evolved for satisfying and engaging the customers, namely
market orientation, relationship marketing orientation, service marketing
orientation and experiential marketing orientation. Towards gaining an
understanding of the marketing orientation in the emerging economies, one
of the current orientations like experiential marketing has been taken up for
the present study, with an effort to assess its level of application in an
emerging economy, like India.

Experiential marketing is usually undertaken by practitioners

and academicians to achieve customer satisfaction as a result of the fourth
offering which is ―experiences‖, wherein the first is product, second is
quality, third is services and fourth is experiences. It aims to retain customers
so as to achieve long-run profitability of the business (Pine & Gilmore 1999).
Marketing tries to offer experiences that are pleasurable and memorable,
allowing the customers to exploit all their senses through the staging of
products and services (Schmitt1999). During the consumption of experience,
there is an emotional, psychological and physical investment made by the
consumers, which make them get engaged (Write et al. 2003). Experiences
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produce emotions and bring about a transformation within the individuals,

which is reflected in their buying behaviour (Caru & Cova 2003).

Customer satisfaction is the first step for lasting relationships, wherein the
customer is willing to promote, defend and involve battle with others on
behalf of the offering, whereas customer engagement is the only thing which
can bring a lasting relationship between the customer and the marketer.
Experiences can make the offering desirable, attractive and preferable, but
only engaged customers remain associated, interested and involved with the
brand.

Due to the above reasons, there is a need to understand

―experiential marketing‖ as a phenomenon, its relationship with ―customer
engagement‖ and customer‘s ―post purchase involvement‖ so as to make a
successful of business. It is imperative to study the creation of
transformations within the individual customers through customer
engagement which would sustain the customer with the business for the long-
run or lifetime profitability. Hence this present effort has been made to study
experiential marketing, in one of the sectors that is organized food retailing
outlets at shopping malls in India.

to study experiential marketing among the customers of

organized food retailing outlets at shopping malls, self-administered
questionnaires are distributed by trained research assistants to customers of
organized food retail outlets located in shopping malls within one of the
States of India, namely Tamil Nadu. The list of organized retailing outlets at
malls in India is prepared by collecting information from various sources. At
present, there is no registry that includes all the organised food retailing
outlets at shopping malls. The list of the same is developed by enquiry at the
Trader‘s Welfare Association offices at Chennai and Coimbatore. Further, it
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is verified through enquiries with major retailers of the organised food

retailing outlets. From these sources, it is found that there are 213 shopping
malls in India in 2017. of these the malls in Tamil Nadu are taken for
consideration. In Tamil Nadu, the top 2 cities having large number of malls
are considered. This turns out to be Chennai with 10 malls and Coimbatore
with 2 malls. The present study is done among the customers of the 12 malls
through ―Store Intercept Method‖.

Keeping in mind the objectives of the study, the data are

analysed using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test, multiple regression and
Pearson‘s correlation. Structural Equation Model (SEM) also is utilized to
estimate the relationship among ―experiential marketing‖, ―customer
engagement‖ and ―post purchase involvement‖.

The study reveals that majority of the customers shopping in

organized food retail outlets are married females, in the age group of 25 to 45
years, with a minimum educational qualification of degree or master‘s
degree. It indicates that the majority of the customers make monthly purchase
worth Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 20,000 from the food retail outlets and most of them
use car as their mode of transportation.

The results further reveal that among sense, feel, think, act and
relate experience of ―experiential marketing‖, relate experience is higher in
the perception of the customers. In ―customer engagement‖ among focused
attention, perceived usability, aesthetics, endurability, novelty and felt
involvement factors, ‗aesthetics‘ is found to be high in the perception of the
customers. With regard to ―post purchase involvement‖ among value, trust,
affective commitment, word-of-mouth, loyalty and brand community
involvement, both trust and loyalty are found to be the top two factors in the
perception of the customers.
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There exists significant relationship between ―experiential

marketing‖ and ―customer engagement‖ and between ―customer
engagement‖ and ―post purchase involvement‖ suggesting that the
pleasurable and memorable experiences offered by organized food retail
outlet at shopping malls would engage the customers and create Post
Purchase involvement, which would retain the customers with the outlet for
long-run/lifetime profitability of the business.

Furthermore, with regard to the demographic characteristics like

gender, educational qualification and number of family members, there is no
significant difference, hence it can be inferred that, both male and female
customers, irrespective of educational qualification and different family size,
perceive experiential marketing, customer engagement and post purchase
involvement in similar ways. In addition to the purchase practices like
monthly purchase, mode of transportation and distance from home, the
customers perceive the offerings in the same way with regard to experiential
marketing, customer engagement and post purchase involvement.

It is clear that organized food retail outlet executives have to

offer better ‗relate‘ experience to their customers, concentrate on ‗aesthetics‘
attribute of customer engagement and put to good use of the ‗trust‘ and
‗loyalty‘ features of their customers.