Samenvatting

In today’s retail landscape, in-store technology is rapidly transforming how consumers interact with physical stores (Grewal et al., 2023). One such innovation is the interactive kiosk, which is an in-store, digital, self-service system employing hardware such as a computer, tablet or larger touchbased display to allow two-way communication with customers (cf. Inman & Nikolova, 2017; Roggeveen & Sethuraman, 2020). Such technology provides multiple functions such as information provision, advertising and promotion, and transaction services. This study specifically focuses on interactive kiosks that offer more basic and common, information provisioning functionality. Interactive kiosks are more than just digital interfaces; they represent a distinct retail service delivery channel within the physical retail channel, integrating the convenience of online shopping with physical store interactions (Schweitzer & Simon, 2021). By doing so, they play an important role in facilitating omnichannel retail by complementing physical stores (e.g., Fang et al., 2021; Wagner et al., 2020). Despite the recognized importance of combining the particular beneficial features of individual channels in order to create synergy between those channels (e.g., Gao et al., 2021; Riegger et al., 2021), few, if any, empirical studies offer further insight into how interactive kiosk features can create such synergy with a physical store. This study adopts and validates a novel conceptual approach to establishing the complementarity between retail channels drawing on three major theoretical frameworks: channel complementarity theory (e.g., Dutta-Bergman, 2004), media niche theory (e.g., Dimmick et al., 2011), and the uses and gratifications perspective (e.g., Rubin, 2008). Specifically, this study explores how particular beneficial features, termed niche gratifications (cf. Ramirez et al., 2008), of interactive kiosks complement the physical retail environment. We empirically study the relationships between the (1) interactive kiosks’ complementarity, conceptualized as four particular niche gratifications (access to large assortment, rich product information, ease of browsing and entertainment), (2) two shopping benefits (shopping effectiveness and positive affect) and (3) individual store visitors’ attitude towards using the interactive kiosk for shopping. A sample of 360 actual store visitors that used an interactive kiosk was employed to validate the research model. The results indicate that two niche gratifications, ease of browsing and entertainment, have a positive effect on shopping effectiveness and positive affect. Additionally, the niche gratification ‘access to a large assortment’ enhances positive affect, but no effect was found on shopping effectiveness. Also, no significant effect was found for the niche gratification of rich product information on the shopping benefits.