The Physical Frictionless Experience: A Slippery Slope for Experience Memorability of Retail Services?

Service industries are increasingly creating physical frictionless experiences to reduce effort for customers so they are able to ‘just walk out’. However, frictionless experiences can reduce memorability which can in turn reduce share of wallet. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between customer effort and experience memorability in a just-walk-out physical frictionless experience. Interviews were conducted with 30 customers using a simulated frictionless retail experience. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis. This study found that a just-walk-out physical frictionless experience consists of transferable positive and negative effort with physical, cognitive, and interpersonal components. A second finding was that the reduction of customer effort is facilitated by removing high interpersonal effort which is associated with a more forgettable, or slippery, experience. Individual differences that appear to play a role in desire for effortful human interaction, shopping value type, attitude towards technology and age were identified.