In the modern retail environment, customers continuously rely on other consumers for assistance when interacting with retailers’ digital technologies. This study examined if technology acceptance drives affective commitment and ultimately existing users to assist potential users, as measured by direct customer citizenship behaviour (advocacy, help in using the technology) and indirect customer citizenship behaviour (tolerance and feedback to the retailer for improvement). The sample consisted of 533 electronic banking customers. All research hypotheses were supported. Practically, the research findings direct retailers on the strategies required to ensure customers engage in direct and indirect citizenship behaviour to assist fellow customers in interacting with the digital technologies, and to improve the customer retail experience. Theoretically, the study extends the extant research on technology acceptance by providing more insight into its connection with customer citizenship behaviour directed towards fellow customers and retailers in the post-consumption stage of digital technology and the extent to which affective commitment strengthens these relationships.

Introduction

New digital technologies are significantly changing the customer retail experience (Farah and Ramadan, 2017:54). For example, today many customers shop online, use self-service checkouts, and pay with mobile devices. Retailers are investing in these convenient self-service channels to increase their own productivity and achieve greater customer satisfaction (Demoulin and Djelassi, 2016:540). Furthermore, it is predicted that the growing digital trend will revolutionise retailing in the future and will radically impact the manner in which retailers interact with their customers (Kallweit et al., 2014:268). New wave technologies – such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality and innovative delivery systems – are expected to transform the consumer retail experience outside of traditional time and location boundaries (Parkin et al., 2018:1–۲). These retail technological developments may result in less real-time face-to-face customer interaction with a retail employee, who would ordinarily be able to provide on-the-spot advice to customers during the retail experience. Accordingly, in the modern retail environment, customers seem to rely more on the help of other consumers – that is, intercustomer helping behaviour (Yi and Kim, 2017). A unique feature of this behaviour is that it is normally voluntary and not an explicit requirement of the retailer (Gruen, 1995). Nevertheless, this behaviour is actively supported as it may improve service delivery and enhance productivity of the retail experience (Kim and Yi, 2017:788–۷۸۹). As such, in business sciences literature, this behaviour is often referred to as customer citizenship behaviour, as it exhibits many of the attributes and motivational drivers of a good social citizen (Yi and Gong, 2013:1280–۱۲۸۱). However, citizenship behaviour is not restricted to customers’ direct engagement with fellow consumers. It may also entail indirect citizenship behaviour, such as customers being tolerant if the service does not meet their expectation levels and providing feedback for improving the retail experience (Yi and Gong, 2013:1280–۱۲۸۱). This behaviour has, to a large extent, been overlooked in the retail literature involving digital technologies, but is nonetheless important, as customers who are not completely satisfied with the digital technologies are retained and their suggestions for improvement may assist in enhancing the customer retail experience for fellow consumers. A major driving force of customer citizenship behaviour is customers’ affective commitment (Curth et al., 2014:149).