How is social capital formed across the digital-physical servicescape?

Abstract

This study examines how consumers create social capital in interactions with other customers and service personnel while shopping in retail stores that consist of both physical and digital locations. We draw on servicescape literature to explore the role of social capital in determining the social realm in digital-physical servicescapes using data from focus group discussions. We demonstrate how customers utilize both the digital and physical servicescapes in a convergent manner to form the social realm of the servicescape with the other people in service encounters. The implications provide guidelines on how the integration of digital and physical channels facilitates trust, human contact, interpersonal relationships, and networks of social exchange that are termed ‘social capital’.