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In recent years, the concept of "customer experience" has gained significant importance as businesses strive to better understand and cater to their customers' desires and habits. Originating from Lewis Carbone's 1994 article "Engineering Customer Experiences," customer experience encompasses every aspect of a business's interaction with its customers (McKinsey & Company, 2022). It has become increasingly vital for companies to adapt to the changing landscape of consumer behavior and market dynamics, particularly in light of rapid technological advancements and digitalization.
Digitalization, defined as the use of digital technologies to transform business models and create new value opportunities (Gartner, s.d.), has accelerated in response to both technological innovation and the global COVID-19 pandemic. The shift from traditional brick-and-mortar retail to online platforms has placed immense pressure on retailers to innovate or risk obsolescence. The food retail sector, in particular, has been heavily impacted, with significant challenges such as declining profit margins (Belga, 2023), increased competition from e-commerce giants like Amazon (Roster, 2012), and the effects of inflation and energy crises (Dominique, 2023).
Belgium's food retail sector exemplifies these challenges, where traditional supermarket chains face severe competition from both smart discounters and e-commerce platforms. The closure of the Makro chain at the end of 2022 (Lambrecht, 2022) and the ongoing struggles of Carrefour's Mestdagh shops (Gondola Group, 2018) highlight the critical need for businesses to innovate and embrace digitalization. The introduction of digital signage, automated checkout processes, and other technological advancements are no longer optional but necessary for survival in an increasingly competitive market.
To help retailers implement the right tools with important and useful features for consumers, a qualitative study was conducted. The objective was to understand how retailers should implement technologies in their stores to improve customer experience. The results show that consumers are positive about digital tools in physical supermarkets and know what they need to have a better store experience.
This research concluded that although digital tools are necessary and appreciated by consumers, retailers must implement them with parsimony and reflection. Recommendations include that retailers listen and pay attention to customer requests and ensure they are properly informed of the risk that these tools will degrade the experience instead of improving it.

Customer Experience, Digitalization, Supermarkets, Shopping Experience, Digital Tools --- Sciences économiques & de gestion > Marketing

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How educated and culturally savvy young people are transforming traditionally low-status manual labor jobs into elite taste-making occupationsIn today's new economy-in which "good" jobs are typically knowledge or technology based-many well-educated and culturally savvy young men are instead choosing to pursue traditionally low-status manual labor occupations as careers. Masters of Craft looks at the renaissance of four such trades: bartending, distilling, barbering, and butchering.In this in-depth and engaging book, Richard Ocejo takes you into the lives and workplaces of these people to examine how they are transforming these once-undesirable jobs into "cool" and highly specialized upscale occupational niches-and in the process complicating our notions about upward and downward mobility through work. He shows how they find meaning in these jobs by enacting a set of "cultural repertoires," which include technical skills based on a renewed sense of craft and craftsmanship and an ability to understand and communicate that knowledge to others, resulting in a new form of elite taste-making. Ocejo describes the paths people take to these jobs, how they learn their chosen trades, how they imbue their work practices with craftsmanship, and how they teach a sense of taste to their consumers.Focusing on cocktail bartenders, craft distillers, upscale men's barbers, and whole-animal butcher shop workers in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and upstate New York, Masters of Craft provides new insights into the stratification of taste, gentrification, and the evolving labor market in today's postindustrial city.

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