Distribution of other Customer Perception on Brand Experience: A Bibliometrics Analysis Study

Abstract

Purpose: The study aims to synthesize research trends regarding the distribution of 'other customer perception' on 'brand experience'; concurrently, to identify the promising research directions and suggest useful for managers. Research design, data, and methodology: The paper deals with the distribution of 'other customer perception' on 'brand experience' through evaluating a systematic review combined with biological mapping analysis (VOS viewer) with 226 documents published in 142 journals from 1987 to 2021. Results: The study synthesizes and analyzes existing literature reviews on the distribution of 'other customer perception' on 'brand experience', which mainly highlights three research topic groups. Exploring the component of relationship should be considered in the brand experience scale when the research context is the social interactions surrounding the customer's purchasing process. Moreover, the presence of mindfulness in several publications has suggested a potential research direction in the consumer behavior field. Conclusions: The systematic reports can be a useful reference for managers towards building brand experience based on distribution of 'other customer perception' with moderating of mindfulness - a new finding of behavioral interaction that has just experienced the Covid-19 pandemic which is experienced directly at the store and lead to many changes in consumer psychology.

1. Introduction

Currently, with so many options, a customer's brand experience depends primarily on emotional, cognitive, and perceived values rather than just product quality or price (Brakus et al., 2009). More specifically, for the retail trade, an effective differentiation strategy has become increasingly dependent upon building long-term relationships with customers. Consequently, businesses seek to create customers with great positive brand experiences through creating a specific shopping atmosphere. Different brand experiences will be created if the customers have different cognitive abilities, personalities, and cognitive styles during perceptual stimulation at the time of purchase.

Although customer experiences vary in intensity, duration, timing, and evaluation (Brakus et al., 2009), the human impact factor plays an important and inseparable part during the customer experience at the purchasing point. Therefore, the consumption behavior of individuals in the retail trade environment will not be fully understood if researchers do not consider the social effects that are occurring (Tombs & McColl-Kennedy, 2003). One of the most important-yet-ignored social influence factors in the retail environment today is “other customer perception” (OCP) (Brocato et al., 2012).

There have been a number of previous authors who have researched on the topic of distributing OCP as the basis for businesses to encourage interaction between customers and customers. Stemming from the core requirement of positive customer interactions or mutually positive reviews will lead to synergies related to positive brand experience evaluations (Brocato et al., 2012). The reports of Brakus et al. (2009) and Gilboa et al. (2016) further explain that customer-paid social factors were identified as important components in the distribution of the overall customer service brand experience.

Moreover, brand experience is one of the fundamental factors in building customer loyalty. Businesses face fierce competition when competitors always launch aggressive marketing strategies by using overwhelming customers to guide consumption trends. The fact that customers are more likely to fall into a state of hasty consumption decisions without considering enough information as well as being fully aware of the value that supplier brings should lead to negative experiences related to the brand and the retail trade in general. Therefore, mindful consumption proposed by Langer (1989, 1992, 2000) has highlighted the element of mindfulness as interacting role and supporting the positive experience formation.

One concerning issue is the Covid-19 pandemic has affected people’ general life in diverse ways; besides health, Covid-19 pandemic has turned our daily life into extreme stress, leading to panic and fear (Wang et al., 2020). Unusual consumer behavior, listed as hoarding of toilet paper and food, was reported worldwide in March 2020 when Covid-19 escalated into a pandemic (Wang et al., 2020). Will consumers change their consumption habits due to restrictions and social distancing or return to their old habits once the pandemic is over? Are there any newer habits that consumers have acquired due to the new regulations regarding shopping in malls or traditional direct stores? All consumption behaviors are bound in terms of place and time elements; in other words, consumers will develop shopping habits over time regarding what, when and where to consume (Sheth, 2020).

Therefore, there is a lack of an overview analysis of OCPs distribution on brand experience on a global scale. Therefore, this study aims to fill this gap by conducting a biometric analysis of OCPs distribution on brand experience. Bibliometric analysis was widely used in order to draw a comprehensive picture of a specific research topic such as marketing, branding, customer behavior, supply chain, Bibliometric analysis helps capture various characteristics from the existing literature on distribution of OCP and brand experience, including the number of related articles from a vertical perspective, geographical distribution of authors, co-author pattern, primary publishing source, major author, research topics,…

This study aims to provide an understanding of other customer perception’s distribution on brand experience with the participation of the mindfulness variable - as a new discovery - through presentation of the research knowledge from scholars published in the Scopus database. Therefore, this study sets the following research questions (RQ):

RQ1: What are the other research trends on the distribution of other customer perception on brand experience from existing studies?

RQ2: What are the most important sources (i.e., books, journal, conference), major authors, research topics?

RQ3: What are the research directions for researchers and useful suggestions for administrators.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Other Customer Perception (OCP)

Other customers are customers who are in the service facility simultaneously with – and who are unacquainted with – a focal customer. Shoppers or other customers and focal customers do not need to interact with each other (Argo et al., 2005; Brocato et al., 2012; McGrath & Otnes, 1995). The presence and the behavior of other customers have a stronger impact on an individual’s perception of product value, distribution channels, brand experience, and service quality; rather through the contact with the service staff at the selling point (Lehtinen, 1991). Therefore, OCP is an important factor for businesses to encourage customer-customer interaction (Brocato et al., 2012).

Although the distribution of OCP as other customers’ perceived similarity, physical appearance and suitable behavior on a brand experience may seem simple, this influence requires an individual level of perception, attention, and awareness. Therefore, there exists a differential mechanism of latent influence to trigger an individual’s attention to external influences – this mechanism is referred to by (Ngo et al., 2016) as mindfulness. Therefore, the presence and the behavior of other customers may have a stronger effect on influencing an individual’s perception of service quality, rather than the exposure to service personnel (Lehtinen, 1991).

2.2. Brand Experience (BE)

This experience can take place directly or indirectly in any situation with a branded product or a service (Brakus et al., 2009; Huaman-Ramirez & Merunka, 2019; Kruger, 2018; Morgan-Thomas & Veloutsou, 2013; Schmitt, 2009; Schmitt et al., 2015; Trudeau & Shobeiri, 2016) during the buying process at distribution channels, like the experience that occurs at the moment when consumers search for products, when they shop and receive services, and when they use them (Brakus et al., 2009); in which, the direct interaction refers to the search for information related to goods or services, the purchasing process, the use of services or products whereas indirect interactions are related to advertising (Japutra & Molinillo, 2019; Nysveen et al., 2012). In these interactions, brand-related stimuli elicit subjective and internal responses to the consumer experience. Therefore, brand experience is defined as a set of responses that a consumer evokes at every touchpoint with a brand (Alloza, 2008; Klein et al., 2016), which is kept in memory long-term (Brakus et al., 2009; Roswinanto & Strutton, 2014) and brand experiences occur whenever there is a direct or indirect interaction with the brand (Brakus et al., 2009).

2.3. The Distribution of OCP on BE under The Regulation of Mindfulness

A variety of researchers on the phenomenon that customers will affect the service experience of other customers have been performed, listed as Lehtinen (1991) who has confirmed that social signal - a component of the service environment (Baker, 1986; Brocato et al., 2012) - results from customer-customer interactions. These customer-customer interactions manifest themselves in diverse ways, maybe through observation, for example, these customers will observe and evaluate the company’s service delivery through consumption processes and other customer experiences. As a result, the service output quality is assessed by the target customer as well as other customers in the exchange environment (Lehtinen, 1991).

In addition, customer-customer interactions may include face-to-face or hand-to-hand contact. In the retail context, it is the random friction among customers that has been affirmed to have a positive effect on their willingness to spend and brand experience compared to that when customers are left untouched (Martin, 2012).

During the brand experience process, no longer do consumers passively receive the value that the brand brings; to be more precise, they ask to become active participants in the brand experience (Merz et al., 2009; Payne et al., 2009; Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2000, 2004; Vargo & Lusch, 2008; Wikström, 1996). Consequently, the fact that customers can play an important role in determining the success of modern brands is the process of interaction between other customers and the focal customers; in other words, distribution of OCP concept has a very strong influence on the customer’s brand experience.

3. Methodology

In this study, the systematic literature review (SLR) method - an increasingly popular method for synthesizing existing document content in a particular field - is applied (Denyer & Tranfield, 2009; Kraus et al., 2020; Tranfield et al., 2003). This is in accordance with the use of systematic methods with the purpose of logically identifying, selecting, and evaluating studies that have involved besides collecting and analyzing data from the included studies based on a clearly formulated questionnaire in the review (Higgins et al., 2019). The main advantages of SLR are transparency in data collection and aggregation leading to a higher degree of objectivity and reproducibility (Denyer & Tranfield, 2009). The bibliometrics method is applied to analyze and to describe the properties of published scientific documents related to the research topic of “OCP” and “brand experience”. Bibliometrics methods allow the synthesis and the interpretation of large volumes of bibliographic data, the detection of research flows on specific topics (van Eck & Waltman, 2010) so as to limit the potential bias due to use-only systematic document review method.

The theoretical review process is in accordance with the systematic literature review (SLR) and bibliometrics methods that adapted from Denyer and Tranfield (2009); Kraus et al. (2020); Tranfield et al. (2003).

The resulting dataset of bibliometric method is put into VOS viewer software with algorithms built for systemizing the bibliometric map.

3.1. Database Review

The thesis is based on SCOPUS database from Scopus.com website - an online database archive containing a large number of documents published in major peer-reviewed journals around the world (Falagas et al., 2008; Kraus et al., 2020) - in the following order:

Firstly, in accordance with the key definitions of OCP (Argo et al., 2005; Brocato et al., 2012; McGrath & Otnes, 1995) and ‘brand experience’ (Brakus et al., 2009; Chaudhuri & Holbrook, 2001; Keller, 2013; Moscardo, 2017), a set of keywords connected to the above research question by brainstorming. The article chose the search keywords as ‘other customer perception’ and ‘brand experience’ to find out the links among studies on how the distribution of other customer perception affects the brand experience during their purchases at distribution channels.

Secondly, the complex keyword sequence, instead of using single keyword, is built to reduce the results that are too general and broad; consequently, the article conducts a review of similar and/or related studies. Go to the research topic to choose and to add more synonyms in words/clusters to expand the search keyword: “OCP”; “perception of customer” or “perceptions of customers” or “other customers’ perception”; “brand experiences” or “branding experiences”.

periences”. In sum, 338 documents were displayed with the correct query conditions (query time at 14:30, October 16, 2021), created based on this complex string, instead of using separate keywords.

Thirdly, narrow down the search results in terms of field, language, and document type. To be more specific: In terms of the fields: (1) business, administration and accounting; (2) social sciences; (3) computer science; (4) economics, econometrics and finance; (5) scientific decision-making; (6) psychology; (7) arts and humanities; (8) multidisciplinary; Language: English medium; Document type: article (ar: article); seminar (cp: conference); book chapter (ch: book chapter); book (bk: book)

The result was 274 documents by 722 authors in 62 countries, published in 168 journals and publications until June 29, 2021, and the oldest one was published in 1987.

Fourthly, cross-checking the results against the Dimension databases (app.dimensions.ai) and Google Scholar is performed by reading the summaries to remove those articles that are not relevant to the research question. The results were quite similar and only 4 articles were removed because the parameters were not enough to analyze the next steps. The total number of articles included in the analysis in Step 2 is 270 documents by 710 authors, from 60 countries, published in 165 journals. The information of the documents included in the analysis list meets the requirements including author, title, year of publication, place of publication, keywords, document type, abstract, number of citations, country, affiliates, English language, etc. that have been exported to .csv format. The data retrieval time is 15pm, October 16, 2021.

3.2. Database Evaluation

Tranfield et al. (2003) and Denyer and Tranfield (2009) argue that literature review is an important part of any research project; therefore, this study has conducted a literature review relevant to the research topic through the back-snow method (Wohlin, 2016) to ensure the systematic and accurate synthesis of the literature.

Firstly, read the title and the abstract of each document to select the documents related to the research out of the 270 articles listed in step 1 to confirm, once again, the documents whether they are related to the subjects of the research topic or not. The result is that 3 articles share the same content and author - only the title is different from the one posted at the conference.

Secondly, read the full text of the document to select the documents relevant to the research and exclude those that: (1) do not focus on the topic concept of “customer perception”; “other customer perception”; “brand experience”; “consumer experience”; “brand-related elements”; (2) do approach from a technical and technological perspective; (3) focus on the topic concept but does not analyze the connection between the research concepts of the topic. The selected documents are articles included in the SCOPUS database; the literature review is published as articles or reviews in reputable journals (Falagas et al., 2008; Kraus et al., 2020). From the results of 267 selected articles, 226 articles by 611 authors from 57 countries published in 142 prestigious journals and conferences in the SCOPUS directory, are finalized.

Thirdly is to standardize keywords. These 226 documents comprise 1210 keywords with synonyms, abbreviations and so on that they have been normalized to 1124 keywords, based on the frequency of occurrence and the highest total link strength (total link strength) in keywords when running on VOS viewer software for the more accurate and focused analysis results.

Fourthly is to select documents that are most relevant to the research topic. During the process of implementing the back-snow method, the author reviews the full text of related documents and discover one (01) document that has a close connection with the research topic to be chosen as the original document for back-snow tracing implementation (Wohlin, 2014), that is:

Perceptions of others, mindfulness, and brand experience in retail service setting (Ngo et al., 2016)

Fifthly, carry out cross-checking of documents by ‘snowing forward’ method in searching for new documents based on citations of 226 selected documents through manual search on Google Scholar, ProQuest, Springer, ScienceDirect, SAGE Journals and tracing the related studies via https://www.connectedpapers.com with the original document selected as Perceptions of others, mindfulness, and brand experience in retail service setting (Ngo et al., 2016) (see Figure 1), and followed by filtering in accordance with the criteria applied in Step 1 – Database Review. Once new documents are found, the title and the abstract will be considered to have the same topic and area of the research topic; in case that the title and abstract are rather unclear, a full-text review of the document will be conducted to review for suitability and decided whether it should be to include documents for bibliometric analysis.

Figure 1: Performing “forward snowballing” with originals Perceptions of others, mindfulness, and brand experience in retail service setting (Ngo et al., 2016), on https://www.connectedpapers.com Source: https://www.connectedpapers.com/main/d77a6b9cf5663271210e80a8b88e96ac4f4fd8ea/Perceptions-of-others-mindfulness-and-brand-experience-in-retail-service-setting/graph created at 24pm, June 01^st, 2022.

When no more new documents can be found, the process of ‘snowing forward and backward’ stops and this analysis validates the validity and the reliability of the dataset screened on the SCOPUS database for the inclusion into the analysis in the next step – bibliometrics.

3.3. Bibliometric Analysis

In this phase, articles are analyzed by being broken down individual studies into their constituent parts and aggregated by creating links among the elements. This aims to develop and to reorganize disinformation knowledge from reading individual studies into a new systematic and coherent arrangement (Denyer & Tranfield, 2009) (see Table 1). Therefore, the study conducted bibliometric analysis on a dataset of 226 documents from 611 authors from 57 countries, published in 142 journals in accordance with the quantitative parameters reported by Todeschini & Baccini (2016) recommended by the number of the studies per year; the number of the studies per author; the number of the studies per country with the purpose of avoiding potential biases in accordance with the proposed procedure by Bresciani et al. (2021). After that, VOS viewer 1.6.17 software is used, a visual mapping technique, in order to conduct similarity and associated analysis between the selected documents (van Eck & Waltman, 2010). The results are illustrated in accordance with the selected principles as follows: co-authorship, co-occurrence, citation, bibliographic coupling, co-citation, and themes. The two standard attributes applied are “links attribute and total link strength attribute” (van Eck & Waltman, 2010).

Table 1: Systematic review methodology

Source: Adapted from (Denyer & Tranfield, 2009; Kraus et al., 2020; Tranfield et al., 2003)

VOS viewer constructs the similar matrix by normalizing the co-occurrence matrix of the analyzed elements; in which, this study is represented by countries, keywords, and general citations of the authors. A bidimensional graphical map is constructed through a series of processes; in which, the nodes represent the authors and the distances among the nodes reflect their similarity of shared references.

After that, VOS viewer 1.6.17 software is used to analyze the relationship among the documents (van Eck & Waltman, 2010), the results are illustrated in accordance with the selection principles, as follows: co-authorship, (van Eck & Waltman, 2010), co-occurrence, citation, bibliographic coupling, co-citation, and themes. Two standard attributes are applied: “links attribute and total link strength attribute” (van Eck & Waltman, 2010).

3.4. Linked Data Analysis

In accordance with VOS viewer’s clustering results, the study systematically reviews all articles in each cluster, highlighting the key topics discussed and the key links between the literature as well as the best-fit research gaps.

4. Results

The study achieves one result data set of 226 documents by 611 authors from 57 countries published in 142 journals that is included in VOS viewer software with algorithms built to bibliometric map system (see Table 2).

Table 2: The number of studies from countries

Source: compiled by the author, using VOS viewer 1.6.17, 2021.

Bibliometric analysis was carried out on a dataset of 226 documents by 611 authors from 57 countries published in 142 journals in accordance with the quantifiable parameters proposed (Todeschini & Baccini, 2016) based on the number of researches every year; the number of studies per one individual author; the number of studies per one single country.

The indicators from Tables 2 provide an overview of the evolution of the analyzed literature review across the number of the published studies by year and country, showing the growing scientific interest in the scientific community regarding this subject. On the other hand, this research field has been being in its infancy with the first publication on the subject back in 1987; however, it was not until 2013 that the research was focused, and 2021 year was the most fruitful period. Besides, the US is the country with the highest number of published studies with 55 studies, followed by the UK (26 studies), China (19 studies), India (16 studies) and Australia (15 studies); in this ranking list, Vietnam publishes five (05) studies on this topic in the same group as Denmark, Japan, New Zealand, and Switzerland (see Figure 2). This indicates that ‘other customer perception’ and ‘brand experiences’ topics are of great interest to the developed countries with various aspects whereas those developing countries with emerging economies with abundant populations is a potential market but faces rather a limited number of research related to these two topics.

Figure 2: Link studies by countries Source: compiled by the author, using VOS viewer 1.6.17, 2021

The results of VOS viewer analysis in accordance with the criteria of co-citation (Co-citation/ Cited author) with at least 20 citations (Min cited: 20). Citation analysis demonstrates that articles are linked by shared citations and form disparately defined topic clusters that reflect the data base-specific knowledge. The result has 103 popular authors divided into clusters. That each colored cluster represents one research line by outstanding authors in the research field implies that the articles are divided into 4 subject lines (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Commonly linked co-citation studies Source: compiled by the author, using VOS viewer 1.6.17, 2021

• The first cluster in red color is experiential marketing.

• The second cluster in blue color is the flow experience with the various brand features management.

• The third cluster in yellow color is distribution of customer satisfaction through experience.

• The fourth green cluster is the distribution of online experience.

The results of the VOS viewer analysis in accordance with the keyword co-occurrence criteria to explore the specific topics were performed by the researchers with a minimum of two repetitions of keywords are shown in Figure 4 indicates that the studies have interferences and are closely related to each other despite being grouped into 15 clusters, in which the green-colored cluster shows the connection of the topics “other customer perception”; “service brand experience”; “mindfulness” and “retailing” which were conducted between 2015 and 2016. Additionally, no further studies, up to this point, have been published. Therefore, it can be inferred that the studies in the marketing field regarding other customers’ observable characteristics and social effects affect the brand experience of one individual customer in the context that retail commerce is scarce and scattered in studies of customer behavior, word of mouth, and psychology.

Figure 4: Linked research keywords Source: compiled by the author, using VOS viewer 1.6.17, 2021

The question is whether there exists a research gap on how observed characteristics. How do other customers affect an individual’s brand experience? Can this be developed into an overall and appropriate conceptual framework and measures in Vietnamese retail trade environment so that researchers can gain a more general and deeper understanding of individuals’ brand experience in the retail trade environment in the emerging-market context like Vietnam.

Among the topics studied by scholars, one relatively different topic - mindfulness - is argued by Ngo et al. (2016) as follows: this impact, on the part of individuals, requires a level of perception, attention, and awareness though the perceived influence of the customers’ brand experience seems rather simple. Therefore, there exists a differential mechanism of potential influence to trigger an individual’s attention to external influences - this mechanism is referred to by Ngo et al. (2016) as ‘mindfulness’ (see Figure 5).

Figure 5. Linked key words as: mindfulness, other customers’ perception, service brand experience Source: compiled by the author, using VOS viewer 1.6.17, 2021.

In addition, a variety of studies propose new concepts listed as ‘mindful marketing’, ‘mindful consumption’; however, these studies are being in their infancy stage.

5. Discussion

This study has suggested some interesting directions for future research, namely that the topic of experiential marketing and distribution of online experience implies various aspects that can be well developed whereas these two topics seem to have been studied and explored in detail.

What is more, the distribution of OCP concept is being rather scattered and appears blurred when it comes to customer behavior. In a few distributions of OCPstudies, it is proposed to examine the interactions of customers at the selling point in the context of retail commerce, based on the interaction and the presence of individuals in contact with other customers to form experiences and emotions, rather during their interaction with service staff - who are sometimes oriented to transfer quality and value to customers shopping at the difference distribution channels. This has supported the managers’ trends of focusing on customer relationship management, customer care and encouraging customer interaction with other customers at distribution channels to increase the positive customer experiences related to brand product, organizational image, and product value. The fact that the old-customer database is an effective and powerful communication and distribution channel leads customers willingness to participate in the process of co-creating values for customers.

In contrast, Erika (2005) argues, from the point of view of consumption, that most of modern consumer behaviors are automatic and thoughtless actions, a lot of what we buy comes from unconscious choice, rather than conscious consideration. Bahl et al. (2016) proposed mindfulness as the “antidote” to mindless consumption. Customers are faced with a variety of choices when it comes to making consumption decisions. Marketing and advertising activities rush to take advantage of this automatic selection behavior to exploit customers’ insatiable needs or drive customers into a consumption state in a hurry, leading to customers regretting their shopping decisions, resulting in the fact that they do not cooperate with the store to solve in case of any arising problems, creating negative brand experiences.

In addition, it is helpful to educate the consequences of consumerism; however, human beings are unlikely to act on that new knowledge unless they are willing to hear and to use it. Mitra and Greenberg (2016) proposed the way to practice mindfulness in consumerism.

Mindfulness concept, in recent years, has been mentioned a lot in our social life and is being increasingly researched by scholars in diverse fields ranging from psychology, sociology to economics, management or business, even distributional marketing. Those studies, despite being at rather primitive stages, have shown the presence of mindfulness in the process that human beings experiment and experience to draw out the individuals perceived and cognitive values.

The growing popularity of mindfulness concept in the West has led to it being called a ‘movement’, even as ‘Mindfulness Revolution’ that has spread throughout the country. Mindfulness concept is a signal of one growing market demand for what used to be considered as one strange and unfamiliar ‘Oriental religion’ (Mitra & Greenberg, 2016).

Research by Langer and Moldoveanu (2000) has verified the role of mindfulness to help people connect more easily with service brands, distribution channel in marketing activities. Brand promotion can appositively affect brand experience, customer loyalty and create customer attachment to corporate brand; after that, the influence of mindfulness during the process of brand experience or new customers’ decision making is noticed by the academia (Ndubisi, 2012, 2014).

6. Conclusion

This present review aims to analyze and to synthesize the existing literature review on the distribution of OCP concept on brand experience concept in the retail commerce environment guided by a key research question. The systematized studies demonstrate that brand experience is associated with customer behavior, purchasing decisions, distribution channel decision or customer satisfaction, in which, the fact that the distribution of online experience is suggested to the online experience communities on the online channels that is one trend worth paying attention to due to the Covid-19 pandemic context that has affected human beings’ psychology as well as limited customers’ in-store experiences; besides, the change in Gen Z’s shopping behavior signals that this is a current and up-to-date research direction.

Upon reviewing the previous studies on brand experience, the author discovers that the ‘relationship’ component is one unpopular element in the Brand Experience Scale and only applied in a few studies. Within this study context, the distribution of ‘other customer perception’ on ‘brand experience’ should be considered; therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to the social interactions surrounding the customer shopping process at the purchasing point (Tombs & McColl-Kennedy, 2003). Therefore, this relationship needs to be considered appropriately in the process of measuring the brand experience factor while most researchers only use the scale that focuses on the extent to which people react on four components below: senses, emotions, reason and behavior (Ding & Tseng, 2015).

The research field concerning mindfulness has been expanding and focusing primarily on the individual, the multitude of interpersonal interactions occurring in everyday life besides providing opportunities for human beings to cultivate their interpersonal mindfulness throughout their interaction activities. To be more specific, Pratscher et al. (2018, 2019) proposes the concept of interpersonal mindfulness as a means to understand the mechanism of mindfulness in interpersonal interactions as well as the emergent interpersonal mindfulness present in the moment of social interaction manifestation (in other words, interpersonal mindfulness) that is more closely related than the traits of interpersonal mindfulness within the relationship outcomes (Barnes et al., 2007).

Interpersonal mindfulness takes place when people are personally mindful, they maintain a receptive awareness of what is going on in interpersonal interactions, moment by moment. They are aware of their thoughts, feelings, emotions, bodily sensations, experiences, and intentions when these interactions are occurring. Concurrently, they pay attention to what seems to be ‘going on’ with the other being, looking for clues, both what is said or done and the other’s mood, tone of voice as well as body language. Because interpersonal interactions often include talking and listening, possible components of interpersonal awareness are awareness and attention as well as acceptance and response (for example, thoughtlessly non-reaction) in conversations (Pratscher et al., 2019).

Therefore, with the distribution of OCP concept on individuals’ brand experience, the regulation of interpersonal mindfulness in the brand experience will be more specific and relevant if only interested in awareness studies; thereby, measuring the impacts on brand trust and brand attachment.

7. Implication

During a global pandemic, human beings may experience anxiety, depression, fear, coping and so on and must gradually get used to a stressful living environment in a small space, leading to a change in purchasing/shopping behaviors and distribution channels, listed as hoarding or hopping to relieve personal stress and so on. Compared to that of Erika (2005) point of view concerning consumption asserts that this behavior is consumers’ automatic and inconsiderate behaviors, much of what is bought comes from an unconscious choice, rather a conscious consideration. Therefore, Bahl et al. (2016) proposes interpersonal mindfulness as the antidote against mindless consumption.

On the other hand, the current research on interactive interpersonal mindfulness in retail trade or services is being in its infancy stage; nevertheless, this is a potential research area to propose a theoretical framework and governance implications.

Although the study is conducted under a rigorous step-by-step review process, it is likely that the relevant literature review may be omitted from other field sources that are not available in English medium. In addition, the selection of the maximum-minimum criteria for biological mapping analysis by VOS viewer software is subjective in accordance with the author’s personal criteria; therefore, it is possible that some inadvertent errors can be discovered in this analysis.