Blueprint for Retail Website Design: Attracting and Retaining Millennial Online Shoppers

Since retail's earliest development in America, the personal touch and customer satisfaction have emerged as recurring themes in retail research. Aproned salespeople in the general store helped shoppers from behind counters and this type of service encounter set a precedent for the relationship marketing still valued in the Internet marketplace. After a brief glimpse at general retail history, a literature review of related research is provided to examine consumer engagement, general online shopping behaviors, and the overall online shopping experience. A survey instrument with these research results in mind was created and cross-referenced to the journal articles cited. A comparison of survey results to related past research was performed, followed by an analysis of the correlation between survey results and past findings. Finally, conclusions were drawn about how retail shopping websites could leverage these data to improve the acquisition and retention of the nation's largest contingent of online purchasers, the millennial generation.