The Role of Digital Transformation in Shaping Customer Satisfaction in Retailing

Digital transformation is increasingly enhancing a wide range of retail activities. However, the retail industry in Malaysia continues to face persistent challenges, including labor shortages and customer congestion even during weekdays. This study investigates the impact of digital transformation factors on customer satisfaction within the Malaysian retail sector. Five independent variables were examined: access convenience, search convenience, evaluation convenience, order convenience, and logistics/reverse logistics convenience, with customer satisfaction as the dependent variable. A quantitative approach was adopted using a questionnaire-based survey administered to 384 digital consumers in Malaysia. The use of convenience sampling was applied, which is acknowledged as a methodological limitation due to its impact on generalizability. Data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics. The findings reveal that access convenience, search convenience, order convenience, and logistics/reverse logistics convenience have significant positive effects on customer satisfaction, whereas evaluation convenience does not. The regression model explained 42.2% of the variance. Overall, the results validate the proposed hypotheses and demonstrate that digital transformation significantly influences customer satisfaction in the retail industry, with the exception of evaluation convenience.