Experiential marketing

: how it shapes gen Z purchase iIntentions in the retail industry

Abstract

With the rise of technologies, industries had to adapt their strategies, adopt digital strategies, which led to the loss of use and effectiveness of traditional marketing. Thus, industries started to transition to the use of experiential marketing, where customer experiences have become the focal point. For the retail industry, Gen Z has become the target segment, since this generation is an affluent user of technologies and values personalized experiences, authenticity and engagement. This creates an opportunity for this industry to understand and appeal to consumers emotions, being able to increase satisfaction, engagement and purchase intentions. However, little is known on how this new strategy specifically affects Gen Z behaviour outcomes in the retail industry. Thus, a randomized between-subjects experimental approach one factor with two levels (type of ad: experiential (N = 51) vs. traditional (N = 52)) was conducted to test the impact of experiential marketing in Gen Z satisfaction, engagement and purchase intentions compared with traditional marketing. To this end, nine hypotheses were elaborated and tested. The key findings of this study show that experiential marketing has a positive and significant effect on Gen Z’s engagement. Also, emotional arousal was key in mediating the relationship between experiential marketing and Gen Z behaviour. For future research, this dissertation can be helpful, since there is not much research on this topic.

Date of Award	3 Feb 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Cláudia Simão (Supervisor)