340 Int. J. Indian Culture and Business Management, Vol. 21, No. 3, 2020 Copyright © 2020 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Identification and ranking the significant factors influencing customer experience for shopping malls in the Indian context Mukesh Govind Kharat*, Rekha D. Chikhalkar, Manoj Kumar Jha and Manoj Govind Kharat National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Powai, Mumbai, 400087, Maharashtra, India Email: mukeshgkharat@gmail.com Email: rdchikhalkar@nitie.ac.in Email: manojkjha40@yahoo.co.in Email: manojgkharat@gmail.com *Corresponding author Abstract: Today the market is highly competitive and saturated with multiple products, to survive and sustain in such an environment customer experience (CE) plays a vital role. Globally, marketers and academicians are focusing on understanding and creating pleasant CE. For marketing managers understanding the elements essential to create experience will help in better management and creation of CE. The present research identifies and assess the critical success factors affecting CE for shopping malls and prioritises to determine which is more significant and causative to achieve promising CE. The study is based on the existing literature on ‘customer experience’ and results obtained from brainstorming sessions with academicians and retail industry experts. It scrutinises the critical success factors affecting CE which are finally confirmed in the context of shopping malls. With the analytical hierarchy process, 11 main factors and 28 subfactors are prioritised which are responsible for creating unique and memorable CE. The findings suggest that the brand managers must ameliorate these factors according to their weights, in order to attain superior CE and sustainable competitive advantage. Keywords: customer experience; retail; shopping malls; determinants; analytical hierarchy process; AHP; critical success factors; India. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Kharat, M.G., Chikhalkar, R.D., Jha, M.K. and Kharat, M.G. (2020) ‘Identification and ranking the significant factors influencing customer experience for shopping malls in the Indian context’, Int. J. Indian Culture and Business Management, Vol. 21, No. 3, pp.340–368. Biographical notes: Mukesh Govind Kharat is currently pursuing his Fellow Doctoral Program in the area of Marketing Management from the National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Mumbai. He obtained his Degree in Information Technology and MBA in Marketing Management. His major interests are in marketing management, strategic marketing, brand management, consumer behaviour, retail management, rural marketing, service marketing, customer experience and competitiveness. He has several refereed international journal publications.