Developing trends in showrooming, webrooming, and omnichannel shopping behaviors: Performance analysis, conceptual mapping, and future directions

In an omnichannel era, businesses and marketers need insights into the dynamics of customer shopping behaviors, particularly the interplay between omnichannel, showrooming, and webrooming behaviors. This study investigates the evolution and trends of the research and channel shopping behaviors (RCSB) domain, spanning from 1998 to 2022, including the Covid-19 era. The study performed a bibliometric review of 500 papers in the Scopus database. The performance analysis reveals an annual growth rate of nearly 16%, with average citations per document of 44, indicating sustained and growing research interest. Science mapping revealed five distinct cluster themes, including showrooming and webrooming in multi- and omni-channel contexts; consumer behavior in online retail and shopping; customer satisfaction and trust in multi-channel retailing; mobile commerce in a multi-channel environment; and the interplay between online shopping, channel choice, and supply chain management. Furthermore, topics, such as showrooming, e-commerce, retailing, and omnichannel retailing, remain popular before and during the pandemic, as seen in the thematic evolution. Our examination of the thematic maps revealed various topics that gained significance during the pandemic, such as multichannel, channel choice, customer experience, social commerce, purchase behavior, and covid-19. Among these, the thematic maps indicate that customer experience, channel choice, multichannel, and covid-19 are emerging and basic topics. These topics can steer research directions in the RCSB domain toward examining customer experiences using digital innovations, e-commerce (including mobile and social commerce), and omnichannel strategy and management

Should offline retailers expand online under consumer showrooming based on the effects of intershowrooming and intrashowrooming?

This study aims to find a way to alleviate or eliminate the negative impact of showrooming on brick-and-mortar retailers. Therefore, under careful consideration of the effects of intershowrooming and intrashowrooming, this study explores whether retailers can effectively solve the negative impact of showrooming by opening online channels. Conduct a comparative study on the decision-making of dual/multi-channel supply chain members before and after the retailer opens an online channel and analyze the influence. In addition, we also explored the impact of factors such as the market scale expansion effect and internet market power structure. Research has found that regardless of the market scale expansion effect generated, it is effective for the retailer to increase profits by opening an online channel. The impact of market scale expansion is not entirely beneficial to the retailer. Under the intrashowrooming, the effect of market scale expansion may benefit the manufacturer. But what is more noteworthy is that for the manufacturer, the impact of intrashowrooming is not necessarily the greater, the better, and the manufacturer's profit may decrease as this effect increases

A csatornatípusok szerepe a hazai ruhavásárlási folyamatokban

Az ügyfélélmény felöleli egy vállalat kínálatának minden egyes részletét, és meg kell jelennie a vásárlói interakció teljes folyamatában: ki kell terjednie a vásárlást megelőző szakasztól a vásárláshoz közvetlenül kapcsolódó eseményeken át a vásárlást követő szolgáltatásokra is. Az omnichannel stratégia lehetővé teszi az ügyfelek számára, hogy bárhol és bármikor vásároljanak a különböző csatornákon keresztül, zökkenőmentes vásárlási élményt biztosítva számukra. Az ügyfél az igényei alapján választhatja ki az elvárásainak leginkább megfelelő csatornakombinációt, ami eltérő csatornahasználati mintákat eredményez. A tanulmány célja, hogy megvizsgálja a ruhavásárlással kapcsolatos attitűdök alapján szegmentált vásárlói csoportok csatornapreferenciáit – a hagyományos boltok, valamint a kis és a nagy képernyős online csatornák használatában – a teljes vásárlási döntés egyes szakaszaiban. Vizsgált mintánkban a válaszadók jelentős része még mindig a hagyományos („offline”) csatornát preferálja a ruhavásárlás teljes folyamata során. Az online csatornák használata elsősorban a ruhavásárlást megelőző szakaszra jellemző, ami a vásárlási attitűd alapján elkülönített vásárlói csoportok közül csak egyetlen csoportnál jelent meg markánsan

Electronics and Computer Sales: Brick-and-Mortar Retail Strategies to Increase Revenue

The growth of online retailing threatens brick-and-mortar retail revenues. Brick-and-mortar retail leaders who fail to increase revenues risk insolvency. Grounded in the theory of change, the purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore effective strategies electronics and computer brick-and-mortar retail leaders use to increase revenue in response to competition from online retailers. The participants comprised 6 electronics and computer brick-and-mortar electronics retail store leaders in San Diego, California, who effectively used strategies to increase revenues. Data were collected from semistructured interviews, company information, financial data, and web site documentation. Inductive thematic analysis was used to analyze the data with 4 themes emerging: returning customers and trust, locality-based marketing, smart devices to shop around by customers, and maintaining stock and customization. A key recommendation is for brick-and-mortar retail leaders to develop website content that drives customer engagement and adopt an influencer strategy to build the brand and increase sales. The implications for positive social change include the potential for brick-and-mortar retail leaders to encourage customer trust, create new jobs, reduce unemployment, and develop new services and strategies to aid local community residents

Consumer behavior in a multichannel context and its managerial implications

The dissertation project consists of four papers. Two papers are concerned with multichannel customer behavior: (a) drivers of competitive webrooming and (b) profitability effects of offline channel additions. The remaining two papers deal with consumer reactions towards different website cookie notifications

Antecedents of Webrooming in Omnichannel Retailing

Although webrooming has become common practice in omnichannel consumer behavior, only a few empirical studies have managed to shed light on the phenomenon. With this research work, we aim to investigate important antecedents of webrooming. We base our conceptual framework on anticipated utility theory and expect that customers' anticipated utility from using the physical store versus the online store for purchase can be predicted by four groups of antecedents: psychographic variables, shopping motivations, channel-related variables, and product-related variables. With the help of a data set from a large cross-national online survey in which 1497 customers reconstruct their last purchase journey, we differentiate webroomers from pure online shoppers. In addition, we disentangle customers who used retailer-owned, competitor-owned, and independent touchpoints along the search and purchase phase of the customer journey in order to characterize webroomers in an omnichannel context and assess their prevalence in different countries and industries. Our insights on the characteristics and antecedents of webrooming help retailers to detect and better understand the psychology behind the webrooming phenomenon from a consumer perspective in an omnichannel retailing environment. In addition, results from our exploratory analysis on the positive association between webrooming and customer spending contribute to research and practice by providing first evidence on the economic value of webrooming

Strategic Assortment Decisions in Omnichannel Retailing: The Design and Evaluation of an Omnichannel Assortment Ontology for Consumer Confusion.

Consumer confusion is a phenomenon observed in retail settings where consumers feel irritation or frustration during the shopping journey. Consumers can be overwhelmed by assortment size, complex product variety, brand similarities, information inconsistencies or by intense stimuli from store atmospherics inducing information overload, leading to adverse reactions. Oftentimes, these experiences result in various negative short- and long-term consequences such as helplessness, purchase abandonment, dissatisfaction, or loss of trust or loyalty, thus representing a crucial challenge for retailers to prevent or mitigate. Consumer confusion has been studied extensively in a single-channel context, for instance, by investigating information overload phenomena in online shopping situations or examining increased choice sets resulting from large assortment sizes in physical stores. However, although omnichannel retailing has become the current state-of-the-art in the retail industry today, consumer confusion research from an omnichannel perspective is still very scarce. With the increased adoption of the omnichannel strategy by retailers that allow free switching behaviour for their customers during their shopping journeys, a new dimension to the consumer confusion phenomenon is observed. Customers are not only exposed to potential confusion at a specific retail situation in a single channel but are now confronted with potential new negative experiences while comparing products, prices, or information across channels. Particularly, when confronted with assortment inconsistencies across channels while switching channels, customers can experience irritation, frustration, or annoyance if the desired item is not to be found on the other channel, leading to adverse reactions that can potentially impact the retailer's financial performance. Prior literature has considered consumer confusion induced by assortment size, variety, or layout, but neglected its occurrence from assortment inconsistencies across channels from a channel switching perspective so far. This thesis focuses on the consumer confusion phenomenon resulting from assortment inconsistencies across channels from a channel-switching perspective in omnichannel retailing. Strategic assortment decisions in omnichannel retailing involve the coordination of the assortment between channels. Retailers can decide to realise a “Full”, “Asymmetric”, or “No Integration” approach for their assortment across channels. These strategic assortment decisions are taken at the Marketing-Operations-Interface (MOI), an interface harmonizing oftentimes conflicting relationships between objectives of the marketing and operations functions of the retailer. Although identical assortment across channels seems to be the desired solution to prevent consumer confusion (representing an objective from the marketing function), retailers oftentimes apply partial integration to benefit from channel-specific advantages such as the Long Tail effect (representing an objective from the operations function) which is detrimental to consumer confusion prevention. Retailers seem to neglect the significance of consumer confusion while making strategic assortment decisions at the MOI indicating that the phenomenon is not sufficiently explored or captured in an omnichannel context. Retailers appear to lack knowledge of the relevant concepts, dimensions, and consequences of the consumer confusion phenomenon. As a result, retailers are likely to fail in addressing and preventing the occurrence of the consumer confusion phenomenon in an omnichannel context. Current studies on strategic assortment decisions and consumer confusion in omnichannel retailing are very scarce and primarily based on experimental studies with a strong lack of empirical contributions. More importantly, none of the studies considers channel switching behaviour in the context of consumer confusion although representing the primary condition for the phenomenon to occur. There is a need for the integration and alignment of knowledge capturing the domains for strategic assortment decisions, the consumer confusion concept, and its short- and long-term consequences from a channel switching behaviour perspective in order to inform strategic assortment decisions at the MOI. Ontologies are explicit and formal specifications of shared conceptualisations that can structure and link information of specific domains and thus are a suitable technique for knowledge representation. Grounded on a Design Science project, this research designs and develops an ontology-based knowledge representation that captures and aligns domain knowledge on strategic assortment decisions, the consumer confusion concept and its consequences from a channel switching behaviour perspective in an omnichannel retailing context. The literature- and practitioner-informed Omnichannel Assortment Ontology for Consumer Confusion is able to integrate and represent relevant concepts and their relationships at the MOI in order to inform omnichannel retailers on the link between strategic assortment decisions and the consumer confusion phenomenon. The ontology is instantiated and evaluated through a System Dynamics model based on a case study that demonstrates successfully its ability to inform omnichannel retailers on strategic assortment decisions and the consumer confusion concept at the MOI. This study contributes to theory and practice in various ways. From a theoretical perspective, this is the first study to link strategic assortment decisions with the consumer confusion concept from a channel switching behaviour perspective. The solution design embodies novel design knowledge on the construction of an ontology-based knowledge representation. Moreover, the study enhances the fields of omnichannel assortment, consumer confusion, and channel switching behaviour research by introducing novel concepts, tools, and an improved understanding of the domains and their interplay with each other. From a managerial perspective, the ontology effectively serves as a knowledge reference that is able to guide strategic decision-making in assortment integration for omnichannel retailers at the MOI. This allows omnichannel retailers to identify and mitigate potential adverse consumer reactions induced by consumer confusion, thus eventually preventing financial impact on their retail performance

An IS-Perspective on Omni-channel Management: Development of a Conceptual Framework to Determine the Impacts of Touchpoint Digitalization on Retail Business Processes

The retail industry is continuously changing. Now, the digital transformation is yet again changing the way how retailers operate their business. After the introduction of different channel types, retailers now try to systematically manage these channels and thereby, blur the lines between those and the various customer touchpoints. This digitally-enabled channel management approach is called omni-channel management. One enabler of this approach is the digitalization of traditional customer touchpoints in brick & mortar stores. However, omni-channel management currently lacks an Information Systems (IS)-perspective and most publications mainly deal with technical or marketing aspects. Thus, the impacts and opportunities of the digitalization of specific customer touchpoints are not entirely clear, making it hard for retailers to prioritize their store innovation projects. Therefore, the overall goal of this research is the generation of a theory, which supports retailers with their decisions regarding the digitalization of customer touchpoints. In this article, a guiding conceptual framework is developed as a basis for the research design. This research design guides the ongoing research efforts to determine the impacts of customer touchpoint digitalization on retail business processes

Asiakaskokemus muodin vähittäiskaupan jakelukanavissa

Vähittäiskauppa on siirtymässä monikanavaisuudesta kohti kaikkikanavaisuutta ja toimittaessa useassa kanavassa on tärkeää tarjota asiakkaille yhtenäinen asiakaskokemus. Muotialan jakelukanavista vaatteita ja kenkiä ostetaan yleisimmin fyysisestä kaupasta, mutta muoti on myös yksi nopeimmin kasvavista tuotekategorioista verkossa. Myös mobiililaitteet ja -kanava luovat uusia mahdollisuuksia muodin vähittäiskaupalle. Asiakkaat odottavat entistä enemmän asiakaskokemukselta. Erinomaisella asiakaskokemuksella muotialan yritys voi erottautua ja saada lojaaleja, kannattavia asiakkaita. Tutkimuksen tarkoituksena oli selvittää, mitä asiakaskokemus on muodin vähittäiskaupan jakelukanavissa. Pääkysymys jaettiin kolmeen osaongelmaan: Miksi asiakkaat käyttävät eri jakelukanavia? Miten asiakkaat käyttävät eri jakelukanavia? Miten asiakaskokemuksen osatekijät vaikuttavat asiakkaan näkemykseen asiakaskokemuksesta? Tutkimus tehtiin kvalitatiivisena tutkimuksena. Tutkimuksen kohteena olivat 18–35-vuotiaat säännöllisesti vaatteita tai kenkiä ostavat miehet ja naiset. Haastateltavat rekrytoitiin Turun yliopiston eri tiedekunnista ja Turun ammattikorkeakoulusta. Haastattelut järjestettiin fokusryhmähaastatteluina. Kaikille haastateltaville lähetettiin ennen haastattelua myös jakelukanavia koskeva esikysely sähköisesti. Aineiston analysoinnissa hyödynnettiin sisällönanalyysia. Fyysiseen myymälään mennään, koska vaatteita voi sovittaa, myymälästä saa palvelua ja tietoa vaatteista ja tuotteen saa heti mukaansa. Verkkokaupoista ostetaan etenkin laajan valikoiman, edullisten hintojen, helppouden sekä ajan ja vaivannäön säästön vuoksi. Mobiilia ja mobiilikanavaa käytetään etenkin tuotteista tietojen etsimiseen, mutta ei ostamiseen. Webrooming-ostaminen on yleistä eli tuotteiden tietoja etsitään verkosta, mutta tuote ostetaankin myymälästä. Tuotteiden palauttaminen koetaan joko helppona toimenpiteenä tai vaivannäkönä. Palautekanavana käytetään verkkokanavaa tai myymälää, mutta palautteita annetaan vähän. Asiakaskokemuksen osatekijät, asiakaspalvelu, atmosfääri ja sosiaalinen vuorovaikutus, vaikuttavat asiakkaan näkemykseen asiakaskokemuksesta joko negatiivisesti tai positiivisesti. Erityisen hyvistä ja huonoista asiakaskokemuksista kerrotaan eteenpäin etenkin lähipiirille. Eri jakelukanavia punnitaan etenkin hyöty-kulu-näkökulman mukaisesti ja jakelukanavia vaihdellaan sen mukaan, mikä kanava kussakin ostopolun vaiheessa on hyödyllinen. Fyysisen myymälän asema korostuu. Asiakkaille on tärkeää voida alentaa ostamisen riskiä ja kokeilla vaatteita. Tämä näkyy myös webrooming- ja showrooming-ostamisessa. Suurin vaikutus asiakkaan näkemykseen asiakaskokemuksesta on asiakaspalvelulla